Distributed to Congress by Irish National Caucus
“This attached article is important reading for Members of Congress concerned about the terrible implications for Ireland, North and South, of a hard Brexit. Diarmaid Ferriter is one of Ireland’s best-known historians and is Professor of Modern Irish History at University College Dublin.”—Fr. Sean McManus.
DUP’s sacred cows the biggest obstacle to Brexit deal
Solution lies in shared distrust of
London and pragmatically prioritizing [The] North
Diarmaid Ferriter. Irish Times. Dublin. Saturday, September 14, 2019
There are no unionist cows in Ireland. That seemed to be the logic of the
comments made by Ian Paisley, Sr. when he was first minister for
Northern Ireland in 2007. In the midst of an outbreak of foot-and-mouth
disease in England he maintained he was prepared to engage in
“worldwide lobbying to prove Northern Ireland’s meat products are safe”.
People should know, said Paisley, that there was “clear blue water” between
Northern Ireland and Britain and there was a distinction between Northern
Irish and British beef.
There are no unionist pigs in Ireland either. During the same crisis,
Paisley contacted the Japanese ambassador in London to assure him
Northern Ireland’s meat products were safe, after a shipment of pork from
Grampian foods in Cookstown, Co Tyrone, was rejected by Japan.
In Yorkshire last week, British prime minister Boris Johnson alluded to an
earlier version of Paisley’s 2007 remarks when asked if he was
pushing an all-Ireland regime for agrifoods following Brexit. During a
meeting with Tony Blair in 2001 to advocate that livestock in the
North should be exempt from the restrictions on movement in the UK Paisley
reputedly said of Northern Ireland “that the people were British but
the cattle were Irish”. According to Johnson, “ in that idea there is the
germ of a solution to the question of frictionless cross-Border
movement”.
North’s exemption
It was actually the SDLP’s Bríd Rodgers who had made the running on
this as minister for agriculture in 2001; against Downing Street’s
advice and despite London threatening to overrule her, she banned the
movement of British livestock into the North, and insisted on the
North’s exemption from a European ban on UK livestock. Unionists and
nationalists were thus singing from the same hymn sheet to argue for
Northern Ireland’s distinctiveness and to try and safeguard its economic
welfare. There is, surely, a lesson in that.
The idea of Northern cows being placed above the divide in Northern
Ireland is not just something recent. In 1984 Paisley, along with
John Hume and the Ulster Farmers’ Union, decried British government
“treachery” when Northern Ireland farmers missed out on concessions
won by the Republic’s minister for agriculture in relation to milk quotas.
In 1990, several EU countries sought to ban British beef due to fears
about BSE (mad cow) disease and Paisley joined the call by the Meat
Exporters Association in Northern Ireland to have beef from the North accorded
a separate status from British beef.
It makes sense to focus on cows as a starting point to finding a solution
to the backstop crisis. But there are other cows – the sacred ones –
that the DUP also needs to let go of, including the disingenuous chorus
about the “constitutional integrity” of the UK and “blood red lines”
in relation to its opposition to a special deal for Northern Ireland. The
solution to the problem lies not in London but rather in Ireland.
DUP’s failed strategy
The DUP has loudly whined about the Irish Government insulting it as
a result of megaphone diplomacy, talking over its head and wrapping
the green flag around itself. The accusations do not stand up to
scrutiny and expose the hypocrisy of the DUP’s failed Brexit strategy
over the last three years. After the referendum in 2016 Arlene Foster
dismissed the idea that Brexit could damage the peace process as
“outrageous commentary” but maintained this summer that a backstop would
run a “coach and horses” through the agreement.
In October 2016 the DUP contemptuously rejected an invitation to join a
“civic forum” in Dublin convened by the Government to discuss the
Brexit referendum fallout and insisted the issues at stake were internal
British concerns. Foster rubbished the forum as a grandstanding
exercise for “Remoaners” and insisted “I have better things to do with my
time” and that the DUP “will do what is best for Northern Ireland” in
any EU negotiations.
But Foster and the DUP have been doing precious little with their time and
have not remotely lived up to the promise of working or negotiating
for the welfare of Northern Ireland. In relation to the green flag
accusation, the Government has consistently downplayed the need for a
Border poll any time soon, suggesting it would be premature, provocative and
unhelpful.
A solution to the crisis needs to lie in a shared distrust of London and a
pragmatism that prioritizes the welfare of The North. It would be
worthwhile to look more closely at ideas such as that put forward by
former UUP leader Reg Empey, who suggested a new north-south
ministerial body to monitor and regulate trade on the island; what Empey
referred to as “an Irish solution to an Irish problem”. And therein
lies the need for the DUP to slaughter its ultimate sacred cow; this is
indeed an Irish problem, as Irish as the cows in Ulster.
END.
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