Her Majesty's loyal chocolate teapot er,.... opposition

One quick refresh later to make sure of some basic facts … I need to bone up on Irish history as it is a bit complex (history was never my favourite subject anyway) but the Government of Ireland act 1920 was the act which partitioned Ireland into Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland (intended to be self governing regions within the British Empire, not independent from the UK but not part of it either).

The Anglo-Irish treaty then set up the Irish Free State (still with two regions?) which was supposed to be self-governing, but again as a dominion within the Empire so not independent.

It is splitting hairs a little I know but NI had to actively exercise its opt out following ratification of the treaty which it did the following day so I think there was about 24 hours where Ireland was “unified” as the Irish Free State and (technically) it was the conscious choice of NI to re-join the Union. Not surprising as the northern counties of Ireland had Unionist majorities (and wasn’t that what the Civil War and the partition all been about anyway?)

Fast forward to the troubles (and I totally agree that the violence was on both sides) and you still have a situation where there is effectively civil war in the North because there remains a sizeable minority of Catholics there who want unification with the (now-independent) South and but a (small) majority of Unionists who are loyal to the crown.

The GFA was a brilliant bit of political sleight-of-hand, but it is predicated on both the UK and Ireland being in the EU. It lead to a situation where there was no practical  difference or advantage to be gained by the Nationalists in re-unifying Ireland. They could move and trade freely across the border with no formalities grace à the single market while the North stayed part of the UK which kept the Unionists happy. The fact that the EU existed and both Ireland and the UK were members allowed this to happen and it is one of the significant goods to have come out of it (even one argues this was something of a happy accident).

Brexit pulls the rug from under all this which is why it (GFA and Irish border) has become the spanner in the machine. I don’t think this was given enough creedance at the time - although there is that worryng statistic floating around that something just over 70% of Tory voters would want Brexit to go ahead even if the Union were to break up as a result.

This is the sort of thing that I blame the Leave campaign for - prior to the referendum there might have been some low level grumbling about the EU, interestingly polls from the period show slightly more people in favour of leaving, but the 2016 referendum turned this into a palpable hatred which we still have today (and is why we can’t just cancel Brexit without dealing with the backlash).

1 Like

A very complex subject. And I admit I never thought about the impact Brexit would have on the GFA, but as a remainer I thought mostly about the losses to the economy and fom.
Not sure if it’s correct but I thought some of the troubles were caused by strong unionist workforces denying employment to Catholics.

1 Like

To be honest neither did I.

I am at least mildly Eurosceptic, though also believe that the solution to some issues is more integration - especially the welfare state. To have a true level playing field I think you need an EU wide social system but I voted Remain because of the obvious economic harm that pulling out of the EU (any model) would cause with dubious gains in the non-economic areas.

In fact I think the only tangible “gain” might be to close our borders to free migration of EU workers.

Sovereignty etc - pyrrhic victory if you ask me.

Possibly but like a lot if the issues in NI/Ireland it runs deeply into the at least 250 years of history of the relationship between the UK and the island of Ireland.

What I mean Teresa is that the whole Island never existed as a united sovereign nation. That was just a sort of aspirational myth used as propaganda, “A Nation once again” as the song goes, which was rammed down people’s throats, especially kids in school and generally by priests, nuns and Christian brothers along with a hatred of the “Sasanach” primarily to take the focus off the absolutely lousy job the Irish Government was doing. The line was, “sure we’d be grand if it wasn’t for the eight hundred years of English oppression” :slight_smile: Which now that I think of it is quite like Brexit. British politicians and popular press have spent the last forty years blaming the EEC/EU for everything.

The North has been problematic since the Ulster plantation four hundred years ago. The whole 1916 Easter rising was a romantic endeavour which didn’t actually reflect the “will of the people” and which led on to civil war, poverty and dominance by the Catholic Church. Now that Ireland has enlightened leadership, a young, well educate and motivated workforce and the Church is in full retreat many feel that the last thing the Country needs is to adopt a failed Northern Ireland.

Actually, I seem have got my number slightly wrong yesterday. I thought it was a £6 billion handout to NI but it appears to be £10.8 billion and, amazingly, that is significantly more than the net amount the UK pays the EU, £8.6 billion. So from a purely economic point of view dumping NI makes far better sense than Brexit :smile:

3 Likes