A hard Border is an economic disaster and a human tragedy

Lorcan McCabe is the deputy president of the ICMSA, and here he gives his personal view as a farmer from the Bailieborough contemplating the return of a hard border.

At the time of writing we are approaching the date that the British Prime Minister has circled as his ‘Do or Die’ Brexit deadline. Just recently we learned – via a unanimous decision by the UK Supreme Court - that the decision to suspend Parliament in the run-up to the October 31 deadline to prevent any resistance being mounted was illegal and void. No-one knows what happens next – least of all the UK Government. But there still remains a disturbingly vociferous element in the UK calling for a no deal Brexit that ignores all procedure, precedent and even the law of the land.
I’m a farmer, not a politician or constitutional expert - much less an expert on the British Constitution. But I can’t be the only one who looks at the scenes of chaos in London right now and find him/herself shaking their heads. It’s not up to us to tell our neighbours and (still) friends how to run their affairs. That’s not our business. Unless and until their mishandling of their affairs starts damaging our lives and businesses, then it does become our business. And that’s exactly where I find myself now, both as a border farmer and as member of a family with as many members north of the border as south.

Checkpoint
I’m well old enough to remember the Troubles and I distinctly remember having to wait at a checkpoint with my mother for 30 minutes while a soldier who was two or three years older than my teenage-self kept us there at the point of a gun. 
My mother explained that the young soldier knew that he was much safer at his checkpoint while a southern registered car was stationary at it. 
She felt sorry for him. As do I now. At the time I resented having our time wasted every time we went the 20 or 25 minutes down the road to Cross or Cullaville to get a tractor part or to visit our farmer cousins in South Armagh.
The challenges and everyday problems that the re-erection of a hard border is going to cause the farming communities both north and south are just depressing and look insurmountable. How are we going to collect and process the milk from the thousands of tanker trips delayed? How are we to handle the question of tariffs on the northern milk processed in the south and then returned north? What happens our pig trade to the north? What happens their hundreds of thousands cross-Border deliveries and transactions southwards?

Disruption
In my capacity as ICMSA Deputy President, I’m only too well aware of the threats to our centuries-old food trade with Britain that will apply on November 1. I know the stats and the data that point to the serious disruption of nearly €5 billion worth of food exports. As the great U.S. Speaker of the House, Tip O’Neill used to say, “All politics is local” and all reverses and challenges, even ones as enormous as Brexit looks likely to be, are automatically translated back into our ordinary working routines as farmers living along the border where it’s as easy (as we say) to go ‘down North’ as it is to go ‘up South’.
There’s the ordinary everyday hassle of a hard border that’ll divide holdings and cut us off from those from whom we buy and those to whom we sell. And that physical border will mean – has to mean – that the border gets harder between our hopes, aspirations and shared desires to get on and get going. Because that’s the thing: the border region was an economic blackspot in the country; even on the few occasions that the rest of Ireland was doing well, the border served as a brake on our economic and infrastructural development and held us back longer and harder than anywhere else in the country. As it disappeared and as the borders to our capabilities fell, the natural resilience and work ethic of people from Cavan, Monaghan, Louth, Leitrim and Donegal reasserted itself and in all areas of business – whether Lakelands or a company like Kingspan – we moved forward very quickly and very comfortably. All that now, I feel, is at risk and I resent it very much.

Human tragedy
This is not, in any sense, a criticism of the British people. I have nothing but friendship and respect for them and my own farm is surrounded by four families who went to Britain in the 1950s and 1960s, worked in buildings and construction, and then returned to buy or expand farms and settle down in their own country.
I don’t forget the opportunities that were given those people – and I don’t think any of us should. But I have to say that I think that a sizable element in Britain has forgotten the opportunities that the peace process has given us and – unforgivably- they seem to have forgotten what it was like for the 30 years before we had that peace.
As a farmer and proud ICMSA member, the thought of a hard border represents an economic disaster. But as a Cavan man who’s old enough to remember what it was like when we had a hard border – and who won’t forget – the thought of a resurrected hard border represents a human tragedy.