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Much of the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland is today imperceptible. (Charles McQuillan / Getty Images)
LONDONDERRY, Northern Ireland – It was "a very sociable summer," remember the Derry Girls. As easy as the breeze, they crossed the largely unseen border of the Republic of Ireland to visit a family, share a pint of beer or swim in the sea in unusually warm weather.
"So we all thought about how we take all this for granted – freedom, the flow – and how it all could end," said Nicola Herron, 52, a local doctor who joined the women's group. like-minded. put pressure on politicians to keep things as they are.
"It's scary, to be honest," said Elaine Doherty, 50, a psychologist and campaigner, who is officially called Derry Girls Against Borders. "Brexit is only in a few months – and there is not one person who can tell you what will happen to us."
The 310 mile border crossing Ireland has become perhaps the main obstacle to the divorce negotiations between Britain and the European Union.
"A real stumbling block," said British Prime Minister Theresa May.
Challenges lie in how to continue to allow free movement of people and trade between the Republic of Ireland, which will remain in the European Union, and Northern Ireland, which will leave with the rest of the United Kingdom.
And how to keep the border just as invisible, even in the UK and the UK? inexorably diverge – everyone is free to set their own immigration controls, tariffs and food safety rules.
And finally, how to do all this without disrupting the delicate peace in Northern Ireland that lies on an open border.
Northerners and southerners are eager to say that it will no longer be possible to return to "The Troubles" – the intimate and vicious guerrilla war between Protestant British and Irish Catholic Republican protesters, which has made more than 3,500 dead.
Yet sectarian lines remain deeply rooted in Northern Ireland. Many people in this border town – still known as Londonderry by Protestants and Derry by 75% of people with Irish-Catholic heritage – fear that a botched Brexit may reignite tensions and eventually lead to violence.
The group of activists Derry Girls Against Borders protested against a difficult division after Brexit. (Charles McQuillan / Getty Images)
Today, if you drive along the Irish border, you can meet a farmer who has a barn in one country but grazes his sheep in another. Nearly one million people freely cross the winding line on the map each month. There are 200 official crossing points and no one knows how many dirt roads, walking trails and cow trails. The savings are closely linked.
Border control points, as well as all the militarized infrastructure of the barracks, watchtowers, bunkers and blast walls, were removed from the island of Ireland as a result of the war. the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, a hard-won pact that ended 30 years of violence. The agreement was in many ways a masterpiece of diplomacy – it did not seek to resolve all the political differences in Northern Ireland but recognized the "continuing and equally legitimate" political aspirations of Republicans and trade unionists.
EU. membership made such an escape possible. EU. Free movement and free trade policies have allowed Republicans in Northern Ireland to feel more connected to the Republic of Ireland, while trade unionists could continue to be an integral part of the United Kingdom. Nobody had to choose. Lines, grievances, identities could begin to soften.
But after Brexit?
Republicans fear that a defined boundary on the island undermines their relations with the rest of Ireland. The leaders of Sinn Fein, the Republican political party, have already warned that any border with Brexit would hasten the day they would request a vote for the unification of the island.
British Loyalists are livid to the US proposal to place a customs border in the Irish Sea between Northern Ireland and Great Britain. May's ruling partners, the Democratic-Unionist Radical Party of Northern Ireland, oppose any kind of "special status" that separates them from the UK.
President of the European Council Donald Tusk blamed the Brexit activists, "who are 100% responsible for bringing back the Irish border problem".
In the 2016 referendum, 56% of voters in Northern Ireland voted to stay in the European Union. In Derry, it was 78%.
"Brexit has all repolished," said Jennifer McKeever, president of the Londonderry Chamber of Commerce and owner of a shuttle service with a third of its staff and customers living on the other side of the border.
May and his European counterparts have promised that there will never be a hard border on the island of Ireland again. But what is a realistic and politically feasible alternative? They did not say, because they do not know.
May promises that his negotiators during the transition period following the start of Brexit in March 2019 will develop an unprecedented free trade agreement with Europe, rendering the Irish border useless.
