Britain After Brexit: The Risk to Northern Ireland

Issue Date January 2017
Volume 28
Issue 1
Page Numbers 42-52
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The United Kingdom’s 23 June 2016 vote to leave the European Union represents an immense challenge for the Irish peace process. The implicit assumption of continuing British and Irish participation in Europe was woven into the terms of the Belfast Agreement of 1998, which brought an end to three decades of intercommunal violence known as the Troubles. This assumption underpinned guarantees to cross-border participation and equal treatment of the nationalist minority in Northern Ireland, regardless of the minority’s preference for British or Irish citizenship. Even before the referendum on EU membership, the political institutions established by the Belfast Agreement had proven tenuous. Now, the Brexit decision casts further doubt on the settlement’s future.

About the Author

Adrian Guelke, professor emeritus in the School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy, and Politics at Queen’s University, Belfast, is attached to the Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security, and Justice and is the editor of Nationalism and Ethnic Politics. He was recently the Van Zyl Slabbert Visiting Professor in the Department of Political Studies at the University of Cape Town.

View all work by Adrian Guelke