“Come all you young rebels and list while I sing”, goes the opening line of The Patriot Game, an elegiac Irish rebel ballad that recounts an IRA attack on a police barracks near the Irish border on New Year’s Day in 1957. ”For the love of one’s country is a terrible thing / It banishes fear with the speed of a flame / And makes us all part of the Patriot Game”.
It was one of the many incidents during the IRA’s ‘border campaign’ during the late fifties and early sixties that targeted key border infrastructure and military installations. Two IRA volunteers, Sean South and Fergus O’Hanlon, were killed in the ensuing firefight. Fifty thousand people attended their funerals and they each remain immortalised in Irish ballads, revered as martyrs to the cause of Irish freedom.
Many are warning that any resumption of a hard border between both jurisdictions on the island of Ireland will reignite conflict, with a new generation of republicans itching to take a shot at renewed physical symbols of British rule in Northern Ireland.
George Hamilton, Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, has warned that any post-Brexit border infrastructure would be seen as ‘fair game’ by republican dissidents who see any step back from the open border that has been in place during the twenty years since the Good Friday Agreement as a breach of faith.
The body representing his rank and file officers, the Police Federation of Northern Ireland, has been even blunter. Its chairman, Mark Lindsay, said a hard Irish border would make his members, ‘sitting ducks’ as they tried to police the 310 demarcation between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic.
Meanwhile, as former Labour Northern Ireland Secretary, Peter Hain, pointed out the other day, “nothing – nothing – is more important in all the government’s many duties and responsibilities than maintaining peace and continued progress on the island of Ireland.”
Dublin is all too well aware of this historical context in its ongoing opposition to any British proposal that results in a hard border. The symbolism is so potent to the Irish – not just to republicans – that ministers are prepared to die on the proverbial hill in stopping Theresa May’s backsliding over the so-called backstop arrangement, (which means Northern Ireland effectively stays in the customs union and single market unless and until another arrangement supersedes it that can guarantee an open border).
This is not belligerence on the part of Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and his foreign minister, Simon Coveney. Two more British-friendly Irish politicians it would be harder to find. The fact they are cast as villains by parts of the British media for ‘blocking’ a withdrawal deal owes everything to the magical thinking that still masquerades as British strategy during what we are repeatedly told is the final part of the Brexit negotiation.
All the Irish Government has asked is that Britain makes good on the backstop commitments - previously agreed - that would legally prevent any hard border emerging. In theory, Downing Street remains committed to doing so, but is desperate to split the difference, wanting the backstop to be time-limited or regularly reviewed, as a sop to retain the DUP’s support.
But this is now zero-sum politics.
It is not hyperbolic to warn that a hard border will provide the catalyst for modern day republicans to take up where the 1950s IRA left off. The collapse of power-sharing at Stormont and the souring of relations between London and Dublin has created a worrying void in Northern Ireland.
Last month, the fringe republican political movement, Saoradh (Irish for ‘liberation’) released a statement warning that any ill-effects of British policy felt by the Irish people ‘are normally met with resistance.’
Any resurgence of ‘armed struggle’ would return us to a grisly cycle of attacks and security crackdowns, which would stymie the prospects of political progress and further destabilise Northern Ireland, radicalising republicans and loyalists in the process.
Hundreds of incidents occurred during the IRA’s six-year border campaign, costing the lives of twelve republicans and six RUC officers, with dozens more injured. Never mind the actual damage. It was a curtain-raiser for the Troubles which exploded a few short years later.
In general, the Westminster political class knows little about what goes on in Northern Ireland. Breixteer ultras might not care, but if we sleepwalk into accepting anything other than the current open border arrangement, then don’t be surprised when history repeats itself with all the despair and destruction that entails
Kevin Meagher is the author of ‘A United Ireland: Why Unification is inevitable and how it will come about'