United Kingdom: New troubles in Northern Ireland?
We’re barely a month into the post-Brexit world and “the tortured question of the Irish border” is already causing problems, said Arthur Beesley in the Financial Times. During Britain’s withdrawal negotiations with the European Union, both parties agreed that they wouldn’t allow a hard border between the Republic of Ireland—an EU member—and the U.K. province of Northern Ireland. Military checkpoints had dotted that border during the decades-long conflict between pro-U.K. unionists and nationalists who wanted a united Ireland, and those barriers were removed as part of the 1998 Good Friday agreement that ended the violence. To avoid the need for new checkpoints, the EU and U.K. agreed that the North would effectively remain in the EU’s single market. Goods now flow freely from Ireland to the North, and from the North to the rest of the U.K. But meat, fish, and other goods arriving in the North from the British mainland have to be inspected on arrival to ensure they meet EU regulations. This red tape has resulted in empty shelves in Northern Irish supermarkets, because many U.K. suppliers have decided that shipping goods to such a small market isn’t worth the customs headache. Unionist lawmakers in Northern Ireland now want the border protocol scrapped, saying it endangers the U.K.’s territorial integrity, and inspections at some ports were halted last week after threats from suspected unionist paramilitaries.
The possibility of violence is real, said Ivan Little in the Belfast Telegraph. Masked gangs of unionist “bully boys” have staged marches and sprayed anti-EU graffiti across the province, and there have been claims of militants recording the license plates of port workers—who some extremists accuse of aiding the nationalist cause. Police say they have no evidence that unionist paramilitaries have threatened staff, but “if the intimidation didn’t emanate from the main terrorist groups,” who is responsible? No sensible unionist supports these thuggish threats, said Ben Lowry in the Belfast News Letter. But there is “justified anger” over “the Irish Sea border betrayal.” Prime Minister Boris Johnson claimed during Brexit negotiations that he’d keep our country united, yet the people of Northern Ireland are now being treated as second-class British citizens. And he did all this to appease Irish nationalist lawmakers in Belfast and Dublin, who dropped ominous hints in the wake of the 2016 Brexit referendum that any border checkpoints within the island of Ireland might be targeted by IRA terrorists.
The potential dangers of a “permanent crisis in Northern Ireland cannot be overstated,” said Patrick Cockburn in Independent.co. uk. No matter whether the border between the EU and the U.K. is located on land or in the Irish Sea, this frontier will remain “a disputed no-man’s land where two communities struggle ceaselessly for dominance.” The problem will surely dominate U.K.EU relations for decades to come and generate flash point after flash point. There will be “much bad political blood” between London and Brussels. We can only hope actual blood won’t be spilled in Northern Ireland.