Border Communities Against Brexit (BCAB) is an organisation which seeks to protect people who live close to the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland from the claimed negative consequences of Brexit. [1] The organisation is active in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
In July 2017 the European Parliament awarded the group a European Citizen's Prize. [2]
On 8 October 2016 six protests took place along the border. One protest took place at Carrickcarnon, Dundalk where a mock customs checkpoint was set up. [3] About 150 protesters gathered at the border between Belcoo in Co Fermanagh and Blacklion in Co Cavan. [4] There were also protests at Moybridge between Tyrone and Monaghan, Aghalane between Fermanagh and Cavan and Lifford Bridge between Tyrone and Donegal. [5]
In late March 2017 the organisation marched on Stormont. The protest included about 300 people, including SDLP leader Colum Eastwood and Sinn Féin leader in the North, Michelle O'Neill. [6]
In September 2019, leaders of the organization met with the French ambassador to Ireland Stephane Crouzat. [7] In January 2020, the organisation organized a protest alongside the Irish border. [8]
Sinn Féin is an Irish republican and democratic socialist political party active throughout both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.
The Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) is a unionist and conservative political party in Northern Ireland. Having gathered support in Ulster, the northern province in Ireland, during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, the party governed Northern Ireland between 1921 and 1972. The UUP and its predecessors have been the traditional Unionist voice in Ireland. It was supported by most unionist voters throughout the conflict known as the Troubles, during which time it was often referred to as the Official Unionist Party (OUP). Between 1905 and 1972, its peers and MPs took the Conservative whip at Westminster, in effect functioning as the Northern Irish branch of the Conservative and Unionist Party. This arrangement came to an end in 1972 over disagreements over the Sunningdale Agreement. The two parties have remained institutionally separate ever since, with the exception of the 2009–2012 Ulster Conservatives and Unionists electoral alliance.
Northern Ireland is one of the four countries of the United Kingdom,, situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland. It was created as a separate legal entity on 3 May 1921, under the Government of Ireland Act 1920. The new autonomous Northern Ireland was formed from six of the nine counties of Ulster: four counties with unionist majorities – Antrim, Armagh, Down, and Londonderry – and two counties with slight Irish nationalist majorities – Fermanagh and Tyrone – in the 1918 General Election. The remaining three Ulster counties with larger nationalist majorities were not included. In large part unionists, at least in the north-east, supported its creation while nationalists were opposed.
The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) is a unionist and loyalist political party in Northern Ireland. It was founded in 1971 during the Troubles by Ian Paisley, who led the party for the next 37 years. Currently led by Jeffrey Donaldson, it is the joint-largest party in the Northern Ireland Assembly, and is the fifth-largest party in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom. The party has been described as right-wing and socially conservative, being anti-abortion and opposing same-sex marriage. The DUP sees itself as defending Britishness and Ulster Protestant culture against Irish nationalism. The party is Eurosceptic and supported Brexit.
Unionism in Ireland is a political tradition on the island that professes loyalty to the Crown and constitution of the United Kingdom. Once the overwhelming sentiment of a then-ascendant minority Protestant population, in the decades following Catholic Emancipation (1829) it mobilised to oppose the restoration of an Irish parliament. In the century since Partition (1921), as Ulster Unionism its commitment has been to the retention within the United Kingdom of the six Ulster counties that constitute Northern Ireland. Within the framework of a peace settlement for Northern Ireland, since 1998 unionists have had to accommodate Irish nationalists in a devolved administration, while continuing to rely on the connection with Great Britain to secure their cultural and economic interests.
Michelle Gildernew is an Irish Sinn Féin politician from County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. She is the Member of Parliament (MP) for Fermanagh and South Tyrone, having been re-elected in June 2017 after previously holding the seat from 2001 to 2015.
United Ireland, also referred to as Irish reunification, is the proposition that all of Ireland should be a single sovereign state. At present, the island is divided politically; the sovereign Republic of Ireland has jurisdiction over the majority of Ireland, while Northern Ireland, which lies entirely within the Irish province of Ulster, is part of the United Kingdom. Achieving a united Ireland is a central tenet of Irish nationalism, particularly of both mainstream and dissident Irish republican political and paramilitary organisations. Unionists support Northern Ireland remaining part of the United Kingdom, and therefore oppose Irish unification.
