Perils and Prospects of a United Ireland E-Book

Padraig O'Malley

• Herausgeber: The Lilliput Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 1051

Beschreibung

Pádraig O'Malley's Perils & Prospects of a United Ireland presents a wide-ranging and unique study of the questions around the future of Northern Irish politics, including the idea of reunification. O'Malley has forged relationships across the political divide for over half a century and here he attemps to ascertain whether, after decades of interaction – but especially since the B/GFA – the protagonists are any closer to working co-operatively. In this book, O'Malley explores the factors that might lead to the Northern Ireland Secretary of State calling a border referendum and the challenges both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland would face. How might that majority for unity, a simple 50 per cent + 1, emerge? What criteria might a Secretary of State draw on to make their judgment call? Including interviews from ninety-seven political players, academics, political influencers, a cross-section of the political grandees who negotiated the B/GFA and faith leaders between February 2020 and June 2021, O'Malley takes a temperature check of opinions from Northern Ireland with a sampling of opinion in the South. Interviewees included party leaders Jeffrey Donaldson (Democratic Unionist Party, DUP), Doug Beattie (Ulster Unionist Party, UUP), Naomi Long (Alliance), Colum Eastwood (Social Democratic and Labour Party, SDLP) and Billy Hutchinson (Progressive Unionist Party, PUP), and members of the Ard Comhairle, Matt Carty TD and Chris Hazzard MP. Focusing on the topics of the Northern Ireland Protocol, the Good Friday Agreement, Brexit, Unionism, Nationalism, the economics of potential reunification or continued partition, and the broad range of Northern Irish identities, this work encompasses the most up-to-date and considered review of political actions so far. A must-read for those interested in the future of Northern Ireland.

Leseprobe

PERILS andPROSPECTS of a UNITED IRELAND

PREVIOUS PUBLICATIONS BY PADRAIG O’MALLEY

The Two-State Delusion: Israel and Palestine – A Tale of Two Narratives (2016)

Shades of Difference: Mac Maharaj and the Struggle for South Africa (2007)

Sticks and Stones: Living With Uncertain Wars (ed.) (2006)

Southern Africa, the People’s Voices: Perspectives on Democracy (ed.) (1999)

Homelessness: New England and Beyond (1994)

Biting at the Grave: The Irish Hunger Strikes and the Politics of Despair (1990)

Northern Ireland: Questions of Nuance (1990)

AIDS: Private Rights and the Public Interest (ed.) (1990)

The Uncivil Wars: Ireland Today (1983)

Irish Industry: Structure and Performance (1971)

PERILS andPROSPECTS of a UNITED IRELAND

PADRAIG O’MALLEY

THE LILLIPUT PRESS DUBLIN

First published 2023 by

THE LILLIPUT PRESS

62–63 Sitric Road, Arbour Hill

Dublin 7, Ireland

www.lilliputpress.ie

Copyright © 2023 Padraig O’Malley

Index © Julitta Clancy, assisted by Elizabeth Clancy

Satellite image of Ireland © Adobe Stock

Every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders and obtain permission to reproduce this material. Please get in touch with any enquiries or any information relating to images or their rights holders.

ISBN 978 184351 8518

eISBN 978 184351 8976

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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior permission of the publisher.

A CIP record for this title is available from The British Library.

The Lilliput Press gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon.

Set in 11pt on 15.3pt Minion by iota (www.iota-books.ie) Printed by Walsh Colour Print in Kerry

For Peter and Mary

Contents

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

Introduction

— ONE —

Brexit: ‘taking back control’

— TWO —

The Northern Ireland Protocol: breaching sea walls

— THREE —

The Northern Ireland Statelet: a place apart

— FOUR —

The Belfast/Good Friday Agreement: the perils of ambiguity

— FIVE —

Referendum Metrics: the numbers game

— SIX —

The North: Jekyll and Hyde

— SEVEN —

The South: ‘The old order changeth, yielding place to new’

— EIGHT —

The Two Economies: a study in contrasts

Illustrations

— NINE —

A Shared Island: a Trojan horse?

— TEN —

Sinn Féin: ‘whatever works’

— ELEVEN —

Unionism: running into culs-de-sac

— TWELVE —

Protestant Fears: ghosts of the past

— THIRTEEN —

Loyalism: loss and change

— FOURTEEN —

Accommodating the British Identity: conundrums and contradictions

Illustrations

— FIFTEEN —

Reunification: problems and prospects

Epilogue

Interviewees

Bibliography

Notes

Index

Acknowledgments

Perils & Prospects of a United Ireland was mostly researched during the worst days of the global COVID-19 pandemic throughout 2020 and well into 2021, when the world went into lockdown, commerce and travel came to a halt and Zoom replaced person-to-person contact. I would like to acknowledge the over six million that the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates died from the insidious virus, whose mutations time and again outwitted our best efforts to contain it. The pandemic leaves us with at least one disconcerting lesson: in a moment of great peril, the global community did not come together and act in unison to counteract the threat. Each country looked after its own interests.

In contrast, the people who helped me with Perils & Prospects came together to form a small, tight community, although separated by thousands of miles. Foremost among those is Allyson Bachta, a PhD student at the John W. McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, whose tenacious research and comments, unstinting diligence and generosity with her time guided the passage of the book through many drafts. Without her, this book would never have seen the light of day. I also benefitted from the fact-checking assistance of Kate Butterworth and Kelsey Edmond. Allan Leonard in Belfast became close to indispensable overseeing the latter stages of preparing the manuscript for publication – from a detailed and meticulous reading of the manuscript, to creating maps, to finding appropriate photographs and visual art, often his own work.

Debby Smith near Valley Forge and then Djinn von Noorden at The Lilliput Press in Dublin both made sense of my mangled prose, offering a keen eye for identifying repetitious paragraphs. They both turned an unwieldy manuscript into a reader-friendly book. Ruth Hallinan oversaw the production process with patience and utmost professionalism. Josh Hall in Belfast scheduled interviews – a formidable task during the pandemic years, as he had to rely almost exclusively on potential interviewees’ official email addresses that few appeared to check on a daily basis. In this task, and in transcribing many of the interviews, he was helped by visual artist Stephanie Heckman, also in Belfast. Andy Pollak in Dublin gave invaluable feedback on an earlier draft of the main chapters and assisted with his extensive Rolodex to identify potential interviewees with their contact information. Professor Brendan O’Leary, at University of Pennsylvania, responded immediately to my many queries about the report of the Working Group on Unification Referendums on the Island of Ireland. Likewise Professor Liam Kennedy in Belfast, who responded with alacrity and source details on punishment beatings in Northern Ireland. Marcy Murnaghan, a close friend of long standing, prepared a bibliography that reflects the extent of my readings on Northern Ireland; rather than being specific to Perils & Prospects, it acts as more a source of material for future researchers to draw on.

