All is Motion

Tag: Brexit

  • Brexit, Irelands saviour!

     

    Back in the medieval times

    From the Norman invasion in 1169, until the late 15th century, Ireland remained peripheral to English state concerns. The Normans had taken the Viking towns as the only recognisable and taxable trading ports along the east and south coast. But, with the faltering of the Norman conquest and the subsequent failure to create a centralised feudal state across the island, English involvement became that of maintaining the failing colony against the resurgent Gaelic zone. But then, in  1492 a Genoese sailor set of into the western sea on his three caravels, and sailed into the sunset and history. 

    The European discovery of America changed everything.  Relations between England and Ireland took on a new urgency. Englands prosperity had been built on the wool trade and other commodities that were traded along the central axis between northern Italy through the Rhine valley and at the trading cities along the Baitic and Netherlands coast. For this trade route England was well placed and Ireland was peripheral. But, the discovery of the new world shifted the emphasis to the west, and access to the Atlantic became a vital requirement to any trading nation wishing to get a bite of the new opportunities. 

    For England, access to the New World required control of the sea routes around Ireland, especially those along the south coast facing France and controlling the mouth of the English channel. Britains position was not good, as whoever controlled Ireland, controlled Britain simply by blocking their access to the Atlantic. Hence, England fought tooth and nail to acquire Ireland. For the Elizabethans it was a matter of survival. Their desperation won them an Empire.

    Control of the Irish ports allowed the expansion into the American colonies, which could begin in earnest only after the Battle of Kinsale. The battles outcome meant that the southern Irish ports were in English hands. A couple of years previous, in 1599 when the war was going very much the Irish way, Aodh Mór Ó’Néill had issued a list of demands to the English Crown. Number 20 said

    That all Irishmen may freely traffic with all merchandises, that shall be thought necessary by the Council of State of Ireland for the profit of their Republic, with foreigners or in foreign countries, and that no Irishman shall be troubled for the passage of priests or other religious men.

    And number 22

    That all Irishmen may freely build ships of what burden they will, furnishing the same with artillery and all munition at their pleasure.

    This was at he height of the Nine Years War, and at the low point for the English state, which at this time had lost control of most of the country. The demands tell us what the war was really about. That while it was cloaked in the language of religion, the real tussle was a fight to the death over who was going to prosper from the access to the new trade routes opening on the Atlantic world. 

    And later, with English policy understanding this strategic reality, the Navigation Acts expressly forbade ships on Atlantic routes to land in Ireland, forcing them to carry on to English ports and then re-exporting to Ireland from there. British goods were imported to Ireland tariff free, but goods going the other way were subject to tariffs. This is how Britain used power to negate Irelands naturally advantageous position in relation to America. Trade was distorted through force. 

    So there is nothing intrinsically peripheral about Ireland, contrary to what you may have learned in school geography class. The favourable position was a fact, a fact that laws and force sought to cancel and suppress in order to allow Britain to dominate despite its poorer placement for American trade.   

    But geography doesn’t change, and what was true then, is still true now, it only requires political events to change for the geographic reality to re-assert itself. 

    Now in the present times

    On the 23rd of June 2016, the referendum on membership of the EU was held in Britain. The shockwave of the vote to leave is still reverberating through the region now. And the constitutional crisis in which the UK finds itself makes it seem likely that a hard Brexit is the most likely outcome. Widely regarded as detrimental to Ireland due to its reliance on trade with Britain and use of Britain as a land bridge for trade with the continent. But is it really the disaster it seems?

    Intra-continental European trade is already being rerouted as the European union shifts its strategic corridor to the west, linking Ireland to the ports of Belgium and Holland. This is not as efficient as the route through Britain, which Ireland has used up to this point. 

    However, it is in inter-continental trade that the potential shift is of huge importance. Irelands position west of Britain makes it a more desirable location for transiting American trade into Europe. With Cork perhaps becoming the main distribution centre for intercontinental trade in the future.

    Cargo and container transport from North America may be routed to Irish ports instead of Southampton in the event of tariffs or trade deal issues.  The emphasis in such a scenario would favour the south and west coast of Ireland for off loading cargo destined for the UK market. The exact opposite of the current setup.

    Virtual Traffic

    The same logic is also playing out in the realm of internet infrastructure. Irelands position makes it a natural one for the landing of trans-Atlantic cables.

    In the far north west of Ireland, the Cable Landing Station, Killala, Co. Mayo  is the Irish base for 287 communications cables that form the internet backbone providing high-capacity connectivity from New York to London and beyond to greater Europe. This infastructure supports the placement of data-centres in Ireland as the EMEA headquarters for many American internet companies is based in Ireland. 

    fibreopticireland

    In terms of this global infrastructure it is the west of Ireland that is in the most favourable position. A new Havefrue cable linking New York, Ireland and Denmark has been announced for 2019, landing at Westport. As demand for this infrastructure continues to grow, and as the only English speaking country within the Euro-zone, it is likely that the west will continue to develop as an important location in global internet infrastructure.