The by-election held in Fermanagh and South Tyrone on 9 April 1981 is considered by many to be the most significant by-election held in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. It saw the first electoral victory for militant Irish republicanism, which the following year entered electoral politics in full force as Sinn Féin. The successful candidate was the IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands, who died twenty-six days later.
Henry William West was a politician in Northern Ireland who served as leader of the Ulster Unionist Party from 1974 until 1979.
The Republic of Ireland–United Kingdom border, sometimes referred to as the Irish border or British–Irish border, runs for 499 km (310 mi) from Lough Foyle in the north-west of Ireland to Carlingford Lough in the north-east, separating the Republic of Ireland from Northern Ireland.
Scouting in Northern Ireland is represented by three Scouting associations. The Northern Ireland Scout Council is part of The Scout Association of the United Kingdom, which is the World Organization of the Scout Movement (WOSM) recognized Scouting association in the United Kingdom. Scouting Ireland is the national Scouting association and the WOSM-recognized Scouting association for the Republic of Ireland, although its membership extends to Northern Ireland. The Baden-Powell Scouts' Association is a member of the World Federation of Independent Scouts and operates one group in Northern Ireland.
Stephen Anthony Farry MP is an Alliance Party of Northern Ireland politician.
Liam Kelly was an Irish republican, who was elected both to the House of Commons of Northern Ireland (1953–1958) and as a member of the upper house of the Irish legislature Seanad Éireann (1954–1957). He was also a member of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and after his expulsion from that organisation in 1951, founded the Republican splinter group Saor Uladh and its political wing Fianna Uladh.
On 13 December 1989 the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) attacked a British Army permanent vehicle checkpoint complex manned by the King's Own Scottish Borderers (KOSB) near the Northern Ireland–Republic of Ireland border at Derryard, north of Rosslea, County Fermanagh. The IRA unit, firing from the back of an armoured dump truck, attacked the small base with heavy machine-guns, grenades, anti-tank rockets and a flamethrower. A nearby Army patrol arrived at the scene and a fierce firefight erupted. The IRA withdrew after leaving a van bomb inside the complex, but it did not fully detonate. The assault on the outpost left two soldiers dead and two wounded.
The Marble Arch Caves Global Geopark straddles the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. It is centred on the Marble Arch Caves and in 2001 it became one of the first geoparks to be designated in Europe.
On 11 February 1990, an active service unit of the Provisional IRA East Tyrone Brigade shot down a British Army Gazelle helicopter along the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. It took place between Augher in County Tyrone and Derrygorry in County Monaghan. The helicopter was hit several times by heavy machine-gun fire and crash-landed on an open field, injuring three members of its crew of four.
The 39th G8 summit was held on 17–18 June 2013, at the Lough Erne Resort, a five-star hotel and golf resort on the shore of Lough Erne in County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland. It was the sixth G8 summit to be held in the United Kingdom and the first to be held in Northern Ireland. The earlier G8 summits hosted by the United Kingdom were held in London, Birmingham (1998) and Gleneagles (2005).
The 2018 Ulster Senior Football Championship was the 130th instalment of the annual Ulster Senior Football Championship organised by Ulster GAA. It is one of the four provincial competitions of the 2018 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship. The winners receive The Anglo-Celt Cup. The draw for the championship was made on 19 October 2017.
The impact of Brexit on the Irish border and its adjacent polities involves changes in trade, customs, immigration checks, local economies, services, recognition of qualifications, medical cooperation, and other matters, now that it is the only external EU land border between the United Kingdom and the European Union.
The Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland, commonly abbreviated to the Northern Ireland Protocol, is a protocol to the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement that governs the unique customs and immigration issues at the border in the island of Ireland between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the European Union, and on some aspects of trade in goods between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom. Its terms were negotiated in 2019 and agreed and concluded in December 2020. Due to the thirty-year internecine conflict in Northern Ireland, the UK-Ireland border has had a special status since that conflict was ended by the Belfast Agreement/Good Friday Agreement of 1998. As part of the Northern Ireland Peace Process, the border has been largely invisible, without any physical barrier or custom checks on its many crossing points; this arrangement was made possible by both countries' common membership of both the EU's Single Market and Customs Union and of their Common Travel Area.
