London Eye: Northern Ireland returns to haunt Britain

The Northern Ireland protocol sits at the heart of issues that could lead to the break-up of Britain. That spectre that has long haunted British politics goes back to the independence of Ireland from British rule just over a century ago. As with India in ways, freedom for Ireland also brought a partition along religious lines, between Catholic Christians and Protestant Christians.

Ireland was a largely Catholic country, but Protestants loyal to the British concentrated themselves in six northern counties in the Ulster region. These then opted to remain a part of Britain. The British government then worked out the demography and then gave that respectability through democracy. Northern Ireland has remained a part of Britain ever since. It is one of the four provinces of the United Kingdom (UK) along with Scotland, England and Wales.

The Catholic minority in Northern Ireland, called Republicans because they largely supported joining the Republic of Ireland have long been in conflict with the Protestants, called the Unionists because they want to maintain union with the United Kingdom. Over a 30-year period from the late sixties, more than 3,500 people were killed, and about 80,000 wounded in violence in Northern Ireland, in a population of just 1.5 million.

The Good Friday agreement of 1998 brought respite. An agreement was worked out for a share in government in the Northern Ireland Assembly between the Republicans and the Unionists. The Irish government in Dublin gave up its territorial claims to Northern Ireland. Irish people were given a choice of citizenship.

Two new dangers have arisen simultaneously to threaten that fragile peace. And fragile it is: high walls built in Belfast between Catholic and Protestant areas have not come down because the people living on either side want it that way. These walls have never come down as the Berlin Wall did. Catholics and Protestants have stepped far enough to achieve peace, but not far enough to aspire to togetherness.

The immediate upset has arisen because in elections earlier this year the Republicans came into a majority for the first time within the Northern Ireland Assembly. Many Unionists saw this change as apocalyptic, it threatens Protestant dominance within Northern Ireland, which was created on the back of Protestant dominance.

That danger comes coupled with Brexit.

So long as Britain and Ireland were both a part of the EU, there was no border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Brexit opened up the dangerous prospect of a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland, threatening barriers to the movement of people and trade and potentially a hostile division among people.

To prevent that a Northern Ireland protocol was worked out between the UK and the EU. Under that British goods going into Northern Ireland would be checked within Britain, with no further checks between Northern Ireland and Ireland. Some EU laws would continue to apply to Northern Ireland.

This appeared a threatening prospect for the Unionists because it institutionalised some barriers between Northern Ireland and the rest of Britain. The UK government is now stepping up to defend its interests, as it long has. But they are not the only ones around in Northern Ireland, or the only ones with an interest in Northern Ireland.