So yeah. Last night I fell asleep on the the sixth reading of this passage, wondering idly if there are sufficient numbers of nouveau taoist confuscian ancestor worshipers  inhabiting the UK to revoke the Tories' mandate.

As the Hekla eruption was in Iceland, it is not surprising that its most dramatic affects were in Britain. According to the paleo-climatologists Chris Sear and Mick Kelly:

The dust veil [put up by the volcano] may well have created an area of low pressure and low temperature over the British Isles. This, the research indicates, led to extremely high rainfall, which, combined with cold weather, would have made agricultural life impossible in areas such as the Scottish Highlands, the southern uplands, the Pennines, the Lake District and Wales. 146

The archaeologist John Barber now postulates catastrophes and major depopulation in Northern Britain in the mid-12th century BC, whe he and Baillie tentatively link to Hekla II. 147 They also suggest that the breakdown of the economy in the Highlands let to social disruption:

The catastrophe was so sudden and severe that it appears to have forced hundreds of thousands of people to leave their upland homes to seek a new life in the already inhabited valleys and lowlands. Widespread warfare would have followed and in the later half of the twelfth century BC, valley settlements start to be fortified. 148

However, the drama had a background. Barber and Baillie agree that for several centuries before the eruption the Scottish Highlands had been under severe environmental stress as a result of long-term climatic changes. Nevertheless, they insist that the final breakdown occurred only after the eruption.

Bernal, "The Thera Eruption," Black Athena, vol II The Archaeological and Documentary Evidence. 1991. p 303

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.