With the focus unable to shift away from the Irish border backstop it is perhaps opportune to go back to see where the border itself originally came from. There is a highly readable article in the Irish Times (HERE) describing the problems surrounding its creation. We British are notorious for drawing national boundaries in other people's countries aren't we? Usually, in our well-meaning but cack-handed way, we do it to resolve an immediate issue which later proves to be a constantly troublesome - to put it mildly.
The Irish one is the case in point but others are sometimes worse, in the Middle East and between India and Pakistan for example.
The article is by Dr Conor Mulvagh, a lecturer in Irish history at University College Dublin.
Amazingly, the border was drawn up in 1914 to create a temporary 'exclusion zone' to remove the northern counties from the control of nationalist leaders in Dublin - I assume because of fears of violence. Both sides were under British control in 1914 and there was no plans for the Irish Free State, which came about in 1922, or indeed any idea that it would become the external border of the European Union in 2019. From the article:
"The Chief Secretary for Ireland, Augustine Birrell, called upon three senior Irish civil servants to draw up a boundary for an Ulster exclusion zone. These were Birrell’s undersecretary, Sir James B Dougherty; W F Bailey of the Estates Commissioners Office; and Sir Henry Augustus Robinson, vice-president of the Local Government Board for Ireland. Birrell set May 6th as the deadline for receipt of proposals from his three advisers".
It was arranged almost like a newspaper competition after the British government secured secret approval for a strictly time-limited exclusion of an undetermined portion of Ulster from nationalist Ireland
Ultimately it was the Dougherty scheme that was adopted. He was the highest-ranking civil servant in Ireland. "Dougherty first wrote on May 7th explaining that it would be 'a difficult, if not impossible job to construct these pens' and that 'the policy of exclusion, whatever plan may be adopted, bristles with difficulties and . . . I do not see how they are to be surmounted.' "
"Dougherty’s full memorandum was submitted on May 11th. It considered the merits and demerits of dividing the province by local government areas, parliamentary divisions, and full counties. Of these, Dougherty’s preference was for the scheme which was ultimately adopted: county option. Dougherty’s rationale focused largely on the administrative headache he foresaw in dealing with an otherwise excluded area in which local government boards, county councils, and existing parliamentary constituencies would be split across two jurisdictions.
"All three schemes recommended that Ulster’s second city, Derry, which had a 56 per cent Catholic majority, be put into the exclusion zone. Robinson argued that it was “impossible to keep the maiden city out of the parent county”. Dougherty reminded his chief secretary that “the city of Derry has strong sentimental attractions for the Ulster Protestant, and it is the headquarters of the county administration” adding that “it is unlikely the ‘Covenanters’ will now consent to see the city excluded from Protestant Ulster.”
"Despite declaring for the whole-county option, Dougherty fudged his answer to the question of whether four or six counties should be excluded. His rationale for four-county exclusion was based on the fact that such a scheme would create “a tolerably compact area” but he seems on balance to have conceded that six counties would be the more realistic outcome due to the fact that “it is difficult to see how the Ulster Covenanters in the four included counties can abandon their brethren in Tyrone or Fermanagh”.
Note his 'plan' took just a few days and as far as I can see no consultation whatsoever with the local population. It was arrogant in the extreme. There were huge questions over which side of the border Derry/LondonDerry was to go and even whether the counties of Tyrone and Fermanagh were to be included in Ulster or the Republic. All settled in days!
Dr Mulvagh finishes:
"The stark reality of the Irish Border is that it was never intended to be an international boundary. What began as an idea for a temporary demarcation line between two devolved United Kingdom parliaments evolved into something much more significant.
"It has seen customs posts, cratering, spiking, checkpoints, and militarisation over its lifetime. The Irish Border has never been 'softer' than it is at the present moment. Equally, there has never been such uncertainty over what the future holds in its chequered history".
What quagmires we make for ourselves
