Today, Explained - The invisible border

Episode Date: January 31, 2020

After nearly four years of acrimony, Britain finally Brexits tonight. But it risks plunging Northern Ireland back into a living nightmare. (Transcript here.) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Visit connectsontario.ca. A warning that today's episode features some graphic descriptions of violence near the top and the bottom of this first half. There's no violence after the break if you want to avoid it altogether. Let's begin. Tonight, believe it or not, the United Kingdom will officially leave the European Union. It happens at 11 o'clock London time. Brexit is happening. We have covered Brexit backwards and forwards on Today Explained. We've talked about trade and immigration and ideology.

And it's all been sort of abstract, very political. But on the show today, our reporter Noam Hassenfeld is going to take us to a place where you can actually see what Brexit might do with your own eyes. Yeah. And in the interest of minimizing my carbon footprint, I got someone closer to go for me. My name is Leona O'Neill and I'm a journalist from Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom, but it shares a border with the independent country of Ireland to the south. I am on the border between Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland. It's just outside Derry.

It's a very, very, very busy road. I've pulled to the side of the road here. There's literally hundreds of cars going up and down past me here. Right now, since both the United Kingdom and Ireland are in the European Union, that border is barely noticeable. But after tonight, while the country of Ireland will still be in the EU, things start to get complicated at the border. Brexit has posed a particularly difficult and unique problem for us. Brexit could bring checkpoints, police, the military,

but that's nothing new for this border. When you say the border, the Northern Irish border, people think, they hark back to those days when there were huge big military installations where the British Army would be there, you know, there'd be checkpoints and stuff like that. There is nothing like that now at the moment. It's something that's kind of forgotten about almost.

It's an invisible border. When I was growing up here beside the border, you know, you would approach the border. There were huge, big military installations, you know, corrugated iron walls, heavily fortified, full of soldiers, armed soldiers. So sometimes your car would be pulled in, everybody would be taken out of the car, the car would be searched for guns and ammunition and all that kind of stuff.

These military installations were shot at, they were bombed. You were almost taking your life on your hands, stopping at them while you were passing, particularly with children in the car, It was quite a terrifying experience. This peaceful spot where Leona is sitting right now, 30 years ago, it was a living nightmare. In 1990, Patsy Gillespie was a young father. The IRA, the Irish Republican Army, were targeting Patsy Gillespie because he worked in a British army station here in Derry. They held his wife and his children hostage and told Patsy to get in his van and drive it to the British army station here, the checkpoint in Cosh Quinn. They said if he didn't do that, that they would shoot his wife and his children. This is Patsy's wife, Kathleen. He was chained to the driver's seat

and the steering wheel of that. It was loaded with 1,200 pounds of explosives and he was made to drive the van to the army checkpoint at Coisquin. He had time to shout a warning and I was told by one of the soldiers who survived that they heard, run boys, I'm loaded, run. And the bomb was detonated by remote control and Patsy was blown to pieces with five soldiers. Patsy was actually identified by a piece of grey zip attached to a piece of the woolen cardigan and a bit of flesh. To this day, Kathleen remembers Patsy on the border.

I'm sitting here actually across the road from the memorial. Patsy's wife Kathleen leaves flowers, I can see them sitting here, she leaves flowers every week there for her Patsy. Brexit isn't just bringing these memories back, it actually might disrupt this hard-fought peace. I know from speaking to dissident Republicans in the past that should any structure go up on the border, any kind of even a sign that says this is the border, they will blow it up. Anyone who puts the life of a customs officer at risk, they will need police protection. The police are then become a target as well as a customs officer. If there are attacks on them,

the army might be brought back to protect the police who are protecting the customs officer. And then we're back in the 1970s, 1980s Northern Ireland. We have a very delicate peace here in Northern Ireland. Anything could just put it over the edge. Peace in Northern Ireland isn't just delicate. It took decades of civilian uprisings, military crackdowns, and brutal terrorist campaigns to reach this point. Thousands of people died in the process. And the peace deal that created this invisible border was an almost impossible balancing act. Ireland was part of the British Empire up until the beginning of the 20th century.

