Guest Post On Johnson's Moves From An Irish Perspective

This is a guest post, from Sraid Marx, on Boris Johnson's latest manoeuvres from an Irish perspective.

The Sraid Marx blog is written by someone who has been a Marxist for around 40 years. As they say in their "About Me" section of their blog,

"My maternal grandfather was an Irish emigrant to Glasgow and a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain during the 1930's and during and after the 2nd World War. He was a union member who lost his job more than once because of his union activities. My mother was also briefly a member of the Young Communist League. Both my mother and father were supporters of civil rights in the late 1960's in Belfast and were briefly members of the Northern Ireland Labour Party in the early 1970's. I therefore come from a left-wing background defined by politics and not by nationality or religion.

In 1975, after my family had moved to Scotland I became involved with socialist politics through the International Marxist Group in Glasgow and in 1976 I joined this organisation. I returned to Ireland to go to university and joined the Irish section of the Fourth International, the Movement for a Socialist Republic, in 1978. I was a member of the MSR and the successor organisations of the Irish section of the Fourth International up until 2012.

I am therefore a Marxist from the Trotskyist tradition."

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The British Government declaration that it was unilaterally about to give itself the power to tear up the parts of the Northern Ireland Protocol that was part of the EU Withdrawal Agreement has met with much damnation by many of the members of the Dáil (the British equivalent is the House of Commons). The Sinn Fein leader denounced ‘Perfidious Albion’ while the People before Profit TD (MP) also condemned “the rotten, rotten Prime Minister” for his “insult to the Taoiseach and the people of this country.” 

‘The Irish Times’ Dáil sketch writer took a more humorous approach, comparing the predicament of the Taoiseach to that of the Irish football team: would he replay the role of Ray Houghton and put the ball in the net against England as Houghton did in the Euros in 1988? Or would he replay the role of Roy Keane in Saipan during the World Cup in 2002 and walk out on the Irish team? 

Those with long memories, or a knowledge of history, would not have to recall the recent words of the British condemnation of China for having reneged on the deal over Hong Kong. They only had to recall that almost 100 years ago the British had threatened ‘immediate and terrible war’ if the Irish did not sign the Anglo-Irish Treaty that created the Irish State and copper-fastened partition. The Brits were at it again – waiving the rules even when they didn’t even rule them. 

But this is the point, which is why Taoiseach Micheál Martin took the more measured approach: “I will therefore exercise judgement in terms of both how I intervene, when I intervene and the manner of my intervention”, which means he will leave it to the EU to do the intervening. The Irish now have the inestimable advantage 100 years later that the power of the political body they are part of greatly exceeds that of the British. The opposition parties in the Dáil were full of righteous indignation but regardless, all would rely on the EU to protect what are seen as vital Irish interests. 

These interests include a requirement for a new trade deal that protects food and other agricultural exports to Britain and free movement of goods to and through Britain to the wider EU market. A new "Brexit-buster" ship MV Laureline has been built and repointed to Irish trade with mainland Europe, and Dublin Port has a plan for a €320m development of facilities to support greater capacity, while plans are well advanced for a new electricity interconnector between Ireland and France. However, these cannot substitute for existing arrangements, electricity interconnection is currently only with Britain, for example, and don’t address the importance of agricultural exports into the British market or imports from it. 

There is an upside for the Irish State, as it can present itself as a convenient, English-speaking site for companies seeking access to the EU market, including companies relocating from Britain, but there is fierce competition for this and there are already infrastructural capacity constraints. The benefits are not as immediate as the potential threats. 

None of this has immediately surfaced as the primary concern of the Irish State or of the EU. Instead, its leaders have denounced the proposed changes for the danger it poses to the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) through the potential creation of a hard border on the island. Neither of them can actually point to where the Agreement requires a ‘soft’ border and the Strand 2 North-South arrangements of the GFA have ironically been the most neglected and disused parts of the Agreement, and with little controversy, including from Sinn Fein. The problem however is twofold. 

Firstly, the peace process relies on freezing the current sectarian arrangements and any sudden or significant movement, in fact any movement at all, threatens instability and gives rise to potential conflict. The GFA assumed a ‘soft’ border and in most minds is part of the GFA, just as lack of political violence is also associated with it, it doesn’t matter that neither were the result of it. 

And secondly, the problem is not so much the border itself; a leader of the ‘dissident’ republican group Saoradh, Brian Kenna, described Brexit as “a huge help” for recruitment to his organisation and a “pilot light in reigniting that side of physical force to British occupation." The Saoradh leadership has said that they hoped Brexit - which they campaigned for - would be "as hard as hell." As one person put it - they want the border posts back so that they can blow them up. 

Unfortunately for this group, British security services in MI5 have penetrated its leadership and arrested nine of them in August. Republican attacks threaten stability, but even aside from their limited effectiveness such attacks do not, in themselves, provoke wider conflict. What does threaten wider conflict is the additional strain that a ‘hard’ border would place on already crumbling political structures within which sectarian competition has been institutionalised. The immediate shock of Boris Johnson’s threatened unilateral changes to the Northern Ireland Protocol did not prevent the resumption of joint Covid-19 press conferences by the DUP and Sinn Fein after weeks of separate briefings following the breaking of social distancing rules by Sinn Fein at an IRA funeral. 

Reaction in the North of Ireland is instructive. The leading voice in the DUP on Brexit, Sammy Wilson, welcomed the British initiative only as a first step after his leader had more or less indicated acceptance of the existing Protocol. The Ulster Unionist Party leader Steve Aiken said his party “took little comfort” from the Tory Bill. Unionists have lost all trust in Boris Johnson and are acutely aware that he doesn’t give a damn for them. Having been burned through accepting his promise that there would be no border on the Irish Sea they are clear that he may be creating another smokescreen to cover up a U-turn on acceptance of a trade deal that requires it. 

While most attention has focused on the potential separation of Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK through rules governing the import and export of goods between them, with no such restrictions or barriers between the North and South of Ireland, this is not the real concern. Fears that Tesco could not deliver food to its stores in Northern Ireland without exorbitant additional costs were on the way to being dispelled, and additional paperwork for goods going from Northern Ireland to Britain have not been seen as a major concern. 

The main issue does not arise from concerns about the separation of Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK market but from the fact that it is still too close. EU state aid rules apply to Northern Ireland under the Protocol but these tie back to the rest of the UK if goods, investment and rules originating or applying in Britain affect Northern Ireland. Rules and tax incentives etc involving subsidies to industry or firms intended to support industry in Britain, if they have any impact in Northern Ireland, would be considered by the EU to be invalid. The intricate and complicated division of labour involved in the modern supply chains makes such impacts inevitable and the EU demands notification in advance of any changes to the British state aid regime. 

The row about the UK Internal Market Bill has therefore nothing and everything to do with Ireland, and Ireland will have not much to do with fighting it to a conclusion. The EU has made it clear that the antics of Johnson’s Government changes nothing, it will not even call a halt to the negotiations on a trade deal. The Withdrawal Agreement itself will be employed to sort out the mess and if the British appear to want no deal it will only be because they pretend to. Then when they sign up to one it will be a great victory. 

Far from getting Brexit done the Withdrawal Agreement demonstrates that it cannot get done without being either pointless or immensely damaging. Unfortunately, the British Labour Party, which should be making hay out of Tory incoherence, can’t effectively challenge while its own policy is that there is a Brexit that is neither. Yet another Brexit crisis demonstrates that only continuing opposition to it can defend the interests of workers in Ireland and Britain.