As face-to-face negotiations with the UK government and European Union Commission continued this week, in the run up to December's deadline for a UK/EU trade deal, Dr Bruce thought that it would be timely to put his reflection into the public domain.
The invitation to the Four Nations Church Leaders to meet was issued by the Church Leaders’ Group (Ireland), which involves the leaders of the Church of Ireland, Methodist, Roman Catholic and Presbyterian Churches in Ireland and the President of the ICC. The meeting, took place on 14 October. It was facilitated by CTBI, of which the ICC is an associate member. It was felt that the meeting would be useful for two reasons:
The meeting was held using the Zoom video conferencing platform, with upwards of 20 church leaders present. The Church of Ireland Archbishop of Armagh, Most Rev John McDowell, focussed on the UK’s Internal Market Bill, and the Moderator focused on Ireland / Northern Ireland Protocol.
I have been asked to give a brief introduction to this item – the Ireland/Northern Ireland protocol, focussing specifically on the implications for reconciliation. The Apostle Paul’s vision of the church is of a new humanity, reconciled with God in Christ, and reconciled with each other across all arbiters of division. “His purpose was to create in himself, one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross by which he put to death their hostility” (Ephesians 2:15-16.)
Brexit is not all about Trade...The proposed existence of an effective border in the Irish Sea regulating goods moving between Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a deeply troubling issue for us, and for the business community here. That said, the alternative, which is a hard land border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland is, for reasons I will comment upon in a moment, equally troubling for us.
Brexit presents us as Christian leaders, with a job of work to do, bearing in mind the ‘terrible beauty’ of our land and history on this side of the Irish Sea. For those of you who know anything about Irish poetry, you may have caught the words of William Bulter Yeats in that last sentence – this ‘terrible beauty’ has been the story of Ireland ever since he wrote these words in his famous poem to mark the Easter Rising of 1916.
It would be easy to characterise our story as a sectarian conflict which led to partition 100 years ago next May, and the violent deaths of thousands of people since – and that is true of course – but Ireland’s terrible beauty is multi-faceted, and the shocking glints of it have been exposed again by Brexit.
Much has been said about the 1998 Good Friday Agreement as the well-negotiated outcome of statecraft, which has given us relative peace and stability for over two decades. It has become a poster-child of good practice in conflict resolution across the world. We act today in support of that Agreement, but note with deep concern some developments around Brexit, which make the delivery of its excellent aspirations much more challenging. There are multiple polarisations here:
- A widening gap between the very rich and the very poor
- A deep-seated suspicion of the other – whoever they may be
- A growing distrust of the historic institutions on this island, whether of government, education, finance, the professions or the church.
Alongside these polarisations, there is the old leg wound of the border, which has given us a cultural and community limp for the last 100 years, and about which there is a growing and gnawing disquiet – an injury so successfully bandaged up by the provisions of the Good Friday Agreement, but now inflamed again and aching like a reminder that the dark damp days of winter are coming and December will soon be upon us. So I need to comment on the options here, and their implications for us as we think of ourselves as ministers of reconciliation.
A soft Border, such as we have had on this island for over 20 years, has been good for community relations, for trade, for building prosperity and hope for the future. We have even organised our parishes across this invisible line with relative ease. Reconciliation between communities and traditions, while never easy, is made less complicated when the border is removed as a significant barrier or issue.
To introduce what amounts to a border in the Irish Sea (which will shake Northern Ireland’s relations with the rest of Britain, and call into question the very viability of many of the business models that drive our economy here due to the requirement of regulatory compliance for exports from Britain to Europe, which aren’t actually going to Europe), is a politically risky thing for a UK government to sponsor, if they genuinely do affirm their commitment to the Union. Reconciliation in the broadest sense between the peoples of these islands will not be best served by such a policy.
On the other hand, a hard land border, re-established from either side of the line on the map as originally drawn around the six counties of Northern Ireland will heighten tensions, alienate one side or the other, and hold all the potential for conflict reignited down the line. Lord, in your mercy, preserve us from this – a potential return to a terrible chapter in our past, where the beauty of reconciliation seemed like an impossible dream.
There are provisions within the Good Friday Agreement, which promote and enable better co-operation on both parts of this island. The part of the document, which is the actual international agreement between the British and Irish governments, includes the following words which I need to quote to you about the aspirations of the Agreement in respect of the peoples of these islands:
“….Wishing to develop still further the unique relationship between their peoples and the close co-operation between their countries as friendly neighbours and as partners in the European Union.”
The framers of the Good Friday Agreement 22 years ago could not have anticipated Brexit. Removing the framework of the European Union from the mix, as Brexit increasingly will do, removes some of the steadying foundations upon which the Agreement itself was built and makes the ability to maintain the ‘soft’ border, which has been a great blessing to us, much more difficult to maintain. John Hume would have been horrified at the prospect, and many, perhaps most moderate unionists would share his disquiet.
I finish my introduction with this. The full impact of whichever border arrangements are finally put in place for Northern Ireland cannot be fully predicted in these months of relentless uncertainty. We, as Church Leaders in Ireland, have already asked for urgency and generosity in the negotiations, to end this uncertainty.
But Covid-19 has dominated the news bulletins for months, distracting us, and possibly also the UK government, from this deeply serious political moment – some I imagine have rather hoped the whole thing would simply go away, locked down and suspended like everything else. We can say that to stall the negotiations, and to default to a no-deal, will harden not only the border, but the hearts of a new generation of young Irish men and women who dream of a better future here.
It is clear that such a scenario would place untold pressure on trade, on community cohesion, on the further prospects for peace-building, let alone reconciliation, and on a sense of ourselves on this island (if I may borrow from Yeats) as more beautiful than terrible.
Earlier this month the leaders of Ireland’s main churches appealed for renewed efforts to strengthen relationships across and between these islands and beyond in this critical phase of the Brexit negotiations. Referred to by Dr Bruce in his refection, you can read the Church Leaders’ statement here.