Brexit: Real Concerns About Lack Of Thought On Irish Border

The two men were on opposite sides for much of their lives but for the past decade or so business has thrown them together and they are now friends. Raymond Montgomery is on one side of the sectarian divide, Donny Mullen on the other. They have been brought together as partners in their meat trading business and now enjoy each other’s company and prosperity.

There is a “but”, and it’s a big one. Both men agree that if there is ever a return to a hard border between Northern Ireland and their neighbours to the south, there is a very real likelihood that “the hard men on either side” will return to the mindset of what is known as The Troubles.

“Och, those dumb politicians in Westminster must be able to see that”, said Montgomery, whose home is just outside Newry a few miles from the border area.

“Aye, yer right enough,“ Mullen, a beef slaughterman, chipped in during an interview with Felix Magazine. “Aye, and I don’t think it will just be the nutters. Most people I know have a gun of some sorts and they’re talking of using it.”

Dangers of the Past

Montgomery, whose brothers were in the British army, said the politicians driving Brexit did not seem to understand the dangers they were playing with. ”I know that if they installed a physical border as in the past (left), there are people who would see it as a challenge and they’ll take up arms again,” he said.

“And if they don’t, if they try to leave it open, I also know some who will see that as a first step to making Ulster different to every other part of the United Kingdom and they’ll see that as the beginning of the end of Unionism in Northern Ireland. And they’ll fight tooth and nail for the Union.”

During the years of IRA violence the area around the Irish border in south Armagh, where both men were speaking, was known to the police and security forces as “the badlands.” Many areas, particularly close to the border, were no-go zones where the army and security forces had to use helicopters rather than road vehicles because of the risk of booby traps.

The squabbling and disagreements within and between the politicians in Brussels, London, and north and south of the Irish border are producing no progress for those on the ground like Montgomery and Mullen. And without some sort of breakthrough on the border question the broader Brexit negotiations will remain in limbo.

It Must Be Solved

The question of how to deal with the Irish border is one of the first “withdrawal” issues that the EU has insisted must be resolved before the talks can move on to the trade talks that Britain is desperate to get underway. And the border is rapidly becoming the biggest sticking point, overtaking the other threshold issues of the “divorce bill” to be paid by London and the rights of expat citizens.

Ireland has now issued a stark warning that it will block progress on the broader Brexit negotiations unless the UK formally guaranteesj there will be no hard border with Northern Ireland. In sharp remarks before a breakfast meeting with Theresa May, the Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, said Brexit-backing politicians had not “thought all this through” in the years they had been pushing for the UK to leave the EU.

Making his first visit to Dublin as the UK’s Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson insisted last week that reintroducing a hard border between the two countries was “the last thing the UK Government wants.”

But without a hard border, the area will become an open back-door into Britain for illicit traffic such as people smuggling, which has already become a problem in the mainly rural areal area.

by Bob Graham

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