British exit, Irish wound

The border dividing Northern Ireland from the South has been a problem for years. If it now becomes a land frontier between the UK and the EU, old sores will open up

RUTH DUDLEY EDWARDS

A fter the Brexit vote on 23rd June, some Irish nationalists had a rush of blood to the head. The border that was seared through the island of Ireland nearly a century ago was finally going to dissolve. After the Northern Irish electorate had voted 56 per cent to “Remain” in the European Union, they fancied, it had become inevitable that the province would gravitate towards the pro-EU Irish Republic and away from the Brexit-voting English.

But then came the reality. Polls still showed that 63 per cent of the Northern Irish electorate would vote to remain in the UK. Then there is the small matter of EU members such as Spain, which have their own secessionist movements and are terrified of setting a precedent. Last but not least, there is the money: Northern Ireland depends on financial support from London, and it is unlikely the EU would be so generous. The days are gone when Irish republicans could earnestly put forward an economic policy which their constitutional nationalist critics had always ridiculed as: “Fuck off, and leave your wallet on the mantelpiece.”

So the border will remain—but it will change. The principal reason is that the 310-mile boundary with the Irish Republic is also the UK’s only land border and after Brexit, it will become its only land frontier with the EU. The history of this boundary being asked to do extra work has rarely been happy, and there are real anxieties again: John Kerry, the United States Secretary of State, visited Ireland in October and insisted that Brexit should not be allowed to damage the push for peace in Northern Ireland.

The border has always been a source of tension and crime, as well as a symbol of territorial division. Since the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, there has been a happy mix of relative peace, easy travel and tariff-free trade. Brexit could turn it back into the troublesome frontier that it has more typically been over the last 100 years. Anxious politicians want the border to stay soft, but the much-mooted “hard Brexit,” especially a British exit from the European single market, could make this impossible.

When he received the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in the Good Friday Agreement, David Trimble spoke of “that form of political evil that wants to perfect a person, a border, at any cost.” The Irish border is far from perfect; now it could well become less so as it changes. To make sense of what is likely to happen, it is important to grasp the varied practical meanings that a border can have— and how, in the Irish case, things have evolved in the past.

A cultural border has been present for almost four centuries. But this is also a political border, created in 1921, and made more entrenched after 1925. It has at times been an economic border, too, with customs posts. This existed from 1923, but gradually began to evaporate after both countries joined the EU in 1973. This border’s essential character, however, can be understood only through its history, which in too many accounts starts with complaints about the British government’s unjust partitioning of Ireland in 1921.

The reality is that the residents of Ireland were tribally partitioned well before then. The ultimate responsibility for creating the conditions could be laid at the door of James VI of Scotland, who in 1603—when he became James I—inherited the English and Irish crowns from Elizabeth I. Elizabeth had largely conquered Ireland, but James fell out with the chieftains of Ulster, the most rebellious and underdeveloped of the four provinces. Intent on pacifying it, in 1607 he confiscated their lands, restored the worst to the native Catholic, mainly Gaelic-speaking Irish, and granted the best to Protestant English (mostly Church of England) and Scots (mostly Presbyterian) planters. A deep divide set in. That great Whig historian, Thomas Macaulay, writing in the 19th century and deploying the uninhibited generalisations of his day, compared the temperaments of the Scots and the Irish: