Toxic Brexit a recipe for strife

Nowhere in the United Kingdom are the toxic effects of Brexit more felt than in Northern Ireland.

The pact made with the European Union by Prime Minister Boris Johnson ‘to get Brexit done’ has produced a unity of sorts with all communities in the Province determined to oppose it.

However, that unity is paper thin concealing a roiling sectarian anger threatening the fragile peace that has prevailed for the past two decades.

Historically Northern Ireland’s Protestant Unionists have favoured retaining links with Britain, while Catholic Republicans seek to unite the Province with the Irish Republic.

At the 2016 referendum Northern Ireland voted to remain in the EU by a substantial majority. For different reasons, both sides in the sectarian divide saw advantages in an arrangement that allowed free movement between north and south while keeping the Province’s links with the UK.

Their vote — and that of Scotland’s — was overwhelmed by the predominately English decision to leave. It was the beginning of a downward slide that is sorely testing the strength of the historic Good Friday Accords of 1998.

Under the EU, the border between the two Irelands is open, uniting the island in all but name. Leaving could have meant the reintroduction of customs, the so-called ‘hard’ border, anathema to the Republicans and a spur to the resumption of sectarian strife.

It is Johnson’s compromise — the so-called ‘Irish Sea Border’ that treats Northern Ireland differently from the rest of the UK, that is almost universally opposed by the Unionist Protestants

Republicans see their dream of a united Ireland — and the end of the flow of EU money that has done much to revitalise the Northern Ireland economy — slipping away.

Unionists feel betrayed, especially as their main party in Parliament, the Democratic Unionists, played a vital role in propping up the Conservative Government after its disastrous 2017 General Election.

While there will be few Northern Ireland votes for Johnson in the December 12 poll, it is unlikely to matter. The Conservatives are expected to be returned on the backs of an English majority and Brexit will be done.

The forces that could be unleashed by this are evident in statements by key figures on either side of the sectarian divide.

Speaking at the annual conference of the pro-Irish Sinn Fein Party, President Mary Lou McDonald called for a referendum on unification with the Republic.

“The days of partition are numbered, change is in the air. Brexit has changed everything,” she said.

In the next five years let the people have their say.”

Meanwhile, a leading Member of the Protestant Orange Order, Mervyn Gibson has called for a campaign of civil disobedience if the Johnson deal comes into operation.

While Mr Gibson stressed such a campaign should be peaceful, another prominent Unionist, retired clergyman Harold Good said criminal elements within loyalist paramilitaries could easily hijack the protests.

Those of us with long memories will remember that it was a peaceful civil rights movement in the late 1960s, led in this case by aggrieved Catholics, which resulted in the sectarian strife that tore the Province apart for almost 30 years.