Sinn Fein sees its chance amid doubts over Ulster’s future
‘Who is going to show their passport to buy eggs? I think it is bleak times. It wasn’t our choice, it was England’s’ anywhere else in the UK bar two London boroughs.
Less than a quarter of voters in the district, called Foyle, opted to leave the EU, and 78 per cent voted to stay. In Northern Ireland as a whole, 56 per cent of voters backed Remain.
Some Londonderry residents are worried that the Brexit vote could lead to checkpoints at the border with the Republic, which is only 10 minutes’ drive away from the city. At present, motorists only notice they have passed from the province to the Republic when speed warnings begin to be given in kilometres per hour.
Tony Blair and Sir John Major visited the city a fortnight before the referendum to caution against Brexit, arguing that it would lead to border controls and customs checks.
Yesterday, Gillian Hamilton, a farmer’s wife from Donegal was laying out free-range sausages and bacon at her market stall just a few yards into the Republic.
All talk was of the referendum. “I’m scared how it is going to change everything,” she said. “Listening to my friends and family, they are just shocked. Here in Northern Ireland and Donegal, it is going to affect us more.” The family live five minutes’ drive from the border, in the Irish Republic, but her 10-year-old son and seven-year-old daughter go to school in Londonderry.
“People are making comments that we will need a passport every morning to take the kids to school,” she said.
Mrs Villiers has said frontier controls will not be necessary and the Irish Government said on Friday that it would do its “utmost” to retain the so-called “Common Travel Area” across the island.
Those words did not reassure Kevin Melarkey, who also sells farm produce, a five-minute walk away from Mrs Hamilton’s stall, but on the other side of the border. “The Leave campaign was all about taking control of the borders,” said the 33-year-old, who has lived in Londonderry all his life. “I think there will definitely be a border if they want to stop migrants.”
His business would suffer, he said, since the majority of his customers drive to his shop from the Republic. “Who is going to show their passport to buy eggs?” he asked.
“I think it is bleak times. How can we be dealt this hand when it wasn’t our choice, it was England’s?”
In the centre of the city, the majority of nationalists live on one side of the River Foyle, the majority of unionists on the other. In between, there is the Peace Bridge.
Yesterday, beside the former British barracks on the east side of the bridge, a 21-year-old Remain voter called Adam Doherty explained that he had initially been downhearted when his side lost the referendum.
Mr Doherty, who grew up in a nationalist household and was made redundant last year after three years as an engineer, said the EU represented prosperity as well as the chance to travel the Continent easily, something that he longs to do.
Then he heard people saying this would make a united Ireland more likely, and his mood picked up. “The English were doing us a favour by voting Out,” he said. “After all the years of war, hopefully we can vote away from them and back into the EU.” On the other side of the bridge, there is a plaque. “This project is funded by the EU,” it says.
Next to the writing, there is an EU flag, with its familiar blue backdrop and yellow stars. One of the stars has worn away.