Brexit and the border: why the backstop debate threatens to reopen old wounds in Ireland

THE Irish border is a place of blood. Perhaps the terrible death of Patsy Gillespie best explains the significance of this snaking, twisting, 310-mile boundary, which runs through farms, homes, streams and villages, to the people both to the north in Ulster and to the south in the Republic.

Gillespie was a Catholic civilian who worked for the British army. In 1990, his family was held hostage by the IRA while Gillespie – viewed as a collaborator – was chained into a vehicle containing 1000lb of explosives. He was forced to drive to a border crossing where the IRA detonated the bomb, killing Gillespie and five soldiers. Gillespie’s death underscored that people die not just at the border, but because of the border. The macabre, cruel spectacle of his death became a staging post on the path to peace.

It’s not just the Irish who die at the border – it’s been a graveyard for the British too. In south Armagh, so-called Bandit Country during the Troubles, warning signs went up at the border saying "Sniper at Work". The IRA’s "Border Sniper" killed seven soldiers and two police officers, eroding British resolve.

Events at the border, then, are able to change things: in some cases, weaken support for the IRA; in others, drain British morale. Today, the battle over whether or not there will be a hard border in the event of the UK leaving Europe, will determine the fate of Brexit and Boris Johnson, the future of Britain, and the safety and security of the island of Ireland.

It’s seen as strange in Ireland that the UK refers to "the Irish Border". It’s "the British Border", surely, the thinking goes – after all, Ireland didn’t want it or create it.

In Irish eyes, the border may all be London’s doing, but it’s the people of both the north and south of Ireland who’ll have to live with the consequences of the current Brexit/Border crisis – also a British creation. UK politicians gave little thought to the border until after the 2016 referendum. Then, as truth dawned, the border became the central dilemma of Brexit.

As time has trickled away, Johnson’s last hope of getting the Brexit deal he wants depends on unravelling the intractable border problem. He’s just asked European leaders to scrap the Irish backstop – the scheme to prevent the imposition of a hard border post-Brexit.

Johnson’s plan would likely lead to resurgent violence. Northern Ireland’s chief constable warns that a hard border could see paramilitaries return. On Monday, dissident Republicans planted a bomb near the border targeting police.

In Dublin and Brussels, the timing of Johnson’s attempt to bluster past the border problem hasn’t gone unnoticed. This month marks the 50th anniversary of the Troubles. No EU leader believes binning the backstop or the return of a hard border would do anything but point a path back to the dark days of political murder. French president Emmanuel Macron called the backstop indispensable. German Chancellor Angela Merkel handed Johnson "Mission Impossible" when she gave him 30 days to come up with a backstop alternative. There’s no solution – technological or otherwise – and Merkel knows that.

The border – that "scar on a beautiful woman’s face" – has been a source of anguish for nearly 100 years. Viewed through the long lens of history, the border was forged because of British indifference to the needs of the Irish people, and the demand for home rule before the First World War. Now, with Brexit just weeks away, British indifference to the border and the needs of the Irish people, both north and south, could also spell the disintegration of the Brexit dream.

The border is Brexit’s Gordian knot – it cannot be untied without the spectre of violence. No amount of Brexiteer wishful thinking will make the problem go away. When peace broke out as the Troubles came to an end, and the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) was signed, the border effectively became invisible. People could identify as either British or Irish under the GFA, and the apparatus of the security state – border watchtowers and checkpoints – vanished. The border had become a symbol of bloody conflict, and only those who harked back to violence wished its return.

The British diplomatic corps is fully aware that Ireland and its European allies are unbending on the issue of a hard border, with its risks of acting as a recruiting sergeant for terrorism. The backstop means Northern Ireland would continue to operate under some European rules, protecting the GFA. To the ever-intransigent DUP, that’s intolerable – the union means no part of Britain can be treated differently to another.

However, for EU leaders peace in Ireland is more important than preventing Britain going into free-fall after no-deal Brexit. So, the border could be the undoing of Johnson, and the unravelling of the UK, with Scotland sure to move towards another independence referendum if Britain crashes out of Europe, in the event of the border question left unresolved. The greatest irony is that the border could be the catalyst for a Northern Ireland vote on reunification.

