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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
7 0 July 2017
I
WAS INVITED to make a presentation to the
Seanad Select Committee on Brexit on 1
June last.
On the same day the European Movement
made the case for welcoming further EU
integration. I argued that the only way of avoid-
ing the establishment of an EU federal-state-style
external frontier in the aftermath of Brexit, with
all its associated problems, either between the
two islands of Britain and Ireland or between the
North and South of Ireland, was for the Republic
to leave the EU at or around the same time as the
UK.
This seems logically and politically an irrefu
-
table proposition, however unpalatable the
prospect of leaving the EU is for many in the
Republic.
The fundamental point to grasp about the
post-UK-general-election situation is that Brexit
is going to happen, whether under Theresa May,
Jeremy Corbyn or someone else. The UK is going
to cease being an EU Member State. The only
issue still open is how long this will take.
This is because that is now the policy of the
British Tory and Labour Party leaderships. They
both accept last year’s UK referendum result.
There is no likelihood of any retreat on that,
whatever other differences there may be
between the two big British parties.
Ultimately a real Brexit means leaving the EU
single market and customs union, for these are
necessary concomitants of EU membership.
Such a real Brexit is inevitable in time, for Tory
and Labour EU-critics will not rest until the ref
-
erendum result is implemented. It is possible
though that the Brexit process will involve a tran-
sitional period of some years during which the
UK joins either the EEA or EFTA on the lines of
Norway, Switzerland or Iceland, or else agrees
with the EU some ad hoc transition deal.
If one quarter of the Irish people and one fifth
of Ireland’s land area are going to leave the EU
because they are part of the UK, has the rest of
the country any real alternative but to follow,
however reluctantly?
Dublin and London want to maintain the
common Anglo-Irish travel and trade area. But if
the Republic opts to stay in the EU when the
North and Britain leave, it is the Republic that is
putting the common area in peril, not the
British.
London has Dublin over a barrel here. It can
bend Dublin to its wishes if it so wills. There is
no international law or moral right to a free-
movement facility like this between two different
sovereign States. Fundamentally the Anglo-Irish
Common Travel area exists as a gratuitous ges-
ture, a social-safety-valve offering from the UK
Government to high-unemployment and emigra-
tion-prone Ireland, an historical vestige of the
days when the whole country was part of the UK.
It is a long-term consequence of the 1920
Partition.
My basic contention before the Seanad Com
-
mittee was that the Republic seeking to stay in
the EU while Northern Ireland left as part of the
UK would make eventual national reunification
more distant and more difficult for the following
three reasons:
First, such a course would add several new
dimensions to the existing North-South Border:
customs posts or other customs controls; food
and EU veterinary checks on animals, milk and
other items moving across the Border; possible
passport controls to prevent EU citizens using the
Republic for backdoor entry into a post-Brexit UK;
and growing divergence between EU-harmonised
law and justice provisions in the South and
Anglo-Saxon-based ones in the North.
Second, the statement by Northern Secretary
Peter Brooke in 1990 that Britain had “no selfish,
strategic or economic interest” in staying in
Northern Ireland if the majority of the people
there should wish to leave the UK at some time
in the future underpinned the 1993 Downing
Street Declaration and the 1998 Good Friday
Agreement. Brussels has signalled recently that
security and military union is the preferred next
stage in EU integration.If the Republic remains
in the EU when the UK leaves it means that it will
become part of an EU military bloc under German
hegemony. That can hardly be in the security
interests of the UK.
If Ireland were ever to be reunited on the basis
of the Good Friday Agreement, however distant
INTERNATIONAL
Brexit will be divisive by facilitating not-easily-
reversed customs and possibly passport controls;
border checks; and divergence between EU-
harmonised and British law; meanwhile Ireland
will accept military union and NI will get used to
freedom from the EU
by Anthony Coughlan
EU membership
delays reunification
Brexit means leaving the EU
single market and customs
union, for Tory and Labour
EU-critics will not rest until
the referendum result is
implemented
July 2017 7 1
C
AN SINN Féin in particular keep up its
year-long opposition to Brexit in these
circumstances? Are Northern Republi-
cans really going to stand over the addition of
these new dimensions to Partition into the
indefinite future? That is hardly what Bobby
Sands and his comrades died for. Even less
did they give their lives so that their putative
successors might aggravate Partition in this
way so as to boost the supranational EU pro
-
ject, the subverter of the democracy of
Europe’s Nation States and the main political
instrument of High Finance and Big Capital in
our part of the world today!
Sinn Féin’s call for a Border Poll has given it
command of Northern nationalism following
the UK general election. At the same time it
has made Northern Unionism more united and
stronger than ever. Sinn Féin should not
delude itself that it can prise the North out of
the British union with such devices. If a Border
poll were held today any proposal for Irish
reunification would be rejected resoundingly.
Implicitly threatening gestures like a Border
poll, or the hope of outbreeding or outnum-
bering Unionists on a head count, is not a
realistic way to unite the people of Ireland.
The only way of doing that is for Northern
Republicans to come to a truly sincere and
heartfelt agreement with a significant section
of Unionist opinion in relation to concerns that
are really shared by both communities. That
should include opening for Unionists the per
-
spective of helping to run a future All-Ireland
State and not just its Northern part, together
with progressive Nationalists, making the
whole of Ireland a better place in the
process.
Sinn Féin missed a major political opportu
-
nity last year. If it had supported Brexit in the
UK referendum there probably would have
been a Northern majority for “Leave”. Sinn
Féin could then have called on the Republic’s
Government and political parties to follow the
North’s lead. Dublin would have been under
powerful pressure to do that. It would have
been a contemporary case of “The North
Began”, with the rest of Ireland following.