This was not a situation which was desired by the majority of people in Ireland. Susan McKay is an author and journalist from Londonderry in Northern Ireland. People there often call it Derry. There was a smaller Protestant minority concentrated in the northeast of Ireland, which did not want to be part of a united Ireland. So in 1921, Ireland was partitioned. The South was independent, while the North remained part of the United Kingdom. A border was put across the country and it's an extraordinary border.

You know, it zigzags all over the place. It cuts off one county, Donegal, practically from the rest of the Republic of Ireland. And it divides villages, it divides houses, it divides people's farms. This is Fintana, a small, rather old-fashioned town in County Tyrone, one of the six north-eastern counties of Ireland which are held under British rule. The situation in the north was that the Unionists,

who were those who were loyal to Britain, set up the northern state in such a way that Catholics and nationalists could really have no power. Two-thirds of the people of this little town are nationalists. That is to say, they are in favour of unity with the rest of Ireland and against being treated as part of Britain. One-third is Unionist, which means favouring British rule and the partition of Ireland.

But the town is controlled by that unionist minority and runs solely in their interest. So the upshot of this gerrymandering, as it was called, was that the Catholic population lived in extremely disadvantaged circumstances, in crowded areas. They didn't have power, their unemployment was very high, and they were extremely unhappy about the state. In the 1960s, things changed. With the advent of television and with the advent of second-level education for larger numbers of people, the civil rights movement rose up about housing issues and employment issues, and it was met by the northern state with a very violent response. Civil rights protests against alleged discriminations were regarded at first as no more than a nuisance.

But as they continued and became more insistent and extreme, petrol bombs ominously replaced stones as the main weapons. This was the beginning of what people call the Troubles. Nationalists and Republicans fighting against Unionists, Loyalists and British troops. And regular people caught in the middle. Into the middle of that scenario, the IRA, the Irish Republican Army, began to build up force. And that was very much accelerated in January 1972 when Bloody Sunday occurred and that was a notorious massacre of innocent civil rights

marchers by a British regiment called the paratroopers. Thirteen people were killed, none of them were armed, so a lot of people started to join the IRA at that point. You had appalling incidents, including Bloody Friday, when the IRA planted a lot of bombs in the shopping streets of Belfast, indiscriminately killing civilians. On that day, Belfast was attacked with 27 bombs in one afternoon. Nine died and over 130 injured.

And you had loyalists going into collusion with renegade members of the British security forces, killing Catholics in isolated areas around the country. In 1981, the British government tried to remove political status from IRA prisoners. And as a result, the IRA prisoners went on hunger strike and Margaret Thatcher refused to relent. Crime is crime is crime. It is not political, it is crime. And there can be no question of political status. By the time a negotiation was reached, 10 of them had died. And by the early years of the 1990s, the people of Northern Ireland were just completely approaching despair.

Susan, you covered the Troubles as a reporter. What was that experience like? Well, being a reporter during the conflict meant going to a lot of funerals. It meant attending a lot of scenes where very violent incidents had happened. It meant talking to people who were in a state of shock and grief. And many journalists like me had to, you know, go to people's houses the morning after somebody had been killed and do interviews with bereaved families. And you've been following up with some of them? Yeah, I went back to many of the families

that I had first met when they were first bereaved. They're all very powerful and all very moving, but a few of them did particularly stick in my mind. One of them was the story of James Morgan which was told by his mother, Philomena. James was he was a 16 year old. He was just like any other normal, happy-go-lucky 16 year old. So on that day

James went to meet his friend Nathan about maybe 200 to 300 yards up the road. He never made it it he was picked up and they beat him round the head with a hammer and they killed him and they buried him in an animal pit

we didn't know where he was when we looked for him then a detective arrived to tell us. So that's where I got the news from. The troubles seemed to be far from here. But it never even entered our heads that something like this could happen. In a small village. But it did, and it changed things forever. like this could happen in a small village.

