A Greater Britain is an Alternate History timeline by Ed "EdT" Thomas, originally posted on AlternateHistory.com. The original timeline can be found here
, while the updated and revised version can be found here.
The timeline is a For Want Of A Nail scenario centering on one of the most hated political figures in British history, Oswald Mosley. He is infamous as a fascist who openly supported Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Yet only a few years earlier, Mosley had been a promising and ambitious young Labour MP. In the scenario he is compared to Tony Blair (each chapter is prefaced by a Blair quote) and portrayed as a Labour politician who thought that centrism was the way forward.
A Greater Britain diverges from our timeline when a few votes at a close by-election go the other way and Mosley scrapes into Parliament a little earlier. Consequences and butterflies from this mean Mosley never quixotically abandons Labour to start his dead-end New Party and instead reforms Labour from within, becoming Prime Minister in 1932. His domestic policy such as a House of Lords reform and devolving power in India is explored, but most significant is his foreign policy, as he pursues an alliance with Mussolini's Italy. This means the Rome-Berlin Axis never forms, and when thanks to butterflies Austria contests the Anschluss, Italy and Britain call Hitler's bluff and war begins before Germany is ready...
This timeline was published by Sea Lion Press in 2015.
This work contains examples of :
- Balkanize Me: Yugoslavia, of course. And India after 1953.
- Happily Ever Before: The timeline proper ends with a short victorious Second World War, no Holocaust, peace in Europe and an India which has seen a peaceful transition to a confederation within the British Commonwealth. The epilogue set in 1974, on the other hand, has a crazy North Korea-style Fourth Reich run by Reinhard Heydrich armed with nuclear space stations, India having broken apart through civil war and strife, and more.
- Historical In-Joke: Many, but in particular the epilogue features Margaret Thatcher and Alan Clark as members of the Labour Party (and lovers!) thanks to Mosley's move to the centre.
- Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Nuclear-armed Nazis IN SPACE!!
- Peace Conference: The Stockholm Conference, which ends the Austrian War.
- Red Scare: After the defeat of Germany in the Austrian War, the Soviet Union was regarded as the "main threat to world peace". Later replaced by the more radical-left People's Republic of China.
