Ireland / United Kingdom: Donegal, a north-western fringe isolated by a border facing the uncertainties of Brexit

Republic of Ireland / Northern Ireland: a traumatic border turned peaceful, facing now the new post-Brexit uncertainties

The North West of the Island of Ireland: an Atlantic, rural and depopulated fringe

This satellite image shows the north-western tip of the island of Ireland, a western peninsula in Europe, where the seas and the lands are deeply intertwined. In the north, we can clearly see the very large and almost triangular Inishowen peninsula. In the west, it is bordered by 30km-long Lough Swilly, a vast and very deep estuary which grows narrower and narrower and in the extremity of which lies the town of Letterkenny. In the east, the peninsula is bordered by another large bay whose shape is almost oval. It is called Lough Foyle and is separated from the sea by a narrow stretch of water dominated by Inishowen Head. Londonderry, through which runs the River Foyle, lies in a large estuary in the extremity of this vast bay. Letterkenny and Londonderry are both located in natural shelters. The two cities are thus protected from the winds and currents of the Atlantic Ocean. To the west of Lough Swilly lies the Fanad Peninsula, separated from the rest of Donegal by the very narrow Drongawn Lough. The whole of the western part of Donegal is long coast hemmed with an alternation of jagged cliffs and small sandy bays. They are the first obstacles that the great Atlantic depressions encounter on their way eastward.

We can immediately see that the North West of the island of Ireland is above all an extremely rural area, and is potentially quite inhospitable in certain places. The image highlights a clear West/ East opposition. The coastal or inland highlands in the western part of Donegal appear in brown. They are quite low and covered in heaths. The eastern part of the county is lower and better sheltered. It is also more welcoming as evidenced by its agricultural organisation with its clearly identifiable cultivated farmland. All the usable agricultural areas are effectively farmed. Only the rocky barren lands of the Inishowen and Fanad peninsulas and the mountainous areas of western Donegal are not cultivated. Everywhere else, in the Foyle Valley and its tributaries, as well as in the northern ends of the two main peninsulas, we can identify an agricultural productive system composed of a myriad of cultivated farmland devoted to livestock.

Donegal is a sparsely populated county, with a population of only 159,200 inhabitants and a density of approximately 33 inhabitants per sq. km. It is very rural, as only 28% of the county’s population live in urban areas. The clusters of population are mainly located in the northern and eastern parts of the county, as well as around Donegal Bay. Between 2006 and 2016, the population increased by 8%. It could be the result of a certain attractiveness leading to the return to the countryside of urban dwellers attracted by the quality of life in the Irish countryside - when they can find a job there. 57% of the county’s population are active, 7% work in the agricultural sector and 9% work in the industrial sector. The services therefore employ the bulk of the county's labour force.

The border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland: a clear denominational and geopolitical divide

Although there are no obvious signs of it, this part of the island is divided and structured by a long border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. This boundary is obviously multidimensional: it is a State border, as well as the boundary of a monetary union for example, but it is, above all, a denominational and geopolitical divide.

As we can see in the image, the border has disrupted the urban network and the regional urban hierarchy. The Inishowen Peninsula is located in Donegal in the Republic of Ireland while Londonderry and Strabane, the small town situated upstream of the Foyle in the south of Londonderry, are two British cities since they are located in Northern Ireland, one of the four nations forming the United Kingdom. Letterkenny is situated in the Republic of Ireland, even though it is only 30 km away from Londonderry. Although Londonderry is a medium-sized city with 110,000 inhabitants, it is by far the largest city in the region. As for Letterkenny and Strabane, they are small cities, with respectively 19,000 and 13,000 inhabitants (in agglomerations comprising 42,000 and 40,300 inhabitants).

This border between Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland was established on a relatively uniform natural environment. It is above all a geopolitical creation, in the sense given to the word by Yves Lacoste, which defines the rivalries of powers on a territory. It was created by London and it was a complete act of gerrymandering – the carving-up of boundaries for political purposes - based on the denominational geography of the island.

The point was to create a territory from scratch - Northern Ireland - where Unionism could keep political and economic control thanks to the presence of a predominantly Protestant population. Until the partition of Ireland in 1921, Donegal belonged to Ulster, one of the four historic Irish provinces - with Connacht, Leinster and Munster - and was one of the 32 Irish counties. After the partition, the largely Catholic County Donegal, was attached to Southern Ireland while the neighbouring counties of Foyle and Londonderry, where there was a Protestant majority, were among the six counties of Ulster which formed Northern Ireland.