But it did and it changed things forever. James Morgan was murdered by loyalists in 1997 near his home in the Mountains of Mourne. And when it went to court, the judge said it was utterly sectarian. He was murdered for his religion.

And for a long time after it, it was very nervy because I couldn't sleep. The rest of the boys were all late teens. Would they be picked up? Would they meet the wrong person? Would they go down a road that you didn't want them to go down?

You know, Fahad Aras used to say, if you get a good day, take it, and if you can laugh, laugh. And we took his advice and that's what we did. People's lives were just ruined and people had to come to terms with immense pain and many, many people are to terms with immense pain. And many, many people are still struggling with that pain. Somehow, after all that pain, both sides made peace in 1998.

And now Brexit might unmake it. More in a minute on Today Explained. Support for Today Explained comes from Ramp. Ramp is the corporate card and spend management software designed to help you save time and put money back in your pocket. Ramp says they give finance teams issue cards to every employee with limits and restrictions and automate expense reporting so you can stop wasting time at the end of every month. And now you can get $250 when you join Ramp. ramp.com slash explained, r-a-m-p.com slash explained. Cards issued by Sutton Bank, member FDIC. Terms and conditions apply. Bet MGM, authorized gaming partner of the NBA, has your back all season long. From tip-off to the final buzzer, you're always taken care of with a sportsbook born in Vegas.

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Now beneath the pyramid penthouse of Stormont's castle buildings, the final scenes of this extraordinary political drama are about to be acted out. — April 10, 1998. Belfast, Northern Ireland. Hours past a midnight deadline. — Dawn broke at Stormont with the deadline for agreement well past, and the chances of a deal emerging seemingly slim. It's Good Friday, the most somber day on the calendar for both Catholics and Protestants. It's all about death, sacrifice, and the anticipation of rebirth. There was a growing feeling of anticipation as the conviction grew that they were witnessing history in the making.

All parties have been invited. The largely Protestant Unionists, along with hardline loyalist groups, and the largely Catholic Nationalists, along with hardline Republican groups. The mood here at Stormont veered almost by the hour between confidence that a deal was tantalizingly close to fears that these talks, even as the finish line loomed into sight, could still stumble. David Trimble, head of the Ulster Unionist Party. We see this as laying the foundations for a healthy, vibrant democracy to replace the stagnation, frustration, and powerlessness of the last three decades.

Gerry Adams, head of Sinn Féin, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army. These negotiations and the new arrangements which result from them are part of our collective journey from the failures of the past towards a future together as equals. As day stretches into evening, the mediator, former U.S. Senator George Mitchell, makes an announcement almost a century in the making. I'm pleased to announce that the two governments and the political parties of Northern Ireland have reached agreement. had entered a situation of what you might call a mutually hurting stalemate, where, you know, they weren't going to achieve their objectives through force, but neither could the British government impose its authority by force either. So they came up with a compromise with two parts.

One was the relationships within Northern Ireland, the power relationships. The deal promised that nationalists and unionists would always be represented in Northern Ireland's government. Both sides compromised but got something, and what they got was to share power within Northern Ireland based on power sharing. Part two, the bigger picture. On the one hand, it promised that Northern Ireland would stay part of the United Kingdom, but on the other hand, there was a provision for what's called a border poll, meaning that at any point in the future, there could be a referendum where the people of Northern Ireland would vote on whether to join a united Ireland. Or as British Prime Minister Tony Blair put it, Those who believe in a united Ireland can make that case now by persuasion, not violence or threats. And if they voted in favor of United Ireland, the British

government was duty-bound to legislate for it. It was almost as if the deal was saying something different to each side. For unionists, this deal was ideally the end. But for nationalists, they would never have agreed to it if they had been sold it as an end in itself. So certainly it was presented as a stepping stone. For one side, the deal affirmed that Northern Ireland was a permanent part of the United Kingdom. For the other side, the door was open for Northern Ireland to join the rest of Ireland. Everybody gets a little bit of what they want. Nobody gets everything, but everybody gets enough to sell it to their supporters. It was kind of confusing, but that was by design.

