HARD BORDER A DREAM FOR SMUGGLERS
AS A child Niall Connolly was forced out of his parents’ car to walk the remaining half a mile to his home. The stretch of land on which the family homestead sits is known locally as Coleman’s Island.
The ‘island’ is in Co. Monaghan, part of the Republic, but it is surrounded by Co. Fermanagh, part of the United Kingdom. A geographical anomaly, this one small patch of land neatly illustrates the intricate complexity of what policing the border entails.
Coleman’s Island is only connected to the rest of the Republic by a narrow strip of water on the River Finn and, in the past, it has proved to be a policing nightmare for both An Garda Síochána and the PSNI.
For those who live along the fringes of the island, it is also something that continues to cast a darker shadow over their lives.
During the Troubles, the roads surrounding Coleman’s Island were either blown up or had huge bollards put across them, leaving people with no option but to park their cars and walk or cycle the rest of their way home.
Mr Connolly told the Irish Mail on Sunday this week how people living in the ‘island’ are anxious about what life will be like post-Brexit, as questions and debate intensify as to how the border may need to be protected as the UK is poised to drop out of the EU, or crash out as the case may be, in just two month’s time on March 29.
‘A lot of people are saying it’s [Brexit] not going to be good. Look at that activity in Derry there a few days ago; it’s unknown ground, nobody knows what is going to happen. The politicians haven’t a clue but it’s looking like it’s going to be a hard border. They’re going to have to police it somehow.’
Mr Connolly, who is aged in his 30s, was born in Coleman’s Island and has lived there all his life. He understands the complexity of the Northern border more keenly than most, and does not want to go back to the days of looking out his kitchen window at a British checkpoint.
‘I’m living here my lifetime. We are just in the South here, those hills are the North. For us to get from here to anywhere in the South, you have go through the North. That road there,’ he says, pointing right in front of his property, ‘you cross the border four times in the space of about two and a half mile.’
During the Troubles, Mr Connolly explains, the roads around the ‘island’ were blown up and he would regularly wake in the night to the sound of the footsteps of British soldiers walking by his home.
‘The road was blown up there, about a half a mile up the road. And out at the end of the main road here, there used to be bollards across the road so, literally, we could not drive into the house, we used to have to get out of the car and walk the rest of the way home.
‘A British checkpoint used to be straight across from us here. As a child, I’d look out the window straight in the British checkpoint. You just grew up with it. There was many a time you’d be up at night with the British Army walking up past the house.’
The border lies directly across the road from the Connollys’ home – in the form of a drain that runs behind an older derelict house. The only access to the rest of the Republic – without first going over the border into Co. Fermanagh – is by crossing the River Finn, eight kilometres from the Connolly home.
Mr Connolly told how some in the area ‘can’t wait’ for the border to come back. ‘They’re mad to get smuggling again,’ he said. ‘There are certain boys around and they can’t wait for it to come back. There is always someone to benefit from it. They’ll smuggle everything. Butter was a great thing back in the day.
‘There’s an old fella from Clones and he was smuggling all the time. He used to go down the North and buy groceries every day and he used to come up and they’d take the groceries off him at the custom hut. He was doing it every second or third day and the customs guys were laughing at him. He kept cycling his bike in past them and they were taking his groceries. But little did they know it wasn’t the groceries he was smuggling, it was the bikes.
‘Some around here made a fortune from the smuggling, an absolute fortune. It was small enough stuff around here.’
MR CONNOLLY said where he and his family live is effectively a no man’s land. ‘The big issue is the main road, the N54 or A3 from Butler’s Bridge to Clones. Just to go on that main route you cross the border a number of time, it is true what they are saying it is no man’s land.
‘The two ATMs that were taken in Cootehill were found about a half mile across that field, as the crow flies, in an old farmhouse. The same thing happened in Newtown Butler, but a bigger job.’
Mr Connolly added that he does not
want to go back to the ‘inconvenience’ of having to cycle to his house.
‘But it is looking like a reality. I was even chatting to my insurance broker and he doesn’t know what way it’s going to go. He said you might not be covered in Northern Ireland, which means I would only be covered for a half a mile down the road.’
Crossing through Coleman’s Island, an elderly couple travelling by tractor reflect on days when the smuggling of butter, flour and wallpaper was commonplace in the ‘island’.
The woman, who did not want to be named, but aged 70, said she regularly travels through Coleman’s Island.
‘We live in Newtown Butler in the North, but shop in Clones in the South. I buy my fish in the Free State, I wouldn’t buy fish North of the border.
‘Back in the Troubles, all of these roads were closed. You would have to travel the main road by car and get a stamp at Clones as you crossed the border.
‘There was always plenty of smuggling happening. There was a huge demand for flour and wallpaper during the Troubles. I smuggled butter myself. I did when there was a shortage during the war. We would bring it back by bicycle through Coleman’s Island.’
Sitting right on the border of Co. Fermanagh and Coleman’s Island is Lesley Grey’s farm. Some of his land is in the North and the rest in the South.
His story is unusual in the sense that he knows Brexit will hurt him financially, but he nonetheless voted to leave for his own religious reasons.
He said: ‘We have a farm on the left-hand side, which is in the North, and on the right in the South. It was difficult with farming back then. Fortunately the British army opened the road again near my farm, because it was impossible. There were people living in there and if they had blocked every exit there was no way in and out, apart from helicopter. The army did use helicopters.
‘There used to be a bit of smuggling. During the war years, when commodities were scarce in the North, people would have gone to Clones for necessities like butter and sugar. You wouldn’t call them serious criminals, just people trying to get by.’
Explaining his stance on Brexit, Mr Grey feels his religious beliefs trump the money at stake in new trade deals.
‘I probably would have a completely different viewpoint to most. I am Christian and looking at it from a spiritual perspective.
‘We would see the EU as fulfilling Bible prophecy and it is a modern day spiritual Babylon. The EU makes no bones about it, Strasbourg parliament is based, is built in the shape of, the Tower of Babel and that’s where rebellion against God started. They even have an effigy of the woman riding the beast outside EU buildings. It gets its name Europe from pagan goddess Europa. Because of my Christian viewpoint I would have voted to leave even though financially it is going to be a disaster for farming.
‘I would see God as having a hand in the vote, because every pundit predicted it the other way. If you are looking at it from a financial side, yes, stay in. But, to my mind, that doesn’t matter whatever the cost.’