Our sense of national identity always comes from the heart

WHAT strikes me most about British discussion of the backstop is the general unawareness of the symbolic significance of the absence of visible Border controls.

At the height of the Troubles, I made several trips to Belfast with my father who painfully endured the scrutiny of the contents of the car and our identities at the Border controls. He openly declared: “This is a dreadful experience in one’s own country.”

When the English team plays Ireland in the annual Six Nations rugby union championship, they experience Ireland as one nation; they do not see themselves as playing a bit of Ireland. My friends in Belfast and those in Dublin equally felt the pain of our recent unexpected defeat.

Whenever someone asks me which part of Ireland I come from my answer is invariably, “all of it”. This is not to make some hidden nationalist political point but a genuine expression of my sense of Irish identity.

National identity can never be determined by lines drawn on a map or established through the barrel of a gun.

Our sense of our national identity is rooted in the heart more than the head. Though Northern Ireland is a distinct political entity, whenever I visit I cannot shake off the feeling that the historical and geographical arbitrariness of the Border has not placed me in a world apart from the rest of Ireland. Philip O’Neill

Oxford, UK