COMMENTARY
After two decades of more-or-less peaceful life, Northern Ireland still feels like a place that could go either way: it could exorcise the demons of sectarianism and secure a brighter future, or it could slip back into endless inter-communal bickering or even outright violence. Brexit makes the second option more likely.
Remember, the region is still recovering from the trauma of war: after 3,500 violent deaths, the equivalent of 125,000 in Great Britain, the embers still glow. That’s not just vindictiveness. The killing ended on terms that left no side fully satisfied, no future excluded, and most practitioners of violence amnestied. Thousands of families live not only with bereavement but in daily co-existence with their loved ones’ killers. It would be amazing if such a settlement was perfectly stable. But it staggers on.
The region is also quite pro-European. These days, its two electoral camps are roughly equal in size: pro-British voters, mostly Protestant, and mostly Catholic citizens who hope, eventually, for Irish unity. Almost all the second camp wants to stay in Europe; a plurality of the first feels minded, amidst some confusion, to leave. That gives a natural majority of at least 60% for staying in. Brexit will make a lot of people angry.
There is similar mix of clarity and confusion among local politicians. Colum Eastwood, the 32-year-old leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party, is clear: Brexit would “devastate” Northern Ireland, hurting farms, businesses and the peace settlement.
Remember, one aim of that settlement was to make politicians across the religious divide, and across Ireland, collaborate to secure European benefits. That part has worked.
Eastwood speaks for moderate nationalists but his arguments deserve wider hearing. About 80% of Northern Ireland’s farm income comes from Europe, and in recent years European subventions have accounted for 1.2% of the region’s GDP.
It can, of course, be maintained that London, free of Euro-shackles and awash with repatriated cash, will replace those European funds. That is what the leaders of the Democratic Unionist Party, which speaks for most Protestants, are saying. That implies, optimistically, that an “independent” Britain will attach huge priority to small farms and remote areas.
In any case, that fond hope doesn’t apply to EU programmes to foster inter-communal peace and regional cooperation, linking the republic’s border areas, the west of Scotland and Northern Ireland. Those funds are diminishing but still hefty: the latest dose will inject close to 500m Euros in the six years to 2020. Apart from the projects they finance, these funds stimulate new political relationships.
Proof is the very fact that the DUP now works hard with its historic adversaries to get goodies from Brussels. But the signal it is sending to voters is pretty cloudy.
For example, Diane Dodds, the party’s MEP, rightly takes credit on her website for lobbying for her home region’s interests. She also claims that Northern Ireland’s entrepreneurs are conflicted over Europe, quoting a poll by the Federation of Small Businesses showing only a small pro-EU majority. But these numbers refer to businesses across the UK; in Northern Ireland, a big share of FSB members favour staying in.
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A deeper point is that the brightest long-term trends in Northern Ireland reflect a softening of the inter-Irish border, facilitated by Europe. Take high-tech: the Irish republic has lots of expertise in this sector, thanks to foreign investment. Belfast, meanwhile, spawns start-ups in fields like software or medical technology. Those start-ups need open borders, across Ireland and Europe, to hire talent and sell services.
The sense of teetering between futures good and bad is acute in a city whose current name recalls unresolved conflict: Derry-Londonderry. The place exudes cultural pride but the spectres of poverty and dissident terrorism are never absent, and it could still slide back into social malaise and violence. Links with the republic mitigate that risk. For example, the Northern Ireland Science Park, a small-business incubator, happily straddles Belfast, Derry and across the border, Letterkenny.
With Brexit, the inter-Irish border would harden, because it would become an external EU border. That doesn’t mean that it would instantly be re-policed by customs officers and soldiers – the Irish republic would still want close relations with the whole UK. But as an EU member the republic wouldn’t be free to negotiate its relationship with the UK. It would be constrained by its European partners, and after Brexit, the atmosphere could be nasty.
With or without Europe, Northern Ireland’s future is wobbling between hope and regression. And it is pretty obvious to almost everybody who is engaged in the sort of projects or businesses that bring hope, a hardening of the border is the last thing this long-suffering region needs.
Edited by Geert Linnebank
This piece was simultaneously published on The Telegraph. On June 9, the figure for EU subventions as a proportion of Northern Irish GDP was corrected; it is 1.2%.
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