My decades-long partner, Patricia Keefer, Washington DC, is a continuing source of inspiration; daughter Ntombikayise Gladwin Gilman a continuing source of joy; and my brother Peter my biggest booster, who pushed me to work on when my energy flagged and from whom I took inspiration, learning to deal with challenges with grace.

Others in that small group I relied on for strength and sustenance were my sister Mary in Dublin, the poet Tracey McTague in Brooklyn, Rebecca Thornley in Minnesota, Edris Kelly and Rhett Nichols in Boston, Caroleen Feeney in San Francisco, Kirsten Thomsen in Portland, Maine, and Marcie Williams in Lansing, Michigan.

My thanks, too, to Rita ‘Kiki’ Edozie, Interim Dean of the John W. McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and my colleagues with whom I have enjoyed warm relationships spanning forty years.

To Antony Farrell, founder of The Lilliput Press, I extend my gratitude for his faith in this project, encouragement in bringing it to fruition and the privilege of publication in one of Ireland’s most prestigious presses.

And finally, my thanks to the ninety-seven interviewees who gave unsparingly of their time. All conclusions reached are mine alone. And I take responsibility for their content.

Padraig O’Malley September 2022

ABBREVIATIONS

B/GFA Belfast Good Friday Agreement

Dáil Éireann lower house of the Irish parliament

DUP Democratic Unionist Party

ESRI Economic and Social Research Institute, Dublin

IRA Irish Republican Army

MLA Member of the Legislative Assembly, Northern Ireland Assembly

MP Member of Parliament, UK Parliament

NILT Northern Ireland Irish Life and Times

NIP Northern Ireland Protocol

Oireachtas Irish parliament, consisting of Dáil Éireann, Seanad (Senate upper house) and the President

PIRA Provisional IRA

PSNI Police Service of Northern Ireland

PUP Progressive Unionist Party

RHI Renewable Heat Incentive

RUC Royal Ulster Constabulary

SDLP Social Democratic and Labour Party

TD Teachta Dála, member of the Irish parliament

TUV Traditional Unionist Voices

UDR Ulster Defence Regiment

UDA Ulster Defence Association

UL University of Liverpool

UUP Ulster Unionist Party

UVF Ulster Volunteer Force

WGR Working Group on Unification Referendums on the Island of Ireland

Introduction

Hundreds of others and I thronged Queen’s University Belfast’s Whitla Hall on 10 April 2018, the twentieth anniversary of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement (B/GFA), where the principals who had negotiated it and its stepchild, the St Andrews Agreement (2006), looked back at their work, pronounced themselves well pleased and shared their hopes for the future. It was a celebratory occasion and we lapped it up. We had come to applaud, not to question.

The fact that key elements of the agreement and the institutions that it gave rise to were in abeyance since the collapse of the Stormont power-sharing government in January 2017, and with little sign that they would be resuscitated any time soon, chastened the proceedings but did little to dim the optimism about the future.

The former protagonists on stage were there – including David Trimble, Seamus Mallon, Gerry Adams and Peter Robinson – and also the luminaries from outside – Sen. George Mitchell, Bill Clinton and Bertie Ahern – and all were focused on the big picture. The present impasse was a hiccup, just the latest in a series dating back to the first stages of implementation in 1998, not an indicator that the agreement itself might need rethinking.

Former Irish Taoiseach (prime minister) Bertie Ahern, one of the architects of the agreement, captured the moment: the B/GFA negotiators, he reminded the audience, had to confront issues of great complexity in order to reach agreement, ‘like the release of prisoners, decommissioning and the reform of the police and … the shape of new political institutions’. All that it would now take to get things back on track was for ‘the two governments at top level to give it total commitment’, and within a month a deal would be hammered out.1 The agreement was, after all, in the judgment of that political savant Bill Clinton, ‘a work of surpassing genius’.2 Sometimes, however, even genius short-changes its most ardent cheerleaders. Brexit, the elephant in the hall, was mentioned only in passing, in keeping with the benign spirit of the occasion.

Part of the ‘genius’ of the agreement was its ambiguity. It allowed David Trimble to sell it to the Protestant community as a destination reached and assured – Northern Ireland would remain a part of the United Kingdom (UK) with no qualifications to the permanency of its position, the ship of state docked securely within the union. It allowed Gerry Adams and John Hume to sell it to the Catholic community on the basis that it was a temporary stop at a waystation on the road to a united Ireland – demographics alone assuring that outcome. At some point, the two interpretations would clash – and Brexit has become that point.

Never quite enunciated above a whisper was that in the final analysis both aspirations – to remain in the UK and to become part of a united Ireland – cannot be simultaneously accommodated. No serial invocation of ‘parity of esteem’, itself a phrase of ambiguity, can perform the political jujitsu of having both sides come out the winner.

I grew up in Crumlin, Dublin, in the 1950s in a family so strictly Catholic it made the puritanical and all-powerful Archbishop John Charles McQuaid look like a rabid reprobate. The words ‘Northern Ireland’ were never mentioned, other than at election time when both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael accused England of being responsible for partition and demanded that England put an end to it. Like magic, the wave of a political wand would reunify the two parts of Ireland. I left a well-paying job at the Agriculture Institute in 1965 to pursue graduate work in economics in the United States, and, in a turn of events that would not have happened if I had stayed in Ireland, found myself in Northern Ireland for the first time in 1972 after Bloody Sunday.

From that point, over a fifty-year span, I have been immersed in the political life of the North. I arranged for a cross-section of political players, including senior republican and loyalist paramilitaries, to attend the Amherst Forum at the University of Massachusetts (1974);3 organized the Airlie House Forum (1985),4 which was attended by the most senior civil servants and ministers holding Northern Ireland portfolios from Ireland, Northern Ireland and Britain; worked on the Opsahl Commission (1993);5 and arranged for the key political negotiators from across the political spectrum to travel to South Africa to meet with Nelson Mandela, Cyril Ramaphosa, later president of South Africa, and others who had been instrumental in negotiating the transition from apartheid to democracy (1997).6 I interviewed the key political players for The Uncivil Wars (1983) and again for Questions of Nuance (1990) and the families of the hunger strikers for The Irish Hunger Strikes (1990).

