An atmosphere of crisis in Ireland north and south is dominating discussions of the future among seasoned observers and commentators there. It is occasioned by the impending decision on Brexit due to be made shortly ahead of the end of the transition period on 31 December.
Geoff Martin was the inaugural head of the European Commission Office
in Northern Ireland 1979 – 1984, and was later Head of the European
Commission Representation in the UK, 1993 – 2002.
While the wider public may well be more exercised by the immediate
effects of the Covid pandemic, those in business, government and
politics are becoming concerned at the almost total absence of detail
about the consequences in Ireland of the UK leaving the European Union. A
Hard Brexit, A Thin Brexit or No Brexit? No one knows. The unease is
more pronounced in the north. It results from the earlier acceptance
that with Britain out of Europe, concerns about the Irish border require
attention to protect the provisions of the Good Friday Agreement. These
developments also follow the announcement of a new policy of a ‘Shared
Island’ by the coalition government in the south. Both have raised fears
in the north once again about a United Ireland through the back door
and unionist apprehensions have again been heightened. The new reality
is that a United Ireland is still an aspiration but no longer a policy.
The famous Four Green Fields of Ireland in the folklore (the provinces
of Ulster, Munster, Leinster and Connaught) will have to wait. But there
may be an interesting role for all of Ireland alongside Wales and
Scotland in promoting shared Celtic interests.
What does the future promise?
The
future of Northern Ireland following these developments will be
dramatic and unprecedented in its 100-year history. For the south, the
vision of the Celtic Tiger may begin to wane as the British absence from
the European Union takes its toll on its nearest and closest neighbour.
So
far, reactions, north and south, have been muted and fairly low key. In
Dublin some academic expressions are focussed on the question of
identity. To what extent do northerners feel Irish or British or both?
In the north the leading voice of unionism, the Belfast Newsletter,
dismissed the “Shared Island” initiative as a coalition conspiracy of
anti-Sinn Fein tactics in order to avoid a Border referendum too soon,
and largely ignored the suggestion.
However, on closer examination
there is much more at stake in both parts of Ireland than yet another
rerun of the well-worn unity arguments. Brexit has put an end to these
old arguments. For Ireland as a whole, Brexit is a fundamental step back
and for Northern Ireland in particular, it marks a major fork in the
road ahead.
Changing Economic Relationships
When
Ireland joined the European Economic Community in 1973, official
figures record that 55% of its exports went to the UK. Today the figure
is 9% and falling. However, in food products the UK is still Ireland’s
biggest trading partner. Around 50% of Irish beef, 34% of dairy products
and 80% of mushroom sales go to the UK.
This will inevitably mean
radical change in the breadth of Irish export patterns. Change has
already begun. Official Irish figures report that in 2018, 9 million
euros worth of Irish beef was exported to China. Currently the value of
beef exports to China is projected to reach 120 million euros soon.
The search for new friends
Within
the negotiating corridors of Brussels and round the ministerial tables
of the European Union, Ireland has lost a valued partner. In crisis
after crisis in the past, the UK did the heavy lifting. That meant that
Ireland could row in behind and reap the consequent benefit from its big
brother without sustaining any collateral damage itself. That has come
to an end. Since 1973 when both countries joined the then European
Economic Community there has seldom been a sliver of difference between
the two, with the possible exception of Northern Ireland occasionally.
Now all that has changed. Ireland is building up its diplomatic clout in
the capitals of Europe and using its renowned charm to make new friends
and garner the political support its interests require in this less
comfortable setting.
This extends to the nations of the UK as
well. A new Irish consulate in Glasgow to mirror the one in Edinburgh.
The reopening of the Irish consulate in Cardiff and more attention being
paid perhaps also to the value of the little known British-Irish
Council. That could be another means of safeguarding Irish influence
within Britain. England in particular shows every sign of wishing to
lead a separate Global Britain initiative, leaving Europe behind. But
Wales and Scotland have other priorities and their relations with
Ireland are more instinctive.
The land bridge between Wales and
the English east coast ports is being re-examined for possible Brexit
related additional cost. A new measurement is being made of the scale of
new English border checks of goods and increased bureaucracy. These
will cost time and money, and will be judged against the currently
lengthier sea crossings to new coastal continental destinations already
being opened up.
The voices of regret
Yet
there are Irish voices of regret at saying goodbye to an old friend.
There are still many thoughts of yesteryear in Ireland. Remnants of the
West Brits survive and still hanker after past relations. Thoughts of
Ireland re-joining the Commonwealth surface. Even though Britain is
currently the so called “Chair-in-Office” of the Commonwealth, it is no
longer the British Commonwealth. Most of its members enjoy substantial
financial and trading advantages from their regional connection with the
European Union which Britain is unable to match, leaving the Queen as
the remaining tower of strength still holding the Commonwealth together.