Ireland and the EU aren’t playing politics over the border. Dublin isn’t desperate to bring the north into the Republic – it would happily live without its troublesome relative. The position from Dublin and Brussels is based on the very real fear of a return to violence in the wake of a Brexit border, and respect for the GFA. In response, Brexiteers accuse Dublin and Brussels of undermining Britain.

However, Dublin and Brussels remember that the border was born in blood – set up in 1922 after the horrors of the Irish War of Independence, which saw the country partitioned into 26 counties in the south which would become the Irish Republic, and six counties in the north which remained British.

The state which grew up in the north was sectarian. Catholics were discriminated against over housing and jobs. Only householders could vote – rather than all adults in the rest of Britain. There was electoral gerrymandering. Both practices meant Catholics had less voting power than Protestants. The heavily armed RUC was also overwhelmingly Protestant.

To Republicans, the border represented unfinished business – the British were still in Ireland so the gun should remain in use. Between 1956 and 1962, the IRA conducted its "Border Campaign". Symbolically, it was a Republican assault on partition, with customs posts burned. Few died, and there was little support, but it was a learning experience for armed Republicans – and one that would help shape the resurgent IRA in the summer of 1969.

Just as the War of Independence had its roots in British indifference to Irish concerns, the Troubles were also rooted in British indifference to discrimination in Ulster. A civil rights movement emerged, modelled on the American civil rights movement. Some campaigners described themselves as Britain’s "white negroes".

London watched as loyalists and police attacked and beat civil rights demonstrators. Catholic homes were burned. Inevitably, the guns came out as the IRA took the unrest as an opportunity to claim they were the defenders of Catholic people in Protestant Ulster. The British army was drafted in by a bewildered UK government to keep the peace – but it was too little, too late. Northern Ireland tipped into chaos – with the border at the symbolic heart of the violence. The conflict claimed the lives of more than 3500 people in 30 years.

And then peace came. David Ervine, a former loyalist paramilitary who became leader of the Progressive Unionist Party, compared the signing of the GFA in 1998 to the Berlin Wall coming down. Life changed.

The Northern Irish comedian Paddy Kielty says: “The brilliant thing about the Good Friday Agreement was that you were allowed to chose whatever nationality you wanted to be – you could choose to be Irish in Northern Ireland, or you could choose to be British in Northern Ireland, or like me you could choose to be both.”

In essence, the GFA was a magic trick which allowed everyone to have their cake and eat it – that was the only way to secure peace, and the disappearance of the border as a physical reality was key to the trick’s success. The return of a hard border would break the magic spell. If the GFA crumbled, peace could crumble too.

A hard border prompting the return of armed republicanism isn’t the only danger looming from British indifference to Northern Ireland. A majority of Conservatives have abandoned unionism and are now prepared to cut the north adrift if it secures Brexit. If that happened, loyalists would revolt.

Despite the miles of peace lines in Northern Ireland to separate Catholics and Protestants, after Good Friday the north entered a period of relative calm.

Mainland Britain returned to its default mode – it got bored and looked away. Now that people weren’t killing each other, Northern Ireland was of little importance, despite the festering threat of sectarian hatred and violence.

To meddle with the border – to risk undoing the GFA – is like juggling grenades. The EU won’t countenance such a risk – as long as Brussels has its ties to Dublin it won’t take any action which could lead to a hard border. So if a hard border does ever come down across the island again, it will be by the action of Johnson’s Brexiteer government crashing out of the EU with no deal.

However, America – the old ally of Irish republicanism – may stop even that happening. Johnson hopes that if he does crash out, a huge trade deal as promised by the Trump administration will save his skin. Macron calls such a deal the "vassalisation of Britain". Senior US congressional leaders say there will be no trade deals if the UK jeopardises the GFA. In Ireland, it looks like America cares more for peace than Britain.

Many cannot understand why the Conservative government is unable to see that preventing a hard border is in the interests of UK security. The graves of British soldiers are testament to the fact that failing to appreciate the reality of the border leads to tragedy for the UK.

In the acclaimed BBC documentary, Border Country, a former British soldier called John, who served at the border during the Troubles, tells how he was shot in the spine by the IRA and left in a wheelchair. “Don’t put us through all this again – what happened all those years ago, with the border posts and all the checks,” he says. “Too many lives were lost, too many people were broken.”