In short, I’ve done an awful lot of listening over half a century.

Since Brexit (2016) – when the UK voted to leave the European Union (EU) by a 52 to 48 per cent margin, but Northern Ireland voted to remain by 56 to 44 per cent, and the subsequent border down the Irish Sea requiring checks on goods entering Northern Ireland from Britain was drawn to demarcate the trade borders of the EU with the UK – the word ‘consent’ has entered the political conversation with recurring vengeance.7 Nationalists and republicans argued that Northern Ireland had not given its consent to leave the EU, yet were stuck with the outcome; unionists and loyalists argued that they had not given their consent to a border down the Irish Sea that diminished Northern Ireland’s status as part of the UK. Increasingly, too, republicans called for a border referendum. The B/GFA stipulates that the Secretary of State shall call a referendum ‘if at any time it appears likely to them [the Secretary of State] that a majority of those voting would express a wish that Northern Ireland should cease to be part of the United Kingdom and form part of a united Ireland’.8

Reams have been written about just precisely what an imprecise instruction this is, with interpretation running from the Secretary of State being able to do so at a whim or in concert with the Irish government or in the most literal sense of what constitutes 50 per cent + 1, devoid of context or in the context of which (if any) strands of the B/GFA agreement are working. The Republic of Ireland is under a legal obligation to hold a concurrent referendum should the North hold one. Here, too, there is a vagueness. If concurrent means simultaneous, then one could end up in a situation where the North votes to stay in the UK but the South votes to reunify Ireland. If there is a lag between the two polls, how long can it go on for? Long enough for minds to change should unrest in the North spread in the wake of a close pro-unity result? Would an Irish government call a referendum if support for reunification were to hover around the 50 per cent + 1 mark or would they wait to build a broader consensus?

In this book, I explore the factors that might lead to the Northern Ireland Secretary of State calling a border referendum and the challenges both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland would face if and when such a poll took place. What does ‘appears likely’ mean? How might that majority for unity, a simple 50 per cent + 1, emerge? Has it got to be just 50 per cent + 1? What criteria might a Secretary of State draw on to make his or her judgment call? Must a referendum take place in conditions of relative normalcy in Northern Ireland, or simply when it seems the required threshold is crossed? Is there any obligation on the part of the Secretary of State to consult with the Irish government before making his or her decision? Who would provide the wording? What referendum scenarios are there to consider? How would prevailing political and socio-economic considerations in Northern Ireland be factored into decision-making? Or is the consent formula pristine, to be invoked as soon as the minimum threshold for holding it is met? Would institutions like the National Health Service (NHS) in the North and the Health Service Executive (HSE) and Sláintecare in the South have to be aligned beforehand? What of the two educational systems, especially at primary level? Would the Stormont Assembly have a role to play? What direct input would the Republic of Ireland have?

What kinds of costs might be involved in merging the two jurisdictions? What obligations does the guarantee in the Irish Constitution that unification will take place ‘in harmony and friendship’ entail? What kind of Northern Ireland would an Irish government want to see in place before sanctioning holding a referendum in the South? How would the South reach a consensus on what model of a united Ireland reflects the will of the Irish people? How would unionism be made part of that process? Would the recommendations of a Citizens’ Assembly, the preferred route to consensus for nationalists, be debated and amended in the Dáil in order to reach crossparty consensus that whatever united Ireland arrangement is agreed is on behalf of the Irish people and not a particular government? What if a consensus cannot be reached?

Would political unionism be part of this process? And how? Can it stay above a rising tide of pro-unification sentiment in the wake of Brexit to meet the challenge of creating a more inclusive Northern Ireland? Should it make it more appealing to ‘cultural Catholics’ who might be quite content to stay in Northern Ireland rather than risk the disruptions that would accompany a bitter and polarizing border campaign, likely followed by even more intense disruptions in the event of a successful pro-unity outcome? Meanwhile, is it in Sinn Féin’s interests to see Northern Ireland become a ‘success’ story? Under what circumstances might a referendum result in violence, either in the lead-up to it or immediately after a poll? How might that impact attitudes in the South? Why are unionists so impervious to the transformative socio-economic and cultural changes in the South since the early 1980s? In the event of reunification, how would the B/GFA’s requirement of ‘parity of esteem’ for the British identity be accommodated?

These are among the key questions I address in this book. There are no hard and fast answers; sometimes there is the posing of more questions and an examination of uncertain outcomes, predicated on assumptions that may have relevance at the present but which, over time, may see that relevance evaporate. External shocks, like Brexit, Scotland voting for independence or the war in Ukraine may reverberate in unforeseen ways, requiring a recalculation of the calculus of analysis.

My overarching focus is on Sinn Féin and political unionism/loyalism as the principal tribunes of their respective constitutional dispositions, one with its relentless pursuit of Irish unity, sensing that the prize is within grasp, the other hunkered down, primed for trench warfare, in opposition but unable to grasp that the nature of constitutional warfare has changed and that staying in place in the trenches exposes it to being outmanoeuvred or simply overrun.

I interviewed ninety-seven political players, academics, political influencers, a cross-section of the political grandees who negotiated the B/GFA and faith leaders between February 2020 and June 2021, mostly from Northern Ireland but also with a sampling of opinions in the South.

From the political parties in the North, interviewees included party leaders Jeffrey Donaldson (Democratic Unionist Party, DUP), Doug Beattie (Ulster Unionist Party, UUP), Naomi Long (Alliance), Colum Eastwood (Social Democratic and Labour Party, SDLP) and Billy Hutchinson (Progressive Unionist Party, PUP). Jim Allister (Traditional Unionist Voice, TUV) declined to take part. Across these political parties I interviewed eight from the DUP, six from the UUP and SDLP, five from Alliance, two from the PUP and seven from the loyalist community. In addition, I interviewed four from the former Women’s Coalition political party, eighteen prominent commentators/opinion influencers, seventeen academics, three from Fine Gael, nine from Fianna Fáil, seven faith leaders and three former senior Irish diplomats who held Northern Ireland briefs during their careers.

Only with Sinn Féin did I encounter a number of refusals: Declan Kearney, chairperson; Alex Maskey, Assembly speaker; Mitchell McLaughlin, former chair; Jim Gibney; and Tom Hartley never responded. I got in touch with the Sinn Féin office in Belfast to try and arrange an interview with Michelle O’Neill but received no responses. I also reached out repeatedly to Conor Murphy and Pearse Doherty but received no responses. Eoin Ó Broin did respond to say he was busy. However, Matt Carthy Teachta Dála (TD) and Chris Hazzard MP – both members of the Ard Comhairle – did respond, and, in all, I interviewed six Sinn Féin representatives: three from the North and three from the South.

