Years of progress could be wiped out by a hard Brexit
A mock customs post set up at Ravensdale, Co Louth, by anti-Brexit campaigners to illustrate the difficulties posed by border divisions.
Photograph: Niall Carson/PA
Named as bandit country at the height of the Troubles, the mountains and fields of south Armagh, marking the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, echo Yeats: “a terrible beauty”.
Even with army watchtowers high on the skyline, border posts and constant patrols, it was impossible to police. But 10 years on since bitter old enemies Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness took power to govern together, Brexit threatens to reawaken border divisions going back centuries.
And this just at a moment when Northern Ireland’s self-government is in a political cul-de-sac as voters go to the polls on Thursday for the second time in eight months, and unresolved issues from the past – including prosecutions of long-retired British soldiers – continue to haunt everyone.
The Good Friday agreement is built on a delicate balance of relationships within Northern Ireland, between Belfast and Dublin and Dublin and London. A hard Brexit will test each of those to destruction.
Along the 300-mile Irish border there are a large number of entry points, with 35,000 people crossing every day. Each month, 177,000 lorries, 208,000 vans and 1.85 million cars cross. And with farms straddling the border, goodness knows how many domestic pets and livestock which could be forced to carry ID tags.
All because the border will become the customs frontier of the European Union.
Yet for Irish republicans and nationalists, an entirely open border, of the kind which has operated without security or hindrance of any kind for many years, is politically totemic.
Bitter enemies Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness, who came together to share power in Northern Ireland, photographed in 2007. Photograph: Paul Faith/PA
It marks an everyday reality to all republicans that progress, albeit in their terms slow, has been made, and is being made, towards their aspirations for a united Ireland.
It has been as if the border no longer matters. Citizens on either side can and do take advantage of the health and educational services nearest to where they live on a cross-border basis. People cross the border freely to work, play and socialise.
Northern Ireland businesses invest without hindrance in the Republic and the same occurs for businesses in reverse. The two economies are being steadily integrated: even the level of corporation tax in Northern Ireland is being cut to synchronise with the low rate in the South.
Of course, the island of Ireland has not been united politically or constitutionally – to do so would properly require endorsement by referendum and the principle of consent is one of the cornerstones of the Good Friday agreement – but it is almost daily becoming united in everyday life. And that is welcomed by unionists as well, secure in the knowledge that there can be no change in the constitutional position without their consent.
The government disturbs that normalisation at everyone’s great and grim peril. I don’t say that we will go back to the murder and mayhem of the Troubles, but I do insist the process could so easily unravel. It requires continuous forward momentum and a reimposed border with restrictions in any way is the very reverse of that.
If the referendum result means Brexit at any price, it might well come at a dangerously high cost for the Northern Ireland peace process.
Police leaders have warned that static customs posts or control points would become sitting ducks for dissident IRA terrorists, small and isolated though they are. The existing smuggling problem on the border could be worsened, with increased opportunities for paramilitary fraud. One wheeze, apparently emanating from the government desperate for a solution, is to have electronic controls of some sort. But nobody can explain how they would be practical or acceptable to the EU, unless there was very heavy and highly provocative security surveillance.
Another suggestion is to grant Northern Ireland exceptional status, justified by its turbulent history, within both the UK and the EU. That might mean a harder border with Wales, Scotland and England, anathema to unionists. However, ports and airports are already monitored and sometimes policed, and travellers present passports and or driving licences to board aircraft.
Alternatively, would the Irish be prepared to increase controls at their ports and airports – with any extra security presumably paid for by Britain, as we do in Calais? The free movement of people, goods and services on the island is critical to the continued momentum of the peace process. On Monday I will move an amendment in the House of Lords to secure that, hoping that we never have to confront the stark choice between delivering on the Brexit referendum and deepening hard-won stability and peace on the island of Ireland.
Peace in Ireland depends upon an open border
Peter HainYears of progress could be wiped out by a hard Brexit
Named as bandit country at the height of the Troubles, the mountains and fields of south Armagh, marking the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, echo Yeats: “a terrible beauty”.
Even with army watchtowers high on the skyline, border posts and constant patrols, it was impossible to police. But 10 years on since bitter old enemies Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness took power to govern together, Brexit threatens to reawaken border divisions going back centuries.
And this just at a moment when Northern Ireland’s self-government is in a political cul-de-sac as voters go to the polls on Thursday for the second time in eight months, and unresolved issues from the past – including prosecutions of long-retired British soldiers – continue to haunt everyone.
The Good Friday agreement is built on a delicate balance of relationships within Northern Ireland, between Belfast and Dublin and Dublin and London. A hard Brexit will test each of those to destruction.
Along the 300-mile Irish border there are a large number of entry points, with 35,000 people crossing every day. Each month, 177,000 lorries, 208,000 vans and 1.85 million cars cross. And with farms straddling the border, goodness knows how many domestic pets and livestock which could be forced to carry ID tags.
All because the border will become the customs frontier of the European Union.
Yet for Irish republicans and nationalists, an entirely open border, of the kind which has operated without security or hindrance of any kind for many years, is politically totemic.
It marks an everyday reality to all republicans that progress, albeit in their terms slow, has been made, and is being made, towards their aspirations for a united Ireland.
It has been as if the border no longer matters. Citizens on either side can and do take advantage of the health and educational services nearest to where they live on a cross-border basis. People cross the border freely to work, play and socialise.
Northern Ireland businesses invest without hindrance in the Republic and the same occurs for businesses in reverse. The two economies are being steadily integrated: even the level of corporation tax in Northern Ireland is being cut to synchronise with the low rate in the South.
Of course, the island of Ireland has not been united politically or constitutionally – to do so would properly require endorsement by referendum and the principle of consent is one of the cornerstones of the Good Friday agreement – but it is almost daily becoming united in everyday life. And that is welcomed by unionists as well, secure in the knowledge that there can be no change in the constitutional position without their consent.
The government disturbs that normalisation at everyone’s great and grim peril. I don’t say that we will go back to the murder and mayhem of the Troubles, but I do insist the process could so easily unravel. It requires continuous forward momentum and a reimposed border with restrictions in any way is the very reverse of that.
If the referendum result means Brexit at any price, it might well come at a dangerously high cost for the Northern Ireland peace process.
Police leaders have warned that static customs posts or control points would become sitting ducks for dissident IRA terrorists, small and isolated though they are. The existing smuggling problem on the border could be worsened, with increased opportunities for paramilitary fraud. One wheeze, apparently emanating from the government desperate for a solution, is to have electronic controls of some sort. But nobody can explain how they would be practical or acceptable to the EU, unless there was very heavy and highly provocative security surveillance.
Another suggestion is to grant Northern Ireland exceptional status, justified by its turbulent history, within both the UK and the EU. That might mean a harder border with Wales, Scotland and England, anathema to unionists. However, ports and airports are already monitored and sometimes policed, and travellers present passports and or driving licences to board aircraft.
Alternatively, would the Irish be prepared to increase controls at their ports and airports – with any extra security presumably paid for by Britain, as we do in Calais? The free movement of people, goods and services on the island is critical to the continued momentum of the peace process. On Monday I will move an amendment in the House of Lords to secure that, hoping that we never have to confront the stark choice between delivering on the Brexit referendum and deepening hard-won stability and peace on the island of Ireland.
Peter Hain is a Labour peer