This border is the direct consequence of two historical legacies dating back to two very different periods. The more recent one is the Irish War of Independence waged by the Irish Republicans against the British government. The older one dates back to the process of “Plantation of Ulster” - or colonisation - decided by the English monarch James I, who was also James VI of Scotland and at the same time King of Ireland - planned three centuries earlier, between 1608 and 1610, and effectively implemented from 1610 on.

A border born from a long war of anti-colonial independence in the 20th century

This war broke out on January 21, 1919 when members of the Irish Volunteers killed two members of the Royal Irish Mounted Police in an ambush near the town of Tipperary. On the same day, the first Dáil - an assembly of 27 Members of Parliament from the Republican political party Sinn Féin who were elected in the 1918 general election but refused to sit in the House of Commons - issued a declaration of independence and proclaimed the Republic of Ireland.

A guerrilla war was then waged by Irish republican forces against the British army, which led to the Government of Ireland Act, adopted on December 23, 1920. It divided Ireland into two autonomous territories, Southern Ireland and Northern Ireland. Southern Ireland was composed of 26 of the 32 Irish counties, with the exception of Antrim, Armagh, Down, Fermanagh, Londonderry and Tyrone as well as the urban districts of Belfast and Londonderry which formed Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland was therefore arbitrarily devised by London to bring together six of the nine counties of the traditional province of Ulster - excluding Donegal, Cavan and Monaghan - in which Unionists - Protestants loyal to the British Crown - had a clear majority.

The war of independence went on until a truce was declared on July 11, 1921. Negotiations led to the Anglo-Irish treaty, signed in London on December 6, 1921 and ratified by the Second Dáil in January 1922. On December 6, 1922, the entire island of Ireland became a Dominion of the British Empire, called the Irish Free State, sharing the same monarch with the United Kingdom and the other Dominions of the British Commonwealth.

Under the Constitution of the Irish Free State, the Parliament of Northern Ireland, opened by King George V on June 22, 1921 at Belfast City Hall, had the possibility to opt out of the Irish Free State within a month of its creation and subsequently join the UK. It took the Parliament of Northern Ireland only two days to make this decision. On December 8, 1922, Northern Ireland withdrew from the Irish Free State, whose territory then became the territory of Southern Ireland that had been defined by the 1920 Government of Ireland Act. However, the Irish Free State remained under British rule until 1937, when its constitution was replaced by the Irish Constitution declaring Ireland a democratic and independent state. Ireland officially became a republic in 1949.

From the making of a border in the 1920s to the return of old forgotten ghosts during Brexit in 2020

The current border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland therefore dates back to the 1920 Government of Ireland Act. It was initially devised as a provisional border. It became an international border on December 8, 1922 when the Parliament of Northern Ireland decided to exercise its right to opt out of the Irish Free State. In this context, the 1920 Act provided for the creation of a commission to determine the precise geographical delineation of the border, should Northern Ireland choose to opt out of the Irish Free State.

The commission - whose work was very controversial and whose report was not made public until 1969 - was installed in 1924. It met in 1925 and confirmed the delineation of the existing border at the end of 1925. The final agreement between the three parties - the Irish Free State, Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom - was signed on December 3, 1925 and then ratified by their respective parliaments. Therefore, the border remained provisional for five years, from the end of 1920 to the end of 1925. The agreement was then officially registered by the League of Nations on February 8, 1926.

The commission confirmed a border whose delineation had been anticipated as soon as 1914 by the British government. Three schemes were then prepared by senior Irish officials. It was Sir James B. Dougherty’s scheme which was finally selected. For administrative reasons - it seemed indeed more convenient not to get rid of existing administrative boundaries - he proposed that the border should follow the pre-existing boundaries of the counties.

It appears that the pre-existing administrative map, from which the border was confirmed, is based partly on natural boundaries and partly on the edges of the areas of influence of towns and cities such as Londonderry, Ballyshannon and Strabane. These boundaries are not always consistent with the region’s topographic and hydrographic characteristics as they cut through valleys for example or they do not follow natural obstacles. They sometimes follow the natural courses of waterways, then move away from them for no obvious reason, except perhaps for very local and specific land issues.

The case of Londonderry is particularly enlightening. Logically, the border follows the course of the Foyle, but turns away from it to bypass Londonderry, instead of cutting through the city. Consequently, Londonderry lies in Northern Ireland. But it is interesting to note that the initial proposals of the three senior Irish officials did not include Londonderry in Northern Ireland, due to its predominantly Catholic population. How to explain a choice which later had such dramatic consequences? As a matter of fact, Londonderry was an emblematic place of the English Plantations on the western domestic colonisation front as well as the stronghold of an influential Protestant minority that controlled political and economic levers. It was therefore politically unacceptable to make it the regional capital of a Catholic county in a Catholic state.