    End Game

    The Brexiteers imagine a glorious future as a trade hub for Britain, but they may instead have relegated it to relative obscurity, they have mistaken what was artificially constructed for a natural occurence. It could be said that England hhad fought so hard in the first place because, conscious of its paucity of natural resources and location facing the Scandinavian coast on the inhospitable North sea, it knew it had to work harder to fight for an advantage that geography did not naturally provide. 

    But Brexit strips away the last remnants of the order that Britain so carefully constructed, and forces Ireland to create a new one in which trade routes are centred through itself instead of relying on England. Ireland will now become what it should always have been, the natural and prosperous trading hub and cultural bridge between Europe and  North America, had it not been prevented by force for 5 centuries.

    Brexit may just be the best thing that could happen to Ireland, and particularly, to Irelands much neglected regions.

    Further information

    https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/irish-port-to-be-european-shipping-hub-after-brexit-35191563.html

    https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/brexit-busting-ferry-launched-from-dublin-port-1.3468760

     

     

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  • Brexit, should we support the latest peasant revolt?

    “Besides, they were informed that he was even intriguing with the helots; and such indeed was the fact, for he promised them freedom and citizenship if they would join him in insurrection, and would help him to carry out his plans to the end.”

    Thucydides, on the Spartan general Pausanius attempted revolt in league with the oppressed helots, 5th Century BC


    March 2017
    Ah yes, the truth! The sordid, amoral, entitled nature of Britains ruling class is laid bare for the world to see thanks to Brexit and the wonder of instant communication. Travelling the globe to shamelessly pander to all the worst dictators and regimes on the planet. Of course, as historians, and particularly historians in Ireland, we know they have been like this for centuries, but have carefully controlled their image to maintain an aura of respectability, to bluff the world and, most importantly, their own people. But now the mask has slipped. Social media casts a light onto events and characters impossible to achieve before,  and with this claruty,  the narrative is not theirs alone to control anymore. .

    Recent avents suggest that Brexit represents perhaps a unique opportunity for the British people to think about how to remove or curtail their parasitical ruling clasd once and for all. Perhaps a chance to reform the archaic system of first past the post voting, that has created virtual perpetual rule by the Tories. Surely the alternative is not to be countenanced? With the Tories consorting with the Saudis, Trump and the murderous Duterte (a person who boasts about personally throwing criminals out of helicopters) they have certainly found their own ilk to hang around with. Their Britain entails an economy based on money laundering & arms dealing for the idle rich, supported by the labour of a helot class who toil in zero hour contracts and uncertainty designed to keep them too desperate, insecure and distracted to effectively resist their exploitation.

    In a world of plenty, they have nothing…and thats on purpose. Helots must always be kept in fear, and so they are bombarded daily with enemies, immigrants, Spain, the EU. Anything to create fear, to distract, to divide, because this prevents any concerted action against the real enemy of the British people, the ruling class. So much for the historical analysis.

    But now with the Brexit vote, the logical consequences of how they have retained internal power, and what is rational action in the outside world, are at odds with each other. This is an opportunity to expose what they are doing, and when we understand a mechanism, we can redesign it. The British state as it developed in the 16th century relied on external enemies to maintain the small elites control of a dangerously fragmented nation. The technique was successful, it led to Empire. However there are costs. National identity is defined in relation to the “other” . The system becomes unstable in the absence of an external enemy.

    So, in the absence of a more traditional enemy, the  EU served as a convenient enemy in the time honoured tradition. This was meant to be routine use of an enemy to create fear and distract the people, it was not meant to be acted on, but Cameron miscalculated and the people, fed a steady diet of hysterical anti-EU rhetoric, called his bluff, and now Brexit must be gone through with. This misstep may ultimately lead to their demise, as their willingness to sacrifice their peoples long term interest just to keep themselves in power has now been exposed. The British ruling class have been hoist by their own petard.
    Brexit is said to be a disaster for Britain, and perhaps in an analysis devoid of historical context this is correct. However, reading  it as a disaster assumes that all is well and functioning in British society, that historical tensions are not under the surface, ready to emerge as change progresses, And we know that for large parts of the country, they have been abandoned to their fate. Does it really make any difference to modern helots what is happening in the outside world? Shorn of rights and opportunities surely their first priority is to free themselves from the criminal gang who have held them hostage, in one guise or another, for roughly 9 centuries….and when the opportunity came, they took it.. the peasants (as the Tories would see it) revolted.
    And in this analysis Brexit may not make much sense from the outside, either socially or economically, but if you are inside it does, because it is not a thought out action of the ruling class, or a democratic, or rational and progressive movement, it is a revolt, a revolt of the dispossessed in the tradition of the great peasant revolts of the Middle Ages, such as the Wat Tyler revolt of 1381. A revolt explains the total disarray of the British establishment, whether left or right, both equally horrified at the seemingly mindless destruction of Brexit,  they do not know how to respond. Only the extremists are happy, and their agenda is being followed, no matter the cost to the economy, to social cohesion, to the existence of the UK itself. So, as the establishment implodes, the next step is to lay out a way forward for the democratic reform of Britain in the long run, and there is much that we, on the outside, can do to help that.
    Viva la Revolucion!

    Note on helots..https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helots