|
So we don’t have a deal, but we also have an agreement to not leave without one. The Brexit chaos continues.
Both in the US and UK, borders seem to matter again. Smugglers have always taken advantage of the tax and regulatory differences between jurisdictions. But border problems are made worse when political borders are drawn up by people not living locally.
This is exactly how Northern Ireland came into existence in 1921, when London-based politicians partitioned Ireland, with the majority British Unionists in the North and the majority Irish separatists in the South. Parts of the maritime border were never agreed and are therefore legally still in limbo. From at least 1927 this led to complaints of illegal fishing in the contested Lough Foyle area. The recent past has seen massive increases in illegal oyster fishing, accompanied by reports of intimidation, as the motivated and often unscrupulous players exploit the lack of jurisdiction to cash in on the lucrative shellfish trade. Furthermore, the Irish government is blocking Northern Irish fishermen’s access to Eire waters.
The partitioning of the Irish mainland was also mishandled. The line on the map didn’t follow any natural features but snaked through farms and even houses, resulting in locals waking up to discover that their family farm now straddled an international border, complete with custom officials prohibiting movement of their livestock across adjacent fields.
This 499 km (310 miles) land border has numerous crossing points. It was impossible to completely secure, even during the Troubles with the security infrastructure in place. With differing levels of taxation and agricultural subsidies between Eire and Northern Ireland the result was large scale smuggling of diesel, alcohol, cigarettes, and livestock. One famous case was that of Slab Murphy whose farm straddled the border and who made millions simply by moving livestock and then fuel across his own land, from one country to another.
The added complication is the involvement of both armed loyalists and republican paramilitaries; predominantly the IRA, who waged a 30-year violent campaign to drive the British out of Ireland, and the loyalists, whose roots were in the 1912 armed covenant to keep Ulster in the UK. These paramilitary groups often ran organized crime smuggling and racketeering; both ostensibly for their respective “causes” and personal enrichment.
The 1998 Good Friday agreement signed by the British and Irish governments and the majority of Northern Ireland’s local political parties was the culmination of the peace process, resulting in the physical border security infrastructure being dismantled.
Organized crime and smuggling were not dismantled however, and by 2015 the Irish and UK governments set up a joint taskforce to combat it.
Post Brexit, the opportunities for even more lucrative border smuggling will probably increase, lining the pockets of a new generation of paramilitaries and once again increasing the likelihood of violence. A harder border will probably be established to prevent some smuggling, only to become a target for republican paramilitaries.
The Brexit border issue has already reawakened the hard men of politics and violence. Sinn Fein, the political wing of the IRA, which demands a united Ireland is exploiting the political uncertainty by calling for a referendum on reunification. That is likely to be fiercely resisted by the loyalists who didn’t sign up to being Irish in 1912 and are unlikely to do so peaceably now. The remaking of a hard Irish border is like asking the Germans to rebuild the Berlin Wall. We are relearning an important lesson from history, that a border is never just a simple line on a map.
Michael Walker was born in Northern Ireland and now lives in mainland UK. He is a commercial pilot and an economist researching illicit trade.
The remaking of a hard Irish border is like asking the Germans to rebuild the Berlin Wall. We are relearning an important lesson from history, that a border is never just a simple line on a map.
|
