Greater Britain 1975

[Melnibonean]

Wasn't David Sterling a bit more than just "a former soldier in the SAS"?
If memory serves.... He was they bloke that started the SAS in the Western Desert during WWII.

[Mustasha Pasha]

While looking for something completely different this came up during a Google search -

http://www.newstatesman.com/asia/2009/12/vietnam-britain-british-war

Just when you thoguth it was safe to go back to the alternative history scenarios 

[commissarmoody]

NOW that is an intresting idea, I like how they added Rhodesia into the mix also.

[Mustasha Pasha]

You have to admit there's some delicious irony in the article. Like the concept of an Alistair Maclean novel being "Booker nominated", or Max Hastings being involved in "celebrated battlefield despatches."

However the premise is probabaly less far fetched than a coup in 1975. Harold Wilson was under terrific pressure from LBJ to send even "just one g0d@mn regiment of the Black Watch!"

 

[carlos marighela]

There was a famous Private Eye cover featuring Harod Wilson, tongue out, kneeling behind the figure of LBJ, whose trousers were pulled down.

[Doug ex-em4]

There was a famous Private Eye cover featuring Harod Wilson, tongue out, kneeling behind the figure of LBJ, whose trousers were pulled down.

Which, as it turns out, was probably a bit unfair on the Gannexed one..............

Doug

[carlos marighela]

Indeed. Had it been Robert 'Ming' Menzies PM, a Scots-Australian, apparently incapable of pronouncing his own name, it would have been spot on.

[frontal assault]

Just wikied David Stirling and found out the chap was actively opposing apartheid in the 50s and that while he did found GB75, he abandoned any ideas of military action after his plans were published by a pacifist magazine and when he realised the kind of right-wing nutters he was attracting to his cause.  Given that it seems somewhat unfair to develop the idea of 1970s British Civil War with him as the instigator of any uprising.  I'll have to rethink the idea and see if it has a future or whether I'll just go with the 79 and 88 civil war ideas.

[commissarmoody]

Or as in the winter of 1979, with a low intensity, civil IRA style with police and army raids, more loss of civil liberties and counter raids, and politically motivated actions by the different revolutionary or reactionary forces. Think of the IRA actions dearing the same time or ever in the Irish war of independence. Low intensity, small numbers involved but highly visible actions and politics made them seem and there actions bigger then they were.

Hell look at this group. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbionese_Liberation_Army
Lots of small groups like this were active in the us dearing this time, but luckily most didn't do any thing more then write long winded manifestos for there friends to read.

and here is a list of other Urban Guerrilla movements.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_guerrilla_warfare

[frontal assault]

Or as in the winter of 1979, with a low intensity, civil IRA style with police and army raids, more loss of civil liberties and counter raids, and politically motivated actions by the different revolutionary or reactionary forces. Think of the IRA actions dearing the same time or ever in the Irish war of independence. Low intensity, small numbers involved but highly visible actions and politics made them seem and there actions bigger then they were.

Hell look at this group. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbionese_Liberation_Army
Lots of small groups like this were active in the us dearing this time, but luckily most didn't do any thing more then write long winded manifestos for there friends to read.

and here is a list of other Urban Guerrilla movements.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_guerrilla_warfare

I checked out the SLA link, as well as looking up the SCUM Manifesto (which I actually found pretty funny, till I read the author went on to shoot Andy Warhol), both of which would make for interesting scenarios.  The last one reminds me of this two Ronnies Sketch called The Worm that turned, where a SCUM-style women's revolution has taken over the world and all men had to wear women's clothes.  The two Ronnies were a kind of two-man Guerilla resistance band.  Actually that would be a much better scenario for an alternative history wargame.

[carlos marighela]

Go with a good old fashioned coup d'etat followed by an uprising against a sort of 1970's cabal of Cromwellian colonels, it's no less silly than all the 1930s VBCW malarky. I always find it funny that the VBCW thing seems to miss more promising ground like the Invergordon mutiny, the Jarrow march or the period following the Great War. Oh well, the one thing to be said for such civil war scenarios is that they allow each gamer to provide their own answer to the perennial question 'Why are the Scots revolting?'  

[G2]

Real interesting history, with lots of wargame scenerio ideas....wow....my mind is racing at the moment. I need to step away from the computer before my head explodes. 

[carlos marighela]

and here is a list of other Urban Guerrilla movements.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_guerrilla_warfare

 Oh my God! I just looked at that list and under the ALN I noticed some bugger has stolen my forum name. The cheek of it! 

[commissarmoody]

Oh my God! I just looked at that list and under the ALN I noticed some bugger has stolen my forum name. The cheek of it! 

  We shell have to have words with that fellow. 

[carlos marighela]

We shell have to have words with that fellow. 

Well you can have words with him but you won't get much response, alas. As it happens I've been up to visit him on a couple of occasions, he's up in Quinta dos Lázaros in Salvador. Impressive tombstone, with his most famous poem carved on to it but not in the best of repair last time I was there. I heard they were going to clean it up for the centenerary of his birth, which falls later this year. I was hoping to go but that plan has fallen through.