The political landscape during this time was kaleidoscopic, everchanging, strewn with the detritus of political upheavals and the impact of a global pandemic. It spanned the careers of four British prime ministers (Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak); three secretaries of state for Northern Ireland (Brandon Lewis, Shailesh Vara and Chris Heaton-Harris); two Taoisigh (Micheál Martin and Leo Varadkar); two leaders of the UUP (Steve Aiken and Doug Beattie); three leaders of the DUP (Arlene Foster, Edwin Poots and Jeffrey Donaldson); several waves of COVID-19; over a year of argumentation, agitation and negotiation over the Northern Ireland Protocol (NIP), the border down the Irish Sea; the toxic effects of Brexit on relations between Dublin and Stormont, and Dublin and London; Assembly elections in Northern Ireland; the meteoric rise of Sinn Féin in the republic and its emergence as the largest political party in the North; a collapsed Assembly; the deaths of Seamus Mallon, John Hume and David Trimble, three titans of the peace process that culminated in the B/GFA; the death, too, of Queen Elizabeth II, an incalculable loss for the unionist community; and finally the invasion of Ukraine by Russia with its far-reaching and ongoing repercussions, including an energy crunch across much of Europe that tested its resolve to stand united against Russian aggression, surging inflation and a cost-of-living crisis that has affected the economies of both Northern Ireland and the republic.

I conducted fifteen interviews in Belfast in February and March 2020 before the COVID-19 pandemic closed down much of the world, and then conducted eighty-two more by Zoom from Boston through late 2020 and 2021, roughly half during the transition year for the NIP and half in 2021, the first year of its implementation.

In-person interviews and Zoom interviews are very different. In-person interviews provide a degree of intimacy and allow you to establish relationships with the interviewees, make strategic interventions to move the conversation along without appearing to be intrusive and, most importantly, establish and maintain eye contact, the key to establishing an empathetic connection with the interviewee. You have a greater degree of control. The Zoom interviews lasted longer, responses tended to wander off point and the internet quality often varied considerably, posing problems for transcribers. That said, I am immensely grateful to all interviewees, who gave freely of the time asked for and, despite the handicaps I’ve mentioned, were exceedingly co-operative.

At one level, conversations about the issues I raised were surreal. Many of them were intense and passionate over an event (a border referendum) that might not take place for another ten years, perhaps longer. Some interviewees predicted a pro-unity outcome, looking forward with absolute certainty to a united Ireland that remains vague and vacuous; some presented ‘facts’ that will change multiple times in the coming years, evidence-based facts and alternative realities commingling, making assumptions about the future when we have learned – once again with the invasion of the Ukraine by Russia, which is redefining relations across Europe and bringing the skeletons of history out of the closet – that such peering into the unknown and making decisions based on hunches is a hazardous exercise.

The conclusions are stark. None of the metrics identified as potential markers of the emergence of a pro-unity majority among the electorate in Northern Ireland meet the test of a majority in the making. These markers fall short of being able to deliver a pro-unity majority in large measure because the binary nationalist/unionist framework that is the foundational bedrock of the B/GFA no longer reflects how large segments of the Northern Ireland electorate behave, how they identify themselves or their likely voting preferences.

Both the North and the South are ill-prepared for a referendum, and it may be a decade or more before the necessary basic political requirements are in place. Neither electorate is willing to pay higher taxes if that is what unity might entail. The South is shockingly ignorant about life north of the border. Unionists harbour ideas about the South that are decades out of date with the reality of the Irish state. Governance in the North doesn’t work. When the Assembly and Executive are functioning – they have been collapsed for almost one-third of their lifespan – they function sporadically and badly, closer to an ongoing drunken brawl between the DUP and Sinn Féin than a progressive, functional legislative process. And few interviewees other than unionists believe that a border referendum would produce a result indicating that the will of the majority is to remain within the United Kingdom. The B/GFA needs a reboot.

Nationalists and unionists both cherry-pick data that support their side of the debate on what constitutes a majority and how it is measured. On one side, nationalists insist the conditions for a referendum are about to be met or are at least relatively imminent. On the other, unionists insist that the conditions for one might never be met or, if they are, that it will occur at least ten years from now, but more likely fifteen or more. One side says reunification of the island is inevitable, the other that there is nothing at all inevitable about it. One side says the other had better get into a conversation now regarding the future of the island. The other says there is nothing to talk about.

One community (nationalist/republican) is gung-ho to talk about the future, because if unionists join in that means they are open to discuss the terms and details of a united Ireland. The other (unionist/loyalist) refuses to engage in any conversation because nationalists are not open to one about Northern Ireland continuing as part of the UK. Worse still, entering into a conversation might be perceived as the unionists signalling their readiness to contemplate a future united Ireland, and they would thus, in effect, be negotiating their terms of surrender.

I was repeatedly reminded by unionist/loyalist interviewees that Leo Varadkar, then Taoiseach, raised the threat of dissident republican violence should there be a post-Brexit land border across Ireland between the EU and the UK. On the other hand, few unionists would rule out loyalist violence in the event of a close and polarizing border poll that results in a narrow margin in favour of unity. Responses were always framed in terms of ‘Of course we would accept the democratic result, but there are others …’ – precisely the same response I received forty years ago when I broached the question then. In April 2021, when young loyalists engaged in bouts of rioting that threatened to get out of hand and metastasize into something more serious, even the Biden administration warned of the necessity to safeguard and protect the B/GFA. There were hurried meetings between Brandon Lewis, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, and David Campbell, Chair of the Loyalist Communities Council (LCC), the umbrella group for loyalist paramilitaries. Loyalists got the message: violence gets attention.

In the run-up to the May 2022 Assembly elections, the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) – not some ‘dissident’ group of former paramilitaries but B Company – announced that it still had weapons, some dating back to a cache of arms that had arrived in Northern Ireland in 1987, and warned that it was going to target Irish government property, first in Northern Ireland and then in Dublin.9 Not all arms had been decommissioned; it is hardly surprising that paramilitaries would hold on to some just in case a future scenario might call for their use. In a peculiar twist of logic, the UVF considered the Irish government responsible for the NIP because it had convinced the EU that the alternative – a land border across Ireland demarcating the border between the EU and the UK – would lead to dissident republican violence.

