On 14 October 2021 the European Union (EU) released its offer of a package of reforms to ease the impact of the Northern Ireland Protocol. The deal would eliminate most checks on goods travelling from Britain to the Six Counties in the north of Ireland. It comes after months of threats from the Loyalists in the Six Counties who have pushed Britain to demand that the EU renegotiate the Protocol. The EU will not renegotiate the deal it spent five years working on with Britain as part of the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement, but the EU has made a series of concessions. The concessions are not enough for the Loyalists; they will accept nothing less than an overhaul of the Protocol. If Britain does not accept the EU’s deal, it will face the consequences of being thrown into conflict with the EU and the US.
Britain’s occupation of the north of Ireland means the Six Counties has left the EU while the 26 Counties in the south of Ireland has remained part of the EU. However, the Six Counties has stayed in the EU single market, while Britain has left it. The Protocol requires customs checks on goods travelling into and out of the EU to take place ‘in the Irish Sea’ – at ports in the Six Counties. The checks are happening between Britain and the Six Counties because they cannot happen at a border between the Six and 26 Counties. The US rejects any such border on the island; on 22 September President Joe Biden again warned Boris Johnson that the Good Friday Agreement must be respected.
The economic border between Britain and the Six Counties, agreed by Britain, is unacceptable to the Loyalists. The Loyalists are becoming more and more agitated by the possibility of a reunited Ireland. Sinn Fein, which supports a united Ireland, is consistently leading polls of voting intentions in the Six Counties with a five-point-margin and The Guardian (9 October 2021) claims 67% of people in the 26 Counties support reunification. Britain does not know how far the Loyalists will go to ‘defend the integrity of the United Kingdom’.
The traditional Loyalist working class has been in decline since the 1970s, a process that accelerated after the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. The companies that working class Loyalists could historically rely on for work – largely in construction and manufacturing: Harland and Wolff, Shorts Brothers, Wilson FG – have shrunk due to shifts in industry and employment.
A significant proportion of Protestant workers are part of the 41.1% of the population now employed in the top three standard occupational classification categories: managers, professionals and associate professionals. Many of them voted to remain in the EU. Although the traditional Loyalist working class has diminished, it remains a strong social force capable of causing destruction to defend its union with Britain.
The ‘Let’s Talk Loyalism’ engagement survey of 1,020 Loyalists published on 30 August found that 91% of those surveyed want the Protocol abolished and 89.5% support collapsing Stormont in protest against it. The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) has fallen not only behind Sinn Fein but also behind the more moderate Ulster Unionist Party and the far-right Traditional Unionist Voice in recent polls on voting intentions. It has been forced by its electoral base to issue an ultimatum.
The DUP has given Britain until November to ‘act on their commitment […] to protect Northern Ireland’s place in the UK internal market’, to get rid of the Protocol, or it will walk out of Stormont. In the meantime it is boycotting all north-south ministerial meetings, bar those relating to health. The boycott has been ruled illegal by the Belfast High Court. The British government, through its Brexit minister Lord David Frost, is attempting to renege on its deal with the EU and threatening to invoke Article 16 of the Protocol, which would suspend elements of the agreement, unless the EU agrees to rewrite it.
While the EU will not renegotiate the international agreement that both parties are obliged to uphold, it has halted legal proceedings against Britain for breaching the Protocol. The EU has released four papers with proposals for resolving issues related to customs checks under the agreement. It includes an offer to remove up to 80% of checks that are currently taking place. European Commission vice-president Maros Sefcovic told Financial Times (13 October 2021) ‘there will be no other package. This is it.’
Frost has previously said Britain will allow only three weeks for talks on the offer. He signalled that unless the solutions meet all Britain’s demands as outlined in the 21 July Command Paper (see FRFI 283), Britain will reject the offer. There is only so far Britain can push the EU before the EU retaliates. If Britain rejects the EU’s major concessions, it should expect to find itself subject to trade tariffs from the EU in what would be the beginnings of a trade war.
Britain will also come up against the US if it carries on refusing to budge. The US demands positive relations between Britain and the EU and still dangles the prospects of a post-Brexit trade deal over Britain. Yet Britain has no choice but to continue provoking the EU. Britain’s control over the Six Counties in Ireland and its delusions of an independent ‘global Britain’ have created a problem that it has no answer to.
Britain has two choices. It can accept the process leading to Irish reunification, which would result in violent Loyalist insurrection. Or it can placate the Loyalists, which will bring it further into conflict with two of the world’s biggest imperialist powers, the EU and the US. This is Britain’s Catch-22.
Ria Aibhilin
