Dr James Dingley: Queen’s prof says any border barriers will be removed but it was republicans who created the divisions

On March 30, the date after the UK was due to leave the European Union, Border Communities Against Brexit organised the protests at crossing points in Tyrone, Louth, Donegal, Fermanagh, Cavan and Monaghan.
One of the Border Communities Against Brexit on March 30, the day after Brexit was due to have happened. This rally was held at BridgendOne of the Border Communities Against Brexit on March 30, the day after Brexit was due to have happened. This rally was held at Bridgend
One of the Border Communities Against Brexit on March 30, the day after Brexit was due to have happened. This rally was held at Bridgend

At one of the protests, attended by Sinn Fein politicians and others, Colin Harvey, a professor of human rights law at Queen’s University’s School of Law, has been quoted as saying he is against any attempt to “undermine or attack” the Good Friday Agreement.

Prof Harvey is reported to have said: “We have long experience of people trying to put walls in our way and we take them down. If anybody attempts to put barriers on this island again they are coming down. Any obstacles on this island will be removed.

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“We as a society are used to people putting up mountains for us to climb and we will continue to climb them. There will be no hard border on the island of Ireland.”

Dr James Dingley is chair of the Frances Hutcheson InstituteDr James Dingley is chair of the Frances Hutcheson Institute
Dr James Dingley is chair of the Frances Hutcheson Institute

Prof Harvey reportedly continued: “We are going to be who can achieve the unification of our own country and we are going to get there.”

For a lawyer Prof Harvey should know better, it is the Belfast Agreement (not Good Friday) and as far as I recall the agreement said nothing about the border, indeed the Republic’s constitutional referendum just after the agreement, appeared to confirm the border. Blame Dublin for that.

Brexit is about Brexit, and although I voted against it, I accept the legitimate democratic decision of the UK as a sovereign nation state ( similarly the Republic of Ireland’s decisions).

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This is not about the Belfast Agreement, it is about Brexit and the right of (in this case the UK’s) self-determination.

Prof Harvey should understand this, since it is what republicans claimed when they fought a terrorist campaign to secede from the UK in 1921, thus manufacturing a new nation state border within the British Isles.

Republicans created the border they now object to.

Many would regard republicans as the primary wall builders, between unionists and nationalists, Catholics and Protestants, British and Irish, both in the past and in now trying to turn Brexit into an attack on the Belfast Agreement.

If there is any threat to peace it can only come from the terrorists who do not accept legitimate democratic mandates.

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Such things could indirectly be legitimised by the repeated claims, by many different people, that Brexit undermines the Belfast Agreement.

Prof Harvey claims that any barriers will be removed: perhaps he endorses compulsory integrated education as a solution to the divided minds that religion has created in Ireland.

Or maybe it is only physical borders that he is worried about, but presumably he would not endorse illegal activities to remove them. What is his point, beyond rhetoric?

Prof Harvey talked of being “the generation who ends the major division on this island”. What exactly is he proposing?

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Especially when he appears in the company of republicans (Sinn Fein), the political wing of a group whose violence dide more than anything to deepen already deep divisions.

Then he talks about “unification of our own country”, but all unionists already feel unified with their own country.

His clear implication is of not removing borders, but shifting them to isolate the whole of Ireland from the UK for a small, insular and self-obsessed little (Roman Catholic) Ireland.

It was precisely this, when tried in the Republic after 1921, that caused Declan Fearon’s “economic wasteland”

Read Dublin’s, 1958, Whitaker Report. The entire economic experiment of republicanism was an economic disaster and had to be dropped.

l Dr James Dingley is chair of the Francis Hutcheson Institute