What the threat of loyalist violence is supposed to accomplish is unclear, unless its purpose is to force the Irish government to intercede on the behalf of unionism by having Article 16 triggered, essentially suspending the protocol.10

Logic, however, is not the purpose of the enterprise, just the endangering of the ‘fragile’ peace, with intimations of violence being enough to send shivers of apprehension down the spine of the country, threatening a downward spiral into renewed conflict. Indeed, a putative republican paramilitary group calling itself Oglaigh na hÉireann emerged out of the shadows to threaten retaliation if the UVF carried out their threat against the Irish government.11

Loyalist interviewees were in common agreement: the protocol had to go.12 Billy Hutchinson of the PUP and part of the loyalist delegation during the B/GFA negotiations wrote on a unionist website in March 2022 that ‘there was no chance loyalism would have supported the Belfast Agreement had they known in 1998 that the principle of consent was merely symbolic’.13

‘It seems the loyalist mainstream has turned its back on the peace process,’ the security analyst Allison Morris wrote in the Belfast Telegraph:

There is no one within loyalism selling the benefits of the Good Friday Agreement. There is no influential figure within loyalism speaking out against the hardline, for they are all hardline now. Loyalism, once fractured with bloody feuds, has united around a common cause. Previous internal fractures are being set aside in opposition to the protocol, and increasingly the Good Friday Agreement itself.14

Should things unravel and the UVF/UDA (Ulster Defence Association) carry through with its threats of violence, we will say that in hindsight we should have seen it coming all along.

For as long as paramilitarism remains ‘a clear and present danger’, to quote successive reports of the Independent Reporting Commission (IRC), a monitoring organization created under the Fresh Start Agreement (2015), there will always be some set of circumstances that will breathe fire into the ashes of their violent pasts. Some paramilitaries justify their continued existence as having become key figures in the conflict transformation phase of the peace process, as they manage the tensions at the interfaces between their respective communities.

In short, we have the contradictory phenomenon of paramilitaries as peace-builders, but hardly a reason to condone their continued existence after twenty-five years. Unless the steps the IRC outlines in great detail – especially massive measures to address the scale of deprivation in both communities – are implemented, and the paramilitary presence and their dissident counterparts in republican and loyalist communities permanently eradicated, the IRC will continue to wail ‘a clear and present danger’ in their reports, and tentacles of paramilitarism will continue to exert their vice-like grip on these communities. In March 2022, the ‘terror threat level’ was downgraded from ‘severe’ to substantial in the North for the first time in twelve years.15 Days later, Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney was evacuated from the Houben Centre in Belfast, where he was attending a peace dialogue, due to a bomb scare. And almost immediately the UVF issued its own threat.16

The political scientist Adrian Guelke has written that ‘in a deeply divided society conflict exists along a well-entrenched fault line that is recurrent and endemic and that contains the potential for violence between the segments’.17 That fault line in Northern Ireland is still a yawning geopolitical gap between two sets of competing perspectives on the present and the future. In a divided society saturated with binary choices, every decision, from the trivial to the existential, receives the same zero-sum stamp. Going on a full generation after the conflict, on the way to a milestone where the B/GFA peace has more years behind it than the decades of conflict, that potential for violence still exists and is invoked very effectively by one side or another when it perceives a threat to its interests. ‘Is a return to violence on the cards?’ asked The Financial Times after reviewing what the political endgames might be following the May 2022 Assembly elections. And it answered its own question: ‘No one expects a full-scale return to the Troubles, but there have been worrying flashbacks – a van hijacking/car hoax last month, and petrol bombs hurled at police this week.’18 Small-scale stuff, but sufficient to push the alert button.19

In one breath we are told that unity is around the corner, that it is inevitable; in the next that the peace is fragile, that if reunification happens, it may take a generation or more. In one breath Sinn Féin emerging as the largest party in Northern Ireland is hailed as ‘historic’, an inflection point hastening reunification; in the next that objective evidence reconfirms that a majority wish to remain part of the UK. This tension between ‘there ought to be a border poll’ republicanism/nationalism, as if it were a moral imperative divined by a higher power, and ‘we are the bulwark against Irish unity’ unionism/loyalism, as though it were a contagious disease, infects the relationship between Sinn Féin and the DUP and has a corrosive if not calamitous impact on their working relationship in government.

The peace process is fragile, says Professor Graham Spencer, who has written extensively about unionism/loyalism and researched their communities, because:

From the start, the peace process was never really embraced by unionism and so it was sold under duress from the beginning. Once that happened it became very difficult, if not impossible, to promote the peace process as something to be welcomed. If you don’t sell it that way at the moment of birth it is unlikely you will be able to convincingly make the case thereafter. Communicating the agreement as something that would ‘copper-fasten’ the union was also a mistake since that obstructed any real receptiveness to the value of process and ongoing change.20

Most interviewees believe Sinn Féin is the biggest obstacle to unity (acknowledged in its own way by Sinn Féin) and that it should not be leading the charge for unity, despite being addicted to calling for a border poll.21 Unionists made a sharp distinction between a united Ireland with Mary Lou McDonald as Taoiseach or Tánaiste and one with Leo Varadkar or Micheál Martin as either. The elusive ‘lower-case’ unionists, who might be open to being persuaded that they would be better off in a united Ireland, would shun a united Ireland with Sinn Féin in control. Pro-union non-voters, I was told, would emerge from the woodwork in droves to vote.

On one aspect of a border referendum there was unanimity: avoid a Brexit-like situation – no simple up-or-down vote on whether to stay in the UK or become part of a unified Ireland. What kind of united Ireland is envisaged should be worked out in considerable detail beforehand. Most interviewees believed that, while unity called for a change of sovereignty, it did not collapse other strands of the agreement. The existing institutions, including the Stormont Assembly, would continue in place with Westminster MPs becoming TDs in Dublin, and the transition period itself before the final phases of reunification were implemented should last ten to fifteen years.

Thus, at some point there is a Hamlet-like question for the republic’s government: whether to launch serious preparations for a united Ireland – even if unionists collapse the B/GFA in protest – on the grounds that a Secretary of State could call a referendum with little warning (though the probability of one doing so is perhaps close to zero, it would be highly imprudent for an Irish government to be caught off-guard with all the negative consequences that would follow). Or whether to take the foot off the reunification pedal, pursue a different route at a more tortoise-like pace, work the Shared Island initiative and give the North more breathing space to heal its wounds? If reconciliation is only possible when it isn’t directly linked to the prospect of a referendum, time may provide unionism with the space to dig itself out of the constitutional silo it has hunkered down in since the conflict erupted in the late 1960s.