Britain is heading out into an unknown future with many fewer friends
than in the past. If strength lies in numbers, those in Ireland who
regret the breaking of old but complicated ties with Britain need to
calculate the costs of a Britain outside Europe and a Commonwealth long
past its zenith. No one seems to have measured Brexit yet in those
terms.
Support for Ireland from outside
The
new American administration will help Ireland come to terms with its
new circumstances as well. President Joe Biden will surely identify
Ireland as already in a very special relationship with America. Family
ties are easily traceable to America from both parts of Ireland and go
back a long way. There is also strong Irish American representation in
Congress. This will be reflected in strong American support for the Good
Friday Agreement and a warning to British nationalists not to interfere
with the current arrangements on the Irish border, where future
business trends within the Single Market are likely to expand to the
benefit of Northern Ireland in its new economic relationships. The
Americans with Biden as President see Brexit as a geopolitical mistake
but the ‘Five Eyes’ defence and intelligence alliance with Britain will
of course continue and Britain remains a permanent member of the
Security Council of the United Nations.
There are also several
potential benefits for Ireland in inward investment and in the financial
services sector. The number of overseas investment projects into the UK
has dropped 35% in the last 12 months to September 2020. Foreign
investment into the UK is predicted to fall more than a third after it
leaves the EU single market and customs union at the end of the
transition period this year, according to a study by UCL and the London
School of Economics. As one of the principal reasons for investing in
the UK was access to the single market, Ireland is well placed to pick
up at least some of this slack. Similarly, in the case of financial
services, already there are moves out of the City of London into
Amsterdam, Paris and Dublin. This trend is likely to continue if the
predicted Brexit deal is either non-existent or pretty thin.
Tensions within Britain
With
the UK out of the European Union, a debate is already raging internally
in Britain concerning the extent to which EU policy, administered until
now by the devolved administrations will be reappropriated by London.
Scotland is a leading voice in this debate, followed closely by Wales.
This does not augur well for a friction free debate with London about
devolution, at a time when within England the regions are insisting that
their voices are heard and their advice listened to in Whitehall as
never before. Ireland will surely become part of this discussion. Its
relations with the island of Britain are close. Its transport links
cross Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland and England. Trade at some as
yet to be determined level, though much reduced, will continue. The
common travel area, family ties, voting rights in local elections and
the big Irish communities in the major cities and conurbations will
ensure that relations remain friendly and close.
The structures
are already in place to ensure a smooth transition for Ireland into a
new set of relations with Scotland and Wales in particular, if not so
much with England. The existence of the British-Irish Council, created
by the Good Friday Agreement, can pave the way. With a membership
consisting of Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Ireland, the Isle of
Man and the Channel Islands, as well as England it is well placed to
share common problems and agree solutions. It already has a permanent
secretariat situated in Edinburgh staffed by British and Irish
officials. Departmental ministers from the member countries meet
regularly and at a summit level, First Ministers and Prime Ministers
meet twice a year. It has become a working arrangement. The fact that it
has not drawn much media attention does not diminish its value and
potential. It commands influence over common areas of interest but may
require some amendment of its procedures to allow more equal access to
its agendas by other members than just Britain and Ireland who at
present control the agenda.
To the outsider, all of this appears
to be a positive response to a rapidly evolving situation. That is,
until Northern Ireland is put into the mix.
Is Northern Ireland a misfit?
Northern
Ireland is not well known in Britain, nor in many parts of the south
either. Its connections overseas are difficult to identify. Nowadays,
after 40 years of conflict, very few exist. The north was once the
industrial jewel in the crown of Ireland and famous worldwide for
shipbuilding. It launched the fated Titanic in the early 1900s.
Engineering, textile manufacturing machinery and a famous linen industry
whose products were coveted in the salons of New York were among its
claims to fame. All that has gone. In contrast, the south has prospered
mightily from membership of the EU. which provided the connections and
the confidence that was always denied it, languishing as it did then, an
impoverished agrarian economy in the quasi-colonial shadow of Britain.
Resistance
to Home Rule, the sacrifices of men in the Great War and subsequently
the outcome of an Anglo-Irish Treaty, created what is now Northern
Ireland, six of the nine counties of the province of Ulster. As the
crow flies the distance between Carlingford Lough in the east and Lough
Foyle in the west is less than 100 miles. But the border between
Northern Ireland and Ireland between these two loughs is over 300 miles.