The term that they used was constructive ambiguity. You try and massage the unpalatable details to a certain degree when people are signing up to something, but ultimately, then you need to inject the money, the changed institutions very quickly afterwards so that people don't have time to go back and have this so-called buyer's remorse. There was no perfect solution to the issue of the border. So the plan sidestepped it, hoping the problem might improve with time. The miracle of the Good Friday Agreement is that it's not, as is often touted,

a conflict resolution situation. This is conflict management. We haven't, in a sense, dismantled the sectarian mindsets that exist in Northern Ireland. Only the guns have been put aside, but not the divisive mentalities. And that's, of course, evident to anybody who visits Northern Ireland. When we've done all these different things, institutional change, constitutional change, you still have a problem of attitudes not having changed. Even in Belfast, for example, the largest city,

there are kilometres upon kilometres of walls which divide both communities. Most were built during the Troubles, but some have gone up even since the peace agreement. If you are from one community, you can spend your entire life growing up without meeting or having a serious conversation with somebody from the other community. 90% of Northern Ireland students study exclusively with members of their own community. You get employed in a different area, you read different newspapers, you play different sports. So Northern Ireland remains very divided. What the Good Friday Agreement did is that it regulated the conflict in such a way

that people didn't feel it was worthwhile killing each other to resolve it. All the while, the Northern Irish border has remained almost invisible. It's one that divides farms, it divides families. It's an unnatural border. And what the Good Friday Agreement managed to do was to make that border invisible. And what Brexit has done is it has reintroduced the threat of a visible border back on the island of Ireland, one that would be what they call a hard border,

customs posts, security, and that's something that, of course, everybody who was involved in the Good Friday Agreement is trying to prevent. Tonight's Brexit deadline doesn't say much about what the deal will look like in practice. It's symbolism. The real negotiations are still yet to take place. And when the trade agreement is negotiated, the United Kingdom will have to make a choice. The UK is going to have to figure

out its trade borders all over again. And it's talking about drawing one in the Irish Sea, which more or less allows for continuing free trade within the island of Ireland, but a de facto border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom. This trade border would split a country, Northern Ireland on one side and the rest of the UK on the other. But the other option could be even riskier. Option two would risk undoing the Good Friday Agreement by rebuilding the land border between Ireland and Northern Ireland. That border between North and South will become the international border between the European Union and the United Kingdom, and it will have to be

policed. It will be visible. And the history of Ireland suggests that once you have a visible border, it becomes a target. Then you will have to have reinforcements to defend it from attack, and you end in an escalating situation, which leads to widespread conflict. The history of the Troubles makes the risk of a rebuilt land border clear. But for unionists in Northern Ireland, a border in the Irish Sea could be dangerous too. The problem for people from that perspective, who were by far the majority of the people who did vote for Brexit here, is that it throws up the possibility that the United Kingdom itself will not hold together. Ben Lowry edits the unionist-leaning Belfast newsletter. This is a massive change.

The impact of being edged out of the economic territory of your own nation is a very serious one. But for Ben, it's not a shocking result. Very many people in England, when put to the test, are not bothered in the least at the prospect of Northern Ireland leaving. And that is something that must concentrate the minds of those of us unionists to think carefully about what the future means. A 2019 poll found that among pro-Brexit English voters, almost three quarters said they didn't care if Brexit led to the breakup of the UK. And 80% said that Brexit is worth it, even if it unravels the peace process in Northern Ireland.