Otherwise, adds the British Prime Minister, Britain will deploy a new "technological cure", which may not have been invented yet. A system using cameras with facial recognition software, as well as mobile tracking applications and customs controls in warehouses far from the border.
The Northern Ireland Senior Police Officer warned that any customs post or security facility would be considered a "fair game" to attack.
"The last thing we would like is any infrastructure around the border because it has something symbolic and that it becomes a target for violent dissident republicans," said the chief of police George Hamilton, Guardian Newspaper.
Paddy Gallagher, 26, is the spokesman for a new marginal political party called Saoradh, which means "liberation" in Irish. The group is home to radical Republicans who reject the agreement on Good Friday.
Gallagher agreed that "any fixed boundary sign" would quickly become a target. A remote camera recording registration plates? A customs collector with a barcode scanner? "Competent groups would be willing to attack them," said Gallagher, careful not to endorse the violence itself.
The Saoradh headquarters in Derry was raided in October by anti-terrorist police units, which confiscated 330 fireworks.
The Bogside Catholic District of Londonderry was the scene of the assassinations of the "bloody Sunday" of 1972. Recent protests have heightened concerns about the risk of a return to violence. (Charles McQuillan / Getty Images)
People are evoking here a week of disturbing violence this summer, unleashed by union marches celebrating the "July 12", the victory of Protestant Prince William of Orange over the fallen king James II at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690.
Angry crowds in Bogside Catholic District erected barricades to close the streets. Although the protests were described as "leisure riots" by drunken crowds, more than 70 gasoline bombs were thrown at the same time as two bombs were thrown at policemen.
This civil unrest occurred in the same streets as the "Bloody Sunday", when British soldiers shot and killed 14 unarmed protesters during a march for the defense of civil rights in a Catholic neighborhood in 1972.
"It's in Derry that the unrest started, and Derry ended it," said Brenda Stevenson, 51, former Mayor of the City and niece of Irish leader John Hume, recipient of the award. Nobel Peace Prize in 1998. for his role in the end of the conflict.
Catholics mourn the people shot by the British Army on "Bloody Sunday" in 1972. (Independent News and Media / Getty Images)
Today, new graffiti in the Bogside is encouraging young people to "join the IRA", even though the Irish Republican Army ended its armed campaign in 2005.
A few steps away, at the water's edge, in the shrinking Protestant enclave, a mural proclaims that "Loyalists are still besieged".
Time is running out for the Brexit negotiations. Frustrated by the British delays, the Europeans insisted on a "backstop", a legally binding insurance policy, to preserve an Ireland without borders in case a free trade agreement would not be respected. In this case, Northern Ireland would remain a member of the European Union. customs union until the problem is solved – a proposal that May has so far rejected.
Along the Irish border, people fear that the British Prime Minister will abandon his commitment to open borders. They have good reasons. A survey commissioned by the University of Edinburgh and Cardiff University revealed that 75% of English conservative voters would accept the collapse of the peace process in Northern Ireland "as the price of the Brexit ".
Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland believe that they are not taken seriously. Both sides were stunned to learn that May 's new secretary for Northern Ireland, Karen Bradley, was so ignorant of Irish politics that she confessed with surprise in an interview that "the nationalists do not vote for the unionist parties and vice versa".
They were not happy either to hear the former Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, asserting that a soft border in Ireland would not be different from the discreet cameras that record and then charge for Congestion charge to drivers for vehicles entering central London.
Jeanette Warke, 74, founded the cathedral club for children at Protestant Waterside in 1972 with her husband, David, who died today. They feared that children would join paramilitary groups.
Warke said that she had voted in favor of leaving Europe, although "we do not know what Brexit represented".
She said, "You voted to" go "if you were [Protestant] and "stay" if you were Catholic was how it seemed to me. "
If there was another referendum today, Warke said, she would vote to stay in Europe. She is also worried about tomorrow.
A Republican sign calls for the exit of the British from Northern Ireland. (Dan Kitwood / Getty Images)
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