Sinn Féin wants to opt for the former route, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil the latter, although if Fianna Fáil were to find itself in a coalition with Sinn Féin after the 2025 general elections, it might be tempted to veer more towards Sinn Féin’s position – or require Sinn Féin to veer more towards its current position as the price of that coalition. This latter approach, of course, has its own set of assumptions – one being that unionism can adapt to change about the future – which are problematical at best.

Commentators, such as Alex Kane, close to unionist thinking say unionism is turning a corner. The fact that this can be seen as some kind of breakthrough speaks volumes about the paucity of unionism’s continuing ability to articulate a ‘vision’ of a future Northern Ireland which is inclusive of its diverse identities. Perhaps it can never get to that spot. Every gesture that would signal inclusivity, making Northern Ireland a ‘warmer house’ for Catholics, is seen as a concession to Sinn Féin. Hence unionists’ trenchant opposition to every move in that direction. Hence, too, their derisive dismissal of Sinn Féin’s promise to fully protect the British identity in a united Ireland, even their being open to the idea that the British monarchy should play a role. In the unionist view, Sinn Féin instigated a thirty-year conflict to destroy Northern Ireland, continues post-conflict to disrespect Northern Ireland and all its appurtenances as illegitimate, is unable even to call Northern Ireland by its legal name and is relentless in the ongoing culture war to dilute the Britishness of Northern Ireland. Unionists find Sinn Féin’s expressions of its willingness to protect, secure and accommodate the British identity in a united Ireland to be laughable and highly hypocritical, smacking of the chutzpah that characterizes its political wheeling and dealing.

Indeed, the unionist preoccupation with Sinn Féin borders on obsessive. Sinn Féin is ‘winning’; therefore, in the binary arithmetic that frames everything, unionism must be losing. Hence, the political Rubik’s cube: the more republicanism focuses on the future, calling for a border poll and talking up the inevitability of a united Ireland, the more unsettled unionism becomes, reinforcing its fierce determination not to engage in a conversation about the future, which it regards as being synonymous with negotiating terms of surrender.

Re-reading The Uncivil Wars, I am struck by how much some things have changed while others have resolutely stayed the same. The violence is over, but paramilitarism still exists. Indeed, no matter what the shortcomings of the B/GFA, the fact that it underpins a ceasefire by republican and loyalist forces is reason enough to treasure its existence. The rantings of Rev. Ian Paisley in our interview in the early 1980s – on the Irish Republican Army (IRA) as part of the Pope’s army, the satanic rituals practised by the Vatican and what the nunneries got up to – would have made it difficult to imagine the DUP emerging as the dominant voice of unionism and impossible to believe that Paisley would form a warm partnership with his arch-nemesis, Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness, and that the pair would be jocularly referred to as ‘the Chuckle Brothers’ during their tenure in office, such was the obvious delight they took in each other’s company. Impossible, too, to imagine Sinn Féin as the largest political party in Northern Ireland and odds-on favourite to emerge as the largest political party in the South in 2025.

And hard to imagine that Alliance, then a small blip on most electoral maps, would become the third-largest party in Northern Ireland, with the surge in support for that party threatening some of the basic architecture of the B/GFA – anchored as it is on a two-traditions paradigm – and calling into question the relevance of this binary model for governance. Unimaginable, too, the collapse of the Catholic Church in the South, a fall from a degree of power and authority of epic proportions, the result (inter alia) of multiple child sexual abuse scandals and related cover-ups. But unchanged, the basic constitutional positions of the two main protagonists: one remains adamantly pro-reunification – the prize, Sinn Féin believes, within grasp – the other adamantly committed to staying in the UK, but apprehensive of fatal British government duplicity.

Nevertheless, with so many ‘unimaginables’ that wound their way into social and political fabric of everyday life since the B/GFA, it is not unimaginable to believe that other seismic changes North and South and within and across the UK and the EU will have a transformative impact. In the short run, the pivotal necessity is for a revamped B/GFA that allows the political middle ground to fully participate in governance and redefines power-sharing without the limitations of mutual vetoes, and for first and deputy first ministers to become joint first ministers. These simple concepts slip easily off the tongue but are time-consuming to negotiate and difficult to achieve where the minutiae of differences, often apparent only to the protagonists themselves, amplify the zero-sum calculus that informs every decision.

I hope this book helps to unpack the complex issues raised by a border referendum on the island’s constitutional future and provides food for thought rather than argumentation. Were everyone to talk less about the imminence of a border poll, it would perhaps, paradoxically, hasten the day one is achieved, with Ireland’s voters, North and South, going to the polls in relative harmony and friendship.

— ONE —

Brexit: ‘taking back control’

By unleashing English nationalism, Brexit has made the future of the UK the central political issue of the coming decade. Northern Ireland is already heading for the exit door. By remaining in the EU single market, it is for all economic intents and purposes now slowly becoming part of a united Ireland.1

– George Osborne, First Secretary of State (May 2015–July 2016)

The great political success of the Brexiteers is that they have convinced a narrow majority of the British people that most of their woes, even the weather, derive from Europe. In truth, scarcely any do, but foreigners make convenient scapegoats.2

– Max Hastings, British journalist and historian, Bloomberg Opinion columnist

Brexit has spooked the moderate liberal Northern niceness, there’s no question about that, because in their European identity there was a wideness, so you can designate yourself as British or Irish singly, British and Irish both, British and Irish and European, British and European, Irish and European … That’s all been snatched away from people. That widening of national identity, in a strange way, Brexit has sharpened that distinctive of Britishness.3

– Rev. Gary Mason, Methodist minister, Director, ‘Rethinking Conflict’

Unionists’ and loyalists’ support for the Good Friday Agreement is predicated on there being no diminution of Northern Ireland’s place within the United Kingdom … That’s the bedrock on which unionists and loyalists have supported the Good Friday Agreement. Anything that begins to undo or in any way detract or dilute Northern Ireland’s place within the United Kingdom … presents the risk for serious disorder, which could very easily spill over into something much more looking like a conflict, and a militarized situation … In effect, it [Brexit] will see Northern Ireland become a rule taker … without a seat at the Brussels table … I think that has the potential for a serious breach in terms of the UK sovereignty, in relation to Northern Ireland. I think that could have serious consequences for the stability here that we enjoy.4

– Winston Irvine, former Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) Director of Communications, Loyalist Communities Council (LCC) member