As for those in Northern Ireland... The arguments in favor of Brexit from a Northern Ireland perspective are that the European Union is a fundamentally incoherent system, that it tries too many things that are the preserve of the nation state. Essentially, the same argument made by the rest of Britain, that it tries too many things that are the preserve of the nation state. Essentially the same argument made by the rest of Britain, that a nation should make choices for itself. Think of the person in Northern Ireland who thinks of themselves as part of the United Kingdom, who doesn't think about it very much, but then accepts that when the nation has decided to move on a major constitutional matter, then we as an integral

part of that nation should move with it. I think the simple truth is that because it all happened relatively quickly, I don't think a lot of thought was given to the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. So Brexit's left unionists with a lot of questions. What do we do if England and the rest of the UK don't want Northern Ireland? What do we do if independence is not feasible? And what do we do if people in the Republic of Ireland don't want Northern Ireland? You know, we could just be this unwanted place that's in limbo forever. Those are genuine concerns coming from a guy who was once bullish on Brexit. If you'd asked me 10 years ago, I was a big supporter of Brexit because I thought that the cultural gulf

between the United Kingdom and the mainland Europe was too great. And in theory, it still seems to have a lot of sense to it. But in practice, it would be problematic and potentially disastrous. Brexit just doesn't have a good solution that satisfies everyone. For most people, the best solution was exactly the way things were, a tentative, fragile status quo. And Danica Obachoyne says that was the miracle of the Good Friday Agreement. The whole idea of the Good Friday Agreement was

to postpone the constitutional issue for at least a generation. Let's get people of different political aspirations working together for a generation or two. And then when they're used to working together within Northern Ireland, then we can delicately put the question, if a majority suggests it will happen, that we would maybe have a united Ireland. And what Brexit did is that it refocused attention on the constitutional issue and all that work that had been put into de-emphasizing the border, de-emphasizing sovereignty, de-emphasizing constitutional questions,

that was now back front and center of practical politics. That de-emphasis seemed to be working. In a recent survey, half of the people in Northern Ireland considered themselves to be neither unionist nor nationalist. And the younger they were, the more neutral they got. The younger generation don't remember what the conflict was like. I mean, I'm a professor, as I said, at the university. I have 20-something students in front of me. It's just remarkable. It makes me feel, of course, incredibly old that they don't remember

a conflict in Northern Ireland. I guess the fear is that as you have a generation who don't know the price of peace, who haven't felt the hurt and the devastation that conflict can cause, that this could be thrown away. So certainly peace is not to be taken for granted. The Good Friday Agreement is, in many respects, a miraculous achievement. I think what's so miraculous here is how rare it is that conflicts like this get resolved diplomatically, without one side just surrendering. Think about what something like this would mean for Israel-Palestine, India-Pakistan, or even Ukraine and Russia.

I know none of these conflicts is exactly like the other, and even in Northern Ireland's case, the peace plan didn't solve everything. But the miracle here is that two sides that were at each other's throats for almost a century actually came together. They talked. They decided on a fragile peace. And it actually worked. And then people forgot. Today Explained reporter Noam Hassenfeld. Thanks to Susan McKay, who allowed us to use the audio

she recorded of Kathleen Gillespie and Philomena Morgan. Those interviews are part of the series Stories from Silence, which you can find at storiesfromsilence.com. Susan's also working on a book about Protestants in Northern Ireland and another one all about borders. I'm Sean Ramos-Verm. The rest of our team here today explained is Bridget McCarthy, Halima Shah, Amna Alsadi, Jillian Weinberger, and Afim Shapiro. The Mysterious

Breakmaster Cylinder provides music. We had a mashup from Jeff Geld this week, an extra hands on deck belonging to Roger Karma and Bird Pinkerton. Our fact checker, Olivia Ekstrom, is moving on from facts. We wish her all the best and thank her for all of her checks. Our new fact checker is Cecilia Lay. Welcome, Cecilia. Today Explained is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Get in touch. Our email address is todayexplained at vox.com. Thank you.