Northern Ireland's former 'badlands' brace for Britain's EU vote

By Conor Humphries CROSSMAGLEN, Northern Ireland (Reuters) - For the Catholic residents of Northern Ireland village Crossmaglen, the prospect of Britain's only land border with the European Union rising around them to obstruct access to the Irish Republic is unthinkable. But barely two decades after a peace deal brought down the military checkpoints that divided the two parts of Ireland, opinion polls show growing support in Britain to leave the European Union in a referendum due by the end of 2017. It's unclear if that would bring back the kind of border controls that Ireland's deputy leader recently dismissed as abhorrent, but any changes would have profound effects in the former border "badlands" Britain long struggled to control. The biggest fear for many in Northern Ireland is that new border restrictions could reenergise Catholic Irish nationalist demands for a united Ireland, which helped fuel three decades of violence with the British authorities and mainly Protestant unionists who wanted it to remain part of Britain. At least 3,600 people were killed in the "The Troubles". "You'd be bringing things back 30 years," said Cathal Short, a businessman walking in the main square of Crossmaglen, a predominantly Catholic village where many shops accept euros alongside sterling and streets are strewn with bunting for Gaelic football, the Republic's most popular sport. "I think it would be an absolute disaster for here." Many see the EU, with its guarantees of civil rights and free movement of goods, workers and capital as a significant factor in securing the peace in 1998. On many practical levels the EU has united Ireland. A British exit would deprive Northern Ireland, one of Britain's poorest regions, of 8.4 percent of its economic output in direct EU funding, according to an Open University report. An Irish think tank, meanwhile, said UK-Irish trade would fall 20 percent, with border towns hit hardest. However opponents of EU membership have argued the EU is a drain on overall British resources and that Brussels bureaucracy hampers small and medium-sized businesses. An EU exit would also create a "significant psychological impact" in the border area, according to a report by a committee in the Irish parliament, which warned it would be "politically destabilising". Martina Anderson, a Member of the European Parliament for the largest Irish nationalist party Sinn Fein - and native of another border area to the west - has said Northern Ireland should consider refusing to accept a British EU exit. "[If] Britain wants to pull out of Europe, the discussion we need to have is that Britain pull out of Ireland," she said. "The decision that is going to be made in England should not be binding on the north." VOTERS COOL ON BREXIT The only major recent opinion poll on attitudes to a British exit in Northern Ireland, commissioned by Danske Bank, showed that 58 percent of the 1.8 million population were against leaving, one of the highest levels in the United Kingdom. Only 16 percent were in favour of a British exit, or Brexit. The population is roughly evenly split between traditional Catholic and Protestant communities. There have been no major studies to break down support for an exit along those lines, and major unionist parties have not announced official positions. But opinion polls suggest that opposition to an EU exit goes beyond the nationalist community, with analysts saying practical concerns on EU funding, trade and travel appear to have softened ideological scepticism about European integration. The fate of Northern Ireland, like that of Scotland, is however likely to be decided in England, home to most of the UK population. A poll by Ipsos MORI last month showed 52 percent of Britons would vote to stay in the EU, while support for an exit rose to 39 percent - the highest level since 2012. Scottish nationalists have already hinted that they will demand another referendum on independence if Britain votes to leave the EU and Scotland does not. Gerry Adams, leader of Sinn Fein - which won 27 percent of the vote in 2011 Northern Ireland assembly elections - has said he may seek a referendum on Irish unity, as allowed for under the 1998 peace deal. While recent polls have shown most nationalists would opt to remain part of Britain rather than risk the upheaval of joining Ireland, Brexit could change the calculus, said Lee McGowan, senior lecturer in European Studies at Queen's University Belfast. "If people start thinking emotionally about the border again might they be more be inclined to opt for a united Ireland?" he said. "Politics here does not seem to be ready for that question." BORDERLANDS Northern Irish companies are more dependent on the market south of the border than the other way around. The Republic accounts for around a quarter of manufacturing exports, while another quarter goes to other parts of the European Union, according to the Northern Ireland Chamber of Commerce. An exit from the bloc could also deal a major blow to Belfast's attempts to attract more foreign direct investment, much of which is dependent on access to EU markets, it says. The border is not even marked on some side roads, having been manned for years by British soldiers in tall corrugated iron border posts, one of the most potent memories of three decades of violence which hit border areas worse than most. From the start of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) campaign against British rule in 1969 to the ceasefire in 1997, around 60 police officers and more than 100 soldiers were killed in the southern parts of the county of Armagh, many in Crossmaglen. While the last soldiers left the village a decade ago, their barracks just off the main square is now used by the police with its six-metre high perimeter fences still intact amid fears of attacks by dissident militants opposed to the peace process. "Things could start flaring up again ... if there were more signs of a border," said Ciaran, 37, who works in the town but, like most residents interviewed, refused to give his full name for an article about the area's politics. William Rodgers, a retired 70-year-old smoking outside a pub in nearby Newry who remembers having to pay duty to move beer across the border, said people did not appear to realise how high the stakes are for Northern Ireland. "I think the average person needs to pay more attention," he said. "They didn't react too well when they had the border here." (Editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Pravin Char)