The difference is the result of a border drawn in order to gerrymander a
majority who wished to remain part of the United Kingdom. It is that
bald fact that has dogged the history of Northern Ireland from the
beginning and in later years led to a period of 40 years of violence,
commonly known as ‘The Troubles’.
The troubles eventually came to
an end with the Good Friday Agreement negotiated with the Northern
Ireland political parties and the Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom
and Ireland all sitting together around the same table. The Good Friday
Agreement, also known as the Belfast Agreement, was recognised by the
United States of American as well as by the European Union which both
Ireland and the United Kingdom had joined together in 1973. It became an
international Treaty, lodged at the United nations too. The Peace
Process resulted. It was generously funded by the European Union and
presided over by the Irish and UK governments and strongly supported by
the United States.
Britain is leaving
Then
in 2016 in a referendum the United Kingdom decided by a slim majority
vote to leave the European Union. In Northern Ireland the vote recorded
59%in favour of staying. The DUP was strongly against remaining in the
EU, preferring to follow the leadership of the British Conservative euro
sceptics. Sinn Fein was strongly in favour. Other parties in general
wished to maintain the status quo and remain in membership.
Now
the UK withdrawal negotiations are coming to an end. They embrace,
unless a new disaster unfolds, an Irish Protocol. This is designed to
maintain an open border between north and south, to maintain and protect
the Peace Process, with Northern Ireland remaining in the Single Market
and Customs Union for goods while other trading commodities, capital,
services and labour, remain part of the separate United Kingdom
arrangements outside the European Union. This complicated arrangement
will have the effect of requiring all goods, especially animals, plants
etc to be subject to checks both going into Northern Ireland from
Britain or moving from Northern Ireland the other way. In effect it
constitutes a border of a kind. But it is not a constitutional
construct. It is in all respects economic in its effects. It recognises
the circumstances of the island’s economic interrelationships without
interfering with the constitutional politics.
A shared island – a new beginning?
Understandably
this is a divisive issue. There is no single northern consensus. The
Northern Irish Executive has not taken a position. However, the final
outcome will be the negotiated position of the United Kingdom Government
and Northern Ireland will be required to implement it.
In
parallel but separately, the proposal for a ‘Shared Island’ has emerged
from the Irish Taoiseach’s office on behalf of the coalition government.
It means that the old arguments for a United Ireland have been put on
the back burner and the hand of friendship extended to a new all-island
economic arrangement connected to the European Union. While the voices
of the party-political extremes have dismissed the concept as
unacceptable, more moderate voices in the north have begun to see some
new prospects opening up. The unionist business community is beginning
to see their future prospects in a new light. In future decisions are
likely to be made in favour of new markets more closely connected to the
European single market than with Britain, as its contacts shrink and
inward investment recedes. By contrast, Britain’s promised new trade
opportunities seem mere chimera in the distance.
This dismal
prospect is now being countered by the call from the government in the
south to take measures towards deepening the development of trust
between north and south. This is not easy in an atmosphere still laden
with suspicion and where discrimination is still present to some extent.
Political
extremism in the form of the Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Fein
control the Northern Ireland Assembly. They have squeezed the other more
moderate parties. The effect has been that over the years, the north
has lost outside contacts apart from the fringes of the politics of the
far right and the extreme left.
So the hope that a policy of
‘sharing’ will invite a warm response is unlikely. Sinn Fein will see it
as a ploy to undermine an early referendum on unity. The DUP will cling
to the bigoted bellowing of the old Protestant Defender Edward Carson
and say NO. His pointed finger, high on a plinth outside the northern
Parliament Buildings in Stormont still points aggressively south at
Dublin.
The best that can be expected from the centre ground, now
beginning to grow again according to polls, is that they will remain
cautious and suspicious and “Wait and See”. As ever there will be no
initiative from the north. There never has been. Yet the consequences of
Brexit and the Irish Protocol will precipitate change. Britain out of
Europe will have repercussions not only in Northern Ireland but also in
Wales, Scotland and Ireland too. The growing pressures for greater
devolution will become stronger as the common economic interests of the
countries in the British-Irish Council, with the possible exception of
England, become more pronounced. The relevance of the Council is likely
to grow. So too is the role likely to be played by the North South
Ministerial Council in the affairs of the island of Ireland itself. A
seat at both these tables for Northern Ireland will become a vital
instrument in awakening a wider interest in the common interests of
these Celtic countries. It could become a crucial stepping stone for the
isolated and defensive Northern Ireland to begin to feel much more
secure at a table in the company of the Scottish and Welsh. The
perennial lurking shadow of a United Ireland could be overtaken by a
wider sharing of Celtic interests. This would be a noble beginning to a
new phase in the development of both parts of Ireland.
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