Postcards from the Edge

Mary Kenny

As an Irish citizen, I abstained from the Brexit vote, although I sympathise with the argument that a country is entitled to control its own borders and make its own laws. But, living just eight miles from Dover, I am beginning to grasp that entering and leaving Britain’s major port post-brexit could be a huge headache, unless some very clever deal is accomplished.

A well-informed Doverian, Mick Tedder, who has forty years’ experience of working at the port, and is a member of the Port and Community Forum, is very ‘pessimistic’ about Dover’s immediate future. The Port of Dover can see more than 10,000 freight vehicles pass through daily: he worked there before 1973 when there was only a fraction of such traffic, and a truckie might have to park up for two or three hours while the paperwork was completed.

Mr Tedder, who voted Brexit (as did most of the Dover referendum voters), predicts that if border controls are introduced, there will be ‘Armageddon’ in the Garden of England. He envisages the need for a huge parking holding area for vehicles awaiting processing, and congestion spiralling out in all directions. Supposing everything has to be stopped and checked, too, at the Channel Tunnel? Imagine the traffic jams and delays.

The local MP, Charlie Elphicke, seems to place his confidence in electronic scanning, as occurs between Canada and the US, but local lobby groups, such as EU Thinking Deal + Dover, are sceptical that this can be done at a huge maritime port such as Dover, which handles 17 per cent of Britain’s imports. There are other issues, too, such as the transport of animals – animals can only be confined in lorries for a certain amount of time, and long waiting periods would be disastrous.

The authorities at the Port of Dover have little to say about the situation, because it seems still so hazy. Talk about Continent cut off by fog!

Mr Tedder, a Brexit voter, is now keen on a soft Brexit to allow Britain’s major port to function effectively, although he does add, ‘You’re not just dealing with the EU. You’re dealing with the French!’ (French industrial stoppages have been known to create mayhem.)

On the plus side, there’s a boat in Dover Museum dating from the Bronze Age, witness to the fact that there’s been trading across the narrow, twenty-mile Channel since the time of the Pyramids. Though not at the rate of 10,000 trucks a day, admittedly.

Theresa May has declared her intention to honour the centenary of the first woman elected to the House of Commons in December 1918, Countess Constance Markievicz (1868-1927). There is even some talk of Mrs May unveiling a portrait as a feminist tribute to the Sinn Fein member, who, of course, was firmly abstentionist and never took her seat.

Constance, always known to Dubliners as ‘Madame’, was a spirited and courageous woman – but a feminist second and a nationalist first. Her cause was Ireland, and her most especial hostility was England, though her mother was English (possibly because her mother was English – she disliked her mother and greatly preferred her father, the eccentric Arctic explorer Sir Henry Gore-booth). Constance denounced divorce in Dáil Éireann because it was an ‘English’ practice. She loathed the British Empire, calling it ‘a belted ass’. She became a Roman Catholic, cutting family ties with Anglicanism.

She deserves esteem for her genuine dedication to the Dublin poor, but she’s an ambiguous figure for Mrs May’s feminism (even leaving aside Connie’s relish for foxhunting). Married to a Polish count, she preferred her stepson to her own daughter because she liked boys more than girls. She was excused execution for her part in the 1916 Rising because of the privilege of her sex.

And I am doubtful that the DUP’S Arlene Foster would support Mrs May’s canonisation of this fiery Anglo-irish revolutionary as the first female British parliamentarian. A hundred years on, Irish politics are still tricky for an English prime minister!

At the start of 2018, the Financial Times reported that Goldman Sachs, the global investment bank, would move its London operation to Dublin, post-brexit. The Bank of America already sites its European operation in Ireland, and Barclays and J P Morgan are adding to their Irish base.

Goldman seems to be hedging its bets, saying that it’s just a matter of about twenty staff members relocating to Ireland. My financial expert tells me that its business will probably still continue in the City of London, but deals struck with EU counter-parties can thus be deemed to have originated in Dublin.

I did hear of a high-flying group of futures brokers who moved to Dublin for regulatory reasons. I’m told they got legless every night by the banks of the Liffey, which is all too tempting.

Frankfurt is more sober – if less fun.