The government of the republic need to be very careful about putting too much weight on Europe to help them and deal with the problems for them in the future … The South needs to be very, very careful, and it hasn’t been careful. It has, instead of seeing itself as a bridge between Europe and Britain, it has seen itself as a bulwark for Europe against Britain. But Europe will not help bail the South out if it runs into a balance of payments deficit with Britain. And Britain will not be so prepared to help out as it was in the past, because they will feel that Ireland was not helpful to them in their Brexit debate. So, I think the Republic of Ireland is not in a good place at the moment.5

– John, Lord Alderdice, former Alliance Party leader and Northern Ireland Assembly speaker, Belfast/Good Friday Agreement (B/GFA) negotiator

Brexit is a game-changer. In Breaking Peace: Brexit and Northern Ireland, Feargal Cochrane expounds on a meteor metaphor to analyse the impact of Brexit on the Northern Ireland peace process in the context of conflict transformation, focusing on the need ‘to provide peacebuilding shock absorbers that can withstand fundamental unforeseen circumstances – meteors – that hit peace processes with the potential to knock them off their conventional axes and change the local context’.6

The meteor analogy can be applied to the whole of the United Kingdom (UK). When the time frame to negotiate the terms of British withdrawal from the European Union (EU) and a trade agreement ended on 30 December 2020, four and a half years after the initial vote, there were signs that the future of the union itself was in jeopardy. A four-country poll in The Times in January 2021 revealed the extent of disaffection and disarray among citizens and the depth of the strains on the union: Scotland’s seemingly unstoppable march to independence; Northern Ireland wanting a border poll; England’s agnosticism with regard to the union; signs of a growing nationalism in Wales; and the overarching sense of Britishness fraying at the union’s seams.7 If one of the purposes of Brexit was to restore and aggrandize the UK’s sense of Britishness, the irony was that it achieved the opposite result. Only in England did voters put Britishness ahead of Englishness, in contrast to the Scots and Welsh whose national identities took precedence. English voters expected Scotland to become independent within ten years. Northern Ireland voters expected Northern Ireland would be united with the rest of Ireland within ten years.

Brexit not only changed the trading relationship between the UK and the EU, it changed the political relationship between the constituent nations of the UK. Above all, Brexit was driven by English nationalism.8 Unlike Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, each of which has its own devolved government, England is the only country in the UK not to have one. But England sends hefty subventions to the other three – 84 per cent of the population subsidizing a 16 per cent increasingly seen by the English as spongers on the British Treasury.9

After forty-three years (1973–2016) as a member of the EU, on 23 June 2016 the UK voted to leave by a vote of 52 to 48 per cent.10 The referendum question was a simple Leave or Remain choice, with no consideration as to what the divorce would entail or what kind of relationship the UK would subsequently have with the EU, whether it would be a ‘soft’ Brexit, which would see the UK continue to be aligned with the EU in a number of regards, or a ‘hard’ one, which would see the UK severing most links with the EU. Northern Ireland voted to remain by a 56 per cent to 44 per cent margin. Eighty-five per cent of the Remain vote came from voters with a Catholic background, 60 per cent of Leave votes from voters with a Protestant background. For self-defined nationalists, 88 per cent voted Remain, 66 per cent of self-defined unionists voted Leave and 70 per cent of those who chose to define themselves as neither voted to stay in the EU.11 Once identity labels are attached, the impact of political leanings became more pronounced.

It was not supposed to happen. Prime Minister David Cameron held the referendum in the certainty, shared by most elites, that it would fail, allowing him to see off the Eurosceptic wing of the Conservative Party. No one had thought through the ramifications. The mantra ‘Taking back control’ galvanized support in England’s heartland, which had borne the brunt of de-industrialization over decades and seen little economic recovery, leaving communities with only the nostalgia for a past that no longer existed – a once-upon-a-time Britannia.12

Both the Leave and Remain campaigns were either ignorant of or oblivious to the B/GFA and the paramount importance of an open border between Ireland and Northern Ireland being one of the planks underpinning the agreement. Both campaigns were oblivious, too, to the fact that the agreement was embedded in EU law, to which Britain and Ireland were parties, and that the EU played a significant and ongoing role in the peace process. In terms of financial support, over €500 million had been pumped into the region ‘in structural funds for economic regeneration and crossborder co-operation’ under the EU’s second Programme for Peace and Reconciliation in Northern Ireland.13 In addition, on an ongoing basis ‘two other EU programmes, INTEREG and PEACE IV, funnel approximately £470 million per annum into Northern Ireland, 85 per cent of which is bankrolled by the EU’.14 The European Convention on Human Rights is etched into every stitch of the agreement.

Cameron immediately stepped down after the Brexit vote to leave the EU, and Theresa May, the formidable Secretary of the Interior, took the helm. Touted as a Margaret Thatcher in the making, she turned out to be anything but. Just about every move she subsequently made was a mistake, some the result of hubris, some of ignorance, but most of them because of incompetence and miscalculations.

In a major speech at Lancaster House on 17 January 2017, May outlined a UK future outside of the EU that would see the UK leave both the Single Market and the Customs Union but remain a close member of the European community. She committed the UK to maintaining the Common Travel Area (CTA)15 and emphasized that ‘nobody wants to return to the borders of the past’ and that a ‘stronger Britain demands that we do something else – strengthen the precious union between the four nations of the United Kingdom’,16 a statement that was met with incredulity in Scotland and Northern Ireland, which had both voted to remain (the former overwhelmingly and the latter less so, but still substantively). May’s speech was long on the aspirational but short on clarity regarding how the objectives it enumerated might be achieved.

On 18 April 2017, in another catastrophic misjudgment, May announced plans for a snap general election.17 Rather than increasing their majority in Parliament, the Tories fell short of one. To form a government and stay in power, May had to enter into a ‘confidence and supply’ arrangement with Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).18 The 10 seats this arrangement provided gave May a cushion of 2 seats and returned the Tories to power, albeit in a party still torn almost equally between Leave and Remain factions.

Under the terms of the agreement between the DUP and the Conservative Party, the UK government poured an additional £1 billion into Northern Ireland, the Tories pledging ‘never to be neutral on expressing support for the union’ and ‘never [to] countenance any constitutional arrangements that are incompatible with the consent principle’.19 However, being locked into the parliamentary deal with the DUP undermined the government’s ability to be impartial between the competing interests in Northern Ireland, making nonsense of the UK government’s requirement under the B/GFA to act as an impartial guarantor and ensure parity of esteem for both aspirations. The new arrangement gave the DUP a veto over EU/UK negotiations on how to deal with the Irish border question. The party’s agenda was straightforward: it would veto any UK/EU withdrawal agreement that would result in Northern Ireland being treated differently from the rest of the UK.