If Sinn Féin had taken that course it would
have found itself in a position now to go to the
British Government together with the DUP and
use its influence along with theirs to help get
a good Irexit deal alongside Brexit from both
Britain and the EU to benefit the whole of
Ireland.
Such a deal could have helped restore the
lost sovereignty of the Irish State vis-à-vis the
EU, enable it get back the Irish pound, take
control of our sea fisheries again, eliminate
the prospect of Irish taxpayers having to sub-
sidise Brussels into the indefinite future, and
restore a meaningful neutrality and foreign
policy independence. It would have changed
the dynamic of Nationalist-Unionist relations.
It might even start some Unionists thinking of
the advantageous role they might play in a
united country down the road.
The prospect of Irexit running in parallel
with Brexit is not of course a question of the
Republic rejoining the UK, as ignorant or
malevolent people like to misrepresent it. It is
rather to see Brexit as an opportunity for the
Irish State to get back its independence and
national democracy vis-a-vis the EU, including
the independent currency and floating
exchange rate that underpinned our Celtic
Tiger economic boom of the 1994-2001 period.
It is still not too late for Sinn Féin to get
together with their DUP opposite numbers on
that prospect, it would mean that the whole
island and not just the Republic would become
part of such an EU military bloc under German
hegemony also. This would give future British
Governments good reason from their point of
view for remaining in the North and discouraging
any future moves towards a united Ireland.
Thirdly, the Republic of Ireland staying in the
EU when the UK leaves would give Northern
Unionists a whole set of new and objectively valid
reasons for opposing Irish unity. For them re-uni-
fication at some future date, however distant,
would mean that the people of the North would
have to join the EU, with its 123,000 or so supra
-
national rules, legal acts and international
agreements - which is hardly real freedom.
They would have to adopt the dysfunctional
euro-currency. They would have to take on the
burden of helping to pay for the private bank debt
that the ECB and the Troika imposed on the
Republic when it decided in 2010 that no Irish
bank should be let go bust. And they would have
to agree to be bound by all the new EU laws and
regulations that will be passed between now and
whenever Partition might end.
It is hard to see Unionist consent to reunifica
-
tion occurring in those circumstances. Yet as the
Good Friday Agreement recognises, Partition can
never be ended without the agreement of at least
a significant section of the present Unionist pop-
ulation. One thing is sure. Ulster Unionists will
never be attracted to the idea of running what
would effectively be an EU province. For that is
what the South remaining in the EU/Eurozone
realistically entails.
Sinn Féin should, with the
Unionists help to bring about
Irexit showing themselves
real Republicans and re-
establishers of Ireland’s lost
national democracy. And it
might encourage Unionists
over an eventual united
Ireland
7 2 July 2017
WHAT JEREMY CORBYN SAID
Speaking on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show on Sunday
11 June Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was asked if
Labour would seek to keep the UK in the EU single
market and customs union. He replied, “Well, the
single market is a requirement of EU membership
and since we won’t be EU members there will have
to be an arrangement made”.
Pressed if he was being clear that the UK will leave
the EU, he said: ”Absolutely. Where I frame it is, we
want a tariff-free access to the European market. We
also want to maintain a very important university
and research collaboration in Europe. And there is a
whole lot of European agencies – Euratom, security,
environment –which we wish to be part of”.
Mr Corbyn said that he wanted “a jobs-first Brexit”
negotiated as quickly as possible, along with guar-
anteeing the post-Brexit rights of EU nationals living
in the UK.
WHAT BRITISH CHANCELLOR PHILIP HAMMOND SAID
On the Andrew Marr Show on 18 June Philip Ham-
mond said: “Our position as regards Brexit was set
out by the Prime Minister in her Lancaster House
speech in January … We are leaving the EU and
because we are doing that we are leaving the single
market and the customs union ...The question is how
we do that in a way that best supports British jobs
and enables us to have a close free trade relation
with the EU ... The important thing is that we segue
seamlessly to allow British goods and services to
flow seamlessly … We need to get there by means of
a slope, not a cliff edge…We aim to get immigration
down to sensible levels in the process”.
the Northern Executive and advance such a policy course
for the whole country. Its leaders would of course be
excoriated by the South’s Great and Good if they did that.
But that would pass. Time will show anyway that the cur-
rent Brexit policy of the Republic’s Government and
political parties is bankrupt.
Even if we do stay in the EU when the UK leaves we are
likely to find the prospect so painful that we shall soon
want to leave anyway. Except that we should be acting
then from a position of utter weakness. Much better that
we should decide to leave now at or around the same
time as the UK, acting independently of course, but coor-
dinating our EU/Eurozone departure with the UK’s and
confident that other EU States are very likely to follow.
Gerry Adams and his Sinn Féin colleagues should put
their thinking-caps on, set out to make genuine friends
with their DUP opposite numbers and together with the
Northern Unionist/Protestant community help to bring
about Irexit alongside Brexit. That would be to show
themselves real Republicans and re-establishers of Ire-
land’s lost national democracy. And it might encourage
some Unionists to look on an eventual united Ireland
with somewhat different eyes.
NB: The proceedings of the various hearings of the
Seanad Special Select Committee on the Withdrawal of
the United Kingdom from the European Union, estab
-
lished in March, may be found on the Oireachtas
website at www.oireachtas.ie
Anthony Coughlan is Associate Professor Emeritus in
Social Policy at Trinity College Dublin
INTERNATIONAL
July 2017 7 3
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