Northern Irish Troubles Remain for U.K.

 By Henry Srebrnik, [Moncton, NB] Times & Transcript

Northern Ireland has long been ethnically divided and subject to debilitating intergroup violence. This provides the backdrop to the current dispute between Great Britain and the European Union over the place of the province in a post-Brexit United Kingdom. It may affect the elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly on May 5, 2022.

There are two competing and opposing nationalisms in Northern Ireland; one looks to retain its British identity and place as part of the U. K. while the other aims to secure eventual unification with the Republic of Ireland.

These competing visions have bedevilled Northern Ireland since its foundation. Beginning in the 1960s, a civil war, called “The Troubles,” claimed the lives of over 3,300 people and lasted for three decades, before a peace settlement was agreed to by the British and Irish governments and most major parties in 1998.

The Belfast Agreement, which was placed within a wider European Union context, did not solve the question but postponed it for resolution to a later date.

The Brexit referendum in 2016, however, changed the political landscape and opened up old issues of national identity. Brexit was rejected by the people of Northern Ireland, with 55.8 per cent voting to remain, but it passed nationwide.

The terms of the subsequent Northern Ireland Protocol, concluded in December 2020, and specifically the “Irish Sea border,” has fed unease, suspicion, and violence in Protestant Unionist areas, as well as wider questions about trust in the British government.

The Protocol is the part of the Brexit withdrawal from the EU that governs the unique customs and immigration issues at the border on the island of Ireland between the Irish Republic, which remains in the EU, and Northern Ireland.

When Britain was a member of the EU, the border had been largely invisible after 1998, without any physical barrier or custom checks on its many crossing points. However, upon the British withdrawal, the border in Ireland has become the only land border between the U.K. and EU.

The Northern Ireland Protocol is intended to protect the EU single market, while avoiding imposition of a so-called hard border that might incite a recurrence of conflict and destabilise the relative peace that has held since the end of the “Troubles.”

Under the Protocol, Northern Ireland is formally outside the EU single market, but EU free movement of goods and rules still apply; this ensures there are no customs checks or controls between Northern Ireland and the rest of the island.

In place of a land border, the Protocol has created a notional customs border in the Irish Sea for customs purposes, separating Northern Ireland from the rest of Great Britain, to the unease of prominent Unionists, who fear this might be a step to the province becoming a de facto separate entity outside the U.K.

The Protocol has prompted disagreements between the U.K. and EU because it has disrupted trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. British prime minister Boris Johnson contends London has grounds to deploy an emergency clause, Article 16, that permits it to suspend parts of the Protocol.

But the EU sees the current rules as a key part of protecting its single market and believes suspending parts of the deal would be unjustified. It has proposed a package of reforms but the U.K. is seeking more fundamental changes.

Behind all the bluster lie fears about the fragility of peace in the province. Is there a possibility of renewed violence? Such questions are at the centre of Northern Ireland’s public debates since 2016.

The cities of Londonderry and the capital Belfast were subject to violence in early April. The hijacking and burnings of buses in Newtownards and Newtownabbey in recent weeks has been linked to loyalist anger. Unionists argue that the Protocol has upset the delicate balance that the Belfast Agreement created.

Currently the Stormont parliament is divided between nationalists and unionists, with 26 Democratic Unionists and an equal number of Sinn Féin Nationalists. The third and fourth largest parties in the legislature are, respectively, nationalist and unionist.

The 2022 elections may therefore prove to be a monumental moment -- especially if an nationalist party emerges as the electoral winner for the very first time.