Implicit in the B/GFA is a frictionless border between the two parts of Ireland that ensures the free movements of people, goods and services. The island of Ireland is, for all intents and purposes, a single economic and geographic entity. Only after the Brexit referendum did the hitherto ignored fact that Brexit would mean a land border between Northern Ireland and Ireland become glaringly obvious. Ireland would become the western perimeter of the EU, the only part of the EU to share a land border with the UK, and hence would necessitate the physical paraphernalia and security personnel a customs border requires.

The re-imposition of customs checks along the 300-mile-plus border, the Irish government strenuously argued, would violate provisions of the agreement referring to cross-border co-operation in listed areas; wreak havoc with economies, both North and South; and reinforce divisions between nationalists/republicans and unionists, spurring a widespread sense of betrayal and raising the prospect of renewed violence.20 In these circumstances, according to some assessments – including that of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) – the peace process, so carefully nurtured over two decades, could unravel at frightening speed.21

According to a 2018 UK in a Changing Europe survey, in Northern Ireland there were ‘strong expectations that protests against either NorthSouth (between Northern Ireland and the republic) or East-West (between Northern Ireland and Great Britain) border checks would quickly deteriorate into violence’.22 In the South, meanwhile, 57 per cent of those polled feared that a hard border would result in violence.23

To ensure free movement of goods and people between the two parts of Ireland, the Withdrawal Agreement would have to include a mechanism keeping either the UK or Northern Ireland in the Single Market. One arrangement, the so-called ‘Irish backstop’, was agreed by May and Michel Barnier, the negotiator handling Britain’s exit for the EU. It would have involved the UK continuing to align itself with the EU’s Single Market and customs area. This was an anathema to hard-line Brexiteers and the DUP. In one of a number of humiliating climbdowns that came to define her tenure as prime minister, May had to abandon lunch with Barnier before unveiling their joint position on the backstop when she was informed that the DUP would not support the position.24 The DUP insisted that there should be no divergence between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom in any Brexit withdrawal agreement, tying May’s hands – indeed, forcing her to back off from the first arrangement she had reached with the EU.25

In Belfast, after he resigned on 9 July 2018 as May’s Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs because of her handling of the backstop,26 Boris Johnson, to rapturous applause, told the annual convention of the DUP that under no circumstance should there be an agreement to any backstop, as it would tear the union apart.27

On three occasions May tried and failed to get Parliament to pass her withdrawal bill.28 Battered by the incessant infighting between Leave and Remain Tory MPs, and having lost support in both factions, May stepped down in March 2019. Months later, the Tories chose Boris Johnson, who promised to ‘get Brexit done’ as their new party leader and the country’s prime minister. Parliament, however, passed legislation ruling out a hard Brexit, or the UK simply crashing out with no deal on 31 October 2019.29

After much posturing and talk of preferring ‘to die in a ditch’ before asking for a further extension of the 31 October exit date,30 Boris Johnson embraced his metaphorical death unscathed: he met with then Taoiseach Leo Varadkar at Thornton Manor Hotel, Liverpool, and reached an agreement: the Northern Ireland Protocol (NIP), or what amounted to a border in the Irish Sea between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.31

Having lost the support of the DUP, Johnson called a snap election on 12 December 2019 that returned the Conservative Party to a whopping majority, reducing the DUP to irrelevance in the Westminster Parliament.

The NIP calls for checks on goods entering Northern Ireland from Great Britain to ensure compliance with EU regulatory standards and customs requirements, especially with regard to foodstuffs. (Medicines are dealt with separately.)32 There are no checks on goods originating in Northern Ireland going into the South. For the purpose of trading – for goods, but not services – Northern Ireland is in both the Single Market and the British internal market.

The Withdrawal Agreement, incorporating the NIP, was reached on 17 October 2019 and ratified by Parliament on 29 January 2020.33 It became legally operational after a transition year on 1 January 2021.34

But uncertainty about the future lurked. A poll of Tory Party members – showing they were quite prepared to toss Northern Ireland out of the union if that was the price to be paid for a hard Brexit – added to the unionist sense of isolation.35 The Conservative and Unionist Party had morphed into an English nationalist one. Says former Alliance leader David Ford:

There’s absolutely no doubt that the decision that the UK should leave the European Union, which was basically an English decision, has been very destabilizing for the prospect of the United Kingdom. There’s no doubt that support for independence in Scotland has increased. There’s no doubt that support for a united Ireland has increased to some extent … It’s probably fair to say that those who would have been described as nationalists, who were basically quite content with the Good Friday arrangements, as long as they saw fairness within Northern Ireland, partnership and sharing here, and North-South links, they weren’t particularly pushing [for a united Ireland]. Some of them are now significantly more Nationalist with a capital ‘N’.36

Brexit disrupted the delicate peace process, which works only when the three interlinked strands it encompasses are working together. When Strand I (the Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive) collapses, Strand II (the North-South Ministerial Council) automatically collapses. In the absence of devolved government in the North, only Strand III – the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference (BIIC) – remains functional. This is the only forum in which the two governments working together can act as mediators to try and resuscitate Stormont after it collapses.

Says Sam McBride, the highly respected political editor of the Belfast Telegraph:

[Brexit] has both polarized and poisoned those relations … There had been a thawing of the ice there that had existed [between unionism and the Irish government] after the Anglo-Irish Agreement … Within Northern Ireland, I think what Brexit has done is forced people who were otherwise quite comfortable, maybe not enthusiastic about the status quo … to question whether Northern Ireland is what they thought it was … It is almost the precursor to what would happen in a border poll where people that otherwise don’t spend their waking hours consumed by these issues suddenly think, ‘What do I think about this? I have to pick a side here.’37

For Ireland, says Fianna Fáil’s Jim O’Callaghan, Brexit has complicated both North-South and East-West relations. Besides being ‘a divisive issue within unionism’, it has had ‘huge impacts’ on political relationships between the North and the South.38 The East-West relationship, says O’Callaghan, is under strain ‘because there’s a strong element of English nationalism in the UK government now’, making politics in every part of the island more complicated.39

From its earliest days, close co-operation and a common sense of purpose between British and Irish governments were prerequisites for a successful peace process. In 1985, had it not been for the personal relations between Dermot Nally, secretary to the Irish government, and Sir Robert Armstrong, British cabinet secretary (and between his cabinet deputy Sir David Goodall and Michael Lillis, a senior Irish diplomat), it is unlikely that the Anglo-Irish Agreement would have passed muster with Margaret Thatcher.40