- Ireland has been a problem since 1169, and still is
AT PENPOINT
The UK did not find it easy to get into the European Union, and is not finding it easy to get out. It appears that the UK’s constitutional arrangements, completed in 1801 and last revised in 1921, may have been enough to take the UK into the EU, but are not enough to bring it out. It is worth noting that both the completion and revision were about Ireland, and now the exit is about what George Bernard Shaw once called in his play John Bull’s Other Island.
There are a number of red lines refusing to intersect, giving the impression that any more ‘normal’ member would have an easier time leaving the EU. The sticking point seems to have been that Eire, most of Ireland, independent since 1921, was also a member. The original trouble came over what was known as the backstop, which would have kept all the UK in the EU Customs Union, until an arrangement was worked out between the UK and the EU.
That would have supposedly defeated the purpose of the 2016 referendum, in which the UK only narrowly voted to leave the EU. The supposed purpose was to regain economic sovereignty, even though it had not merged the pound in the euro. The real motive for leaving was social rather than economic.
The UK remains faced with the question of whether or not it will be part of Europe. The saga of its relationship with the Continent is a long one, and will probably not be over with Brexit. However, once out, it is not easy to see how it will return to the EU, which will increasingly be Europe’s future, except for terms which will pay little attention to British pretensions about national sovereignty, even unity
When the UK lost its empire, it lost its main source of gaining wealth, and then spent most of what it had accumulated in the two world wars. As the Empire would no longer provide wealth, it had to become part of the EU. Apart from the economic benefits, it had to accept the free movement of labour. That meant, as the EU expanded, accepting Eastern Europeans and other such immigrants. However, when the EU accepted a certain number of Syrian refugees, and started allocating them to member states, and when migrants from Africa began crossing the Mediterranean, the British jibbed. There had been enough trouble with the South Asian and Caribbean migrants after World War II, and Britons were no longer in the mood to accept any more non-white migrants. Thus Brexit contained a racist undercurrent, something which has been emphasized by the Conservative Party, which is broadly more insular, more ‘Little-Englander’, than average.
Though none of the other EU members had corresponding Empires, those that had them, had migrant populations, some of whose members also gravitated to the UK. It should not be forgotten that the UK had manged a separation with Ireland before, in 1921, at a time when the UK had an Empire which had needed Irish help to man. Ireland was notoriously poorer, so its sons were particularly inclined to join its armed forces as well as its colonial services. Protestants, mainly, though not all, from Ulster, were in the forefront, and an Irish Protestant class had developed into a bulwark of the Empire. The Anglo-Irish aristocracy was famed indeed, and played a major role in ruling the Empire.
Insularity has been peculiarly English. One of the issues repressed because of the Irish backstop has been that of Scotland. Scotland remained in the UK, of which it has been a part since 1707, but it also voted to remain in the EU. One of the advantages of being in the UK was that it carried EU membership. As a Scots nationalist said in the 1970s, “It’s one thing to be the junior partner in the world’s largest empire; it’s another to be a junior partner in the Sick Man of Europe.” Scotland would prefer to be independent; and then join the EU in its own right. The vast majority of Scottish seats are now held by the Scottish Nationalist Party, which generally votes against the Conservatives, and thus supports the Labour Party, which it actually supplanted. This is an eerie parallel with the Irish Home Rule League, which regularly, in the decades leading up to World War I, would win about 85 of the then 100 Irish seats. It supported the Liberal Party, helping it form several governments. However, the Liberal Party foundered because of Irish Home Rule, with the Liberal Unionists hiving off and joining the Conservatives. So far, such a split has not occurred in the Labour Party over Scotland.
However, the effort to keep Ulster within the UK, which included a special relationship with Eire, extending to allowing Eire citizens to continue enlisting in the UK armed forces, received a setback with the beginning of the Time of Troubles in 1968, when the struggle to unite the island became violent. The UK military also committed many atrocities as it tried to put down the insurgency. Ultimately, there was the Good Friday Agreement between the Irish nationalists and the Ulster unionists, which provided among other things, that there would be no border between Eire and Northern Ireland. As the latter was part of the UK, it meant there was to be no border between the UK and Eire. Since the UK and Eire were both in the EU, it was OK. Now that one is to leave, a border must be set up, where people and goods are to pass through migration and customs checks.
As Boris Johnson (the Tories’ third Prime Minister since the 2016 referendum) agreed to Northern Ireland remaining in the EU customs union while taking the rest of the UK out, in effect, he gave up Northern Ireland. No wonder the Democratic Ulster Party, a unionist party and thus a Tory ally, upon which it depends for support to stay in government, opposed the agreement.
The House of Commons rejected the deal. That obliged the sending of a letter seeking an extension, as decided by a previous Act. He sent the letter, without signing it, and another, duly signed, saying that an extension was not necessary. This piece of chicanery showed just how Brexit was taking its toll on British constitutionalism just as much as on the integrity of its territory. And how it showed that Ireland, as it had been ever since Henry II first invaded it back in 1169, which marked the beginning of seven and a half centuries of English interference in Ireland, is still causing problems. And the UK is still in the middle of the mess that is Brexit.
Johnson is committed to leaving the EU even if it means that there is no deal. His critics have accused him of aiming for a no-deal Brexit, and the Labourites believe he wants the UK to align with the USA rather than the EU in any impending trade war, the first signs of which are the USA’s slapping tariffs on the EU.
The UK remains faced with the question of whether or not it will be part of Europe. The saga of its relationship with the Continent is a long one, and will probably not be over with Brexit. However, once out, it is not easy to see how it will return to the EU, which will increasingly be Europe’s future, except for terms which will pay little attention to British pretensions about national sovereignty, even unity.
