Border checks will not be tolerated
Border Communities Against Brexit (BCAB) has said it will fight tooth and nail to resist any and all types of Border checks - hard or soft - post Brexit.
That was the strong message emanating from a well-attended exhibition and meeting in the Creighton Hotel in Clones last Sunday night.
Attendees heard that 8,700 lorries and vans were counted crossing the Border on June 5 in a 24-hour period. It was further pointed out that sportswear, made by O’Neill’s in Strabane, crosses the Border four times before it hits the shelves in sports outlets in the Republic.
BCAB representatives also protested outside the Dáil on Monday while the Taoiseach Leo Varadkar met with British Prime Minister Boris Johnston inside.
The co-ordinator of the BCAB campaign, Damien McGinnity, said Sunday’s meeting marked the 25th anniversary of the Border Roads opening campaign. An informative video depicting communities opening border roads was shown at the outset of the meeting. “It appears that it is a little bit of back to the future, with the current political climate,” he said.
Mr McGinnity concluded the evening by declaring: “The people across Europe and in Dublin need to know that we are not going to accept this. It is definitely not going to split our communities, wreck our communities and our peace and prosperity for the future.”
The Border Memories Project put up a display of photographs in the function room at the Creighton Hotel and many were stark reminders of darker days, which Mr McGinnity said “we never want to go back to”.
Local Sinn Fein councillor Pat Treanor said: “Whatever they do to us, to the Border communities, we will fight back and we need to be ready for that.”
The party MP for Fermanagh South Tyrone, Michelle Gildernew, said that the reinstatement of the last two Border crossings took place in 2010.
“I remember doing an interview with a Dutch journalist at one of those crossings and I pointed out a house and saying - the people in that house would need their passport to walk the dog. That is how ludicrous this situation could be.
“The Dublin Government need to take a long hard look at what they are doing – the only solution to all of this, that any of us will be able to live with, is Irish unity,” she said.
Martina Anderson, Sinn Fein MEP said that, BREXIT was a shambolic mess that “is going to be delivered to the people of Ireland by English men with plummy accents”.
“This is the worst thing to happen to Ireland since the partition of Ireland and it is long past time that people are able to recognise the devastating impact that this is going to have – not just for those who live along the current Border – I live in a city that is partitioned – in Derry,” she said.
Referring to a leaked British Cabinet report, MEP Anderson said: “They are going to declare an emergency. There are 1,600 British soldiers put on stand-by, just to drive tankers to get them oil. They have opened up a nuclear bunker in London, where they can put British troops to deal with the civil unrest. Fifty per cent of the medicine we get in the North comes from the EU”.
She called for “calm, considerate conversation about the form and the shape of the new Ireland”.
Matt Carthy MEP said that the of BCAB movement was important. “We must lift our game now in the coming weeks – these could be defining – we will make the political arguments – we will tell people about the 200,000 jobs that will be directly impacted in an all-Ireland trade context,” he said.
MEP Carthy said: “You can’t on one hand say that you are committed to the Good Friday Agreement and, on the other hand, talk about checks, whether that be one mile or 10 miles or 100 miles from the Border.”
To thunderous applause, he added: “We need to say it to Brussels and we also need to tell Dublin - this Border is already too hard and we are not going to tolerate it getting one bit harder.”