The border does not respect the region’s human characteristics either, since it crosses many roads and cuts through farms and even villages, thus multiplying absurd situations, which were highlighted during the debates on its possible return during the period of Brexit negotiations. As a matter of fact, in the region, Brexit has brought back some old ghosts that seemed to have long gone.

Brexit: from union to break-up, a new complex issue

This living border is a political, economic, social and geopolitical issue at local, regional (Ireland / Northern Ireland / United Kingdom) and international (European Union/ United Kingdom) levels. It has alternated phases of appeasement, intense tensions and crises. Between 1968 and 1998, during the thirty years of conflict in Northern Ireland called the "Troubles" which caused more than 3,600 deaths, the border was almost completely closed and guarded by the British army’s watchtowers. Then the Good Friday agreement of 1998 put an end to the Troubles. The Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom’s joint membership of the EEC and then European Union since 1973 has eased tensions and made the border completely invisible, enabling the free movement of people and goods, economic integration, etc.

However, Brexit has deteriorated the situation and revived the prospects of conflicts and tensions, which have unmistakably turned into major political crises. The divorce between the United Kingdom and the European Union undoubtedly darkens the future once more. The Irish border has been such a thorny issue in the United Kingdom and in the negotiations with the European Union that it prevented the divorce between the two parties for long. The border is 500 km long and has more than 200 crossing points – one every 2.5 km on average. It is also the only land border between the United Kingdom and the European Union. Its other peculiarity is that it has become almost invisible and that the Good Friday Agreement formally prohibits the return of a physical border, with customs posts and checks.

The British parliamentary elections of December 12, 2019 comfortably installed Boris Johnson as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. After Theresa May's repeated failures to get Westminster to accept the exit deal she had negotiated with the European Union in November 2018, Boris Johnson's victory confirmed the electorate’s approval of the exit deal he had successfully renegotiated in October 2019. The renegotiation mainly dealt with the Irish border, which will become an external border to the European Union, while having a very special status. The backstop option negotiated by Mrs May, which would have prevented the return of the Irish border, should the free trade negotiations between the United Kingdom and the European Union have failed, is long gone.

The new agreement between the European Union and the United Kingdom: a true high-wire act

The agreement negotiated by Boris Johnson with the European Union is a true high-wire act. It seeks to solve a major contradiction: how to protect the European single market of the United Kingdom without reinstating the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland? How to combine the impossibility of reinstating a border with the need to control the flow of goods and people following the exit of the United Kingdom from the European Union? Handling effectively this contradiction requires the implementation of a specific customs status for Northern Ireland.

Northern Ireland will indeed keep a foothold in the European Union. Although it is leaving the European customs union like the rest of the United Kingdom, it will have to comply with the rules of the European single market for the movement of goods, including VAT. Northern Ireland is considered as an entry point into the European customs union. The critical answer is the creation of a special status according to the final destination of goods. One the one hand, if they come from the United Kingdom and are to remain in Northern Ireland, they will not be applied tariffs, since Northern Ireland belongs to the same customs union as the United Kingdom. On the other hand, if they are only passing through Northern Ireland on their way to the Republic of Ireland or any other European Union member state, the British authorities will have to apply European tariffs. VAT will remain the same on the whole island to prevent trafficking. British customs authorities will be responsible for collecting customs taxes, under the supervision of a British and European joint committee.

Northern Ireland will therefore remain aligned with European Union regulations, at least four more years from the end of the transition period starting on 31 December 2020. There will not be any checks on goods at the crossing points of this invisible border – which will therefore remain so. Checks will take place at points of entry into Northern Ireland, i.e. ports and airports – in particular Belfast and Londonderry. In practice, the border is displaced into the Irish Sea.

This raises the question of the confirmation and sustainability of such an arrangement. Every four years, the Northern Ireland assembly will have to vote whether or not to continue with these provisions. This will undoubtedly cause significant political, and perhaps social, tensions. No doubt that there are – and will be – major differences on this subject in Northern Ireland between Republicans – who are in favour to the reunification of the island – and Unionists – who are still strongly attached to the British crown. The return of intercommunity violence, which is a mirror of political instability and tensions in Northern Ireland, is a possibility that should never be completely discarded in post-conflict Northern Irish society.