This time 30 years ago, nobody would have dreamt that Germany would be reunified just 20 months later. It was one of those great surprises of History in which, as is often the case, it is people mobilising who tip the balance, with politicians left to do no more than decide whether or not to seize an opportunity.
As everybody knows, the island of Ireland is divided in two. The smaller part of it belongs to the large neighbouring island. An ordinary person looking at a map would wonder what kind of logic had led to that annexation. Northern Ireland represents just 5% of the territory of the United Kingdom. It has less than 3% of the MPs in Westminster. Economically, it’s not exactly Bavaria or the Silicon Valley: ageing industries, such as shipbuilding, small rural enterprises, zero growth in the last two years. It is one of the poorest provinces of the United Kingdom, which subsidises it to the tune of €10 billion every year. Objectively speaking, it is not one of the most important parts of the great Leviathan.
History can of course be called upon to explain this oddity. The Irish have many times had to revolt against subjugation by the British. In 1922, the price of independence was for the six counties of Northern Ireland to stay in the UK, for the reason that the Protestant population was very much in the majority there (65%) and felt a solidarity born from the ideology of Joseph Chamberlain: these Irish Protestants sprang from the same (superior) race as the Anglo-Saxons. However, in 1940, London offered to give back this prestigious relic to the young free State on condition that it enter the war; Dublin refused, not out of sympathy with the powers of the Axis, but amid concerns that it would lose its military independence. The weight of the past would make itself felt for the entire century, with legalised discrimination against the Catholic minority in accessing jobs and housing, in matters of education and culture, and much more.
We all know what happened next: tensions and demands, interventions by the British Army, Bloody Sunday in Londonderry in 1972, a wave of attacks by the Irish Republican Army (IRA), retaliatory action by armed Protestant groups, direct rule from London, prisoners dying on hunger strike: a long chapter of “The Troubles” that left 3500 people dead. It did not end until 1998 and the Good Friday Agreement signed in Belfast, encouraged if not imposed by Dublin and London, but mainly Washington and ‘Brussels’. Its main provisions include the principle of proportionality in the system for the election of MPs and in the distribution of government portfolios, an end to discrimination, the demilitarisation of the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, the disarmament of paramilitary groups, the Republic’s renunciation of its territorial demands, the right to dual nationality and the creation of cooperation bodies between the Republic and the province.
The deal was approved in a referendum: 74% of people in Ulster and 94% of people in the Republic of Ireland voted yes. The single European market without borders had provided the practical preparations for this, with its tacit element of pressure in advance. Besides INTERREG and subsidies under the Common Agriculture Policy, the four phases of the PEACE programme (1995-2020) of the European Union subsequently consolidated it, by supporting dialogue initiatives between communities.
In a sky that had been sunny for 18 years, the 2016 Brexit referendum burst like an enormous clap of thunder (see EUROPE 11580). 55.8% of the Northern Irish population voted to remain. Of its six counties, only two staunchly Protestant ones wanted to leave the EU. The people’s concerns mounted as their eyes were opened to the practical implications of Brexit and the struggles in the negotiations between London and ‘Brussels’. Legal cases were brought, in vain: first the High Court of Northern Ireland and then the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom confirmed that the government of the UK did not have to seek the approval of the provincial assemblies and that only the agreement of the Parliament in Westminster was required. Brexit was thus imposed on a population that didn’t want it: this had the effect of reducing sympathy for the British even further.
But that wasn’t the worst of it. Brexit would lead to the restoration of a hard border between the two parts of the island, as the Republic was staying in the EU. This 500-kilometre demarcation line is crossed every day by 30,000 people. Not only do goods move freely, but the local economies are intertwined, particularly in the farming sector. Well-known drinks such as Guinness and Baileys, for instance, are the result of activities carried out on both sides of the line. For emergency healthcare, farming, fishing, environmental protection, energy, and many other areas besides, the need to preserve the absence of an internal border and the same legislative and tax framework is quite obvious. Furthermore, bringing back a hard border would be seen as a violation of the 1998 peace agreement and violence could return, targeting the technology or even the people carrying out the checks. Although none of this seemed to matter a damn to the British negotiators, their EU counterparts had to insist on a backstop being written into the withdrawal agreement, which many British MPs are not keen on. Theresa May has, moreover, still not managed to set out how it would be implemented in practical terms if a trade deal cannot be reached with the EU.
In the 2017 general elections, 10 of the 18 seats allocated to the Northern Irish were won, courtesy of the first-past-the-post system in force in the UK, by the unbending Protestants of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). These have had a pivotal role in allowing the government to hang on to a majority in the House of Commons. They have brought pressure to bear for Northern Ireland not to be the subject of a specific mechanism in line with EU rules, so much so that May would rather keep the whole of the UK inside customs union, an idea that is simply unthinkable to the most radical Brexiteers. But as what is equally unthinkable to ‘Brussels’ and Dublin is any modulation or renegotiation of the ‘backstop’, May’s Plan B is unconvincing and the deadlock total (see EUROPE 12176).
Looking at it dispassionately, however, we cannot ignore the fact that if Ireland were reunified, there would be no need for a border on its territory. In such a scenario, the Celtic and Irish Seas would provide natural borders, checks would be carried out in ports or territorial waters. May’s government could leave customs union and be able to put forward the wording of a transitional and subsequent agreement that would best suit the national interests and Parliament. The United Kingdom and Great Britain would then be one and the same thing and the expression Brexit would be wholly apposite. And, as Theresa May constantly reminds us, ‘Brexit means Brexit’.
In other words, the best and most uncontroversial way of avoiding the re-emergence of a physical border on Irish soil would be to abandon the existence of a State border. By sacrificing 5% of their territory, the British authorities would prevent Ulster from turning into a powder keg that would sooner or later require direct administration and the intervention of the British Army among a population hostile to Brexit. And this is not a situation the EU leaders could long ignore. (To be continued)
Renaud Denuit.