Brexit: Grass greener if we Leave, say Northern Irish farmers

The lampposts in and around Markethill are decorated with more than just Union Jacks this summer.

Some carry the thin, red posters of the Leave campaign in the European Union referendum, imploring voters in the rural Armagh village, over 90 per cent unionist, to “take back control” of Britain’s affairs. There is no sign of blue Remain posters anywhere.

It had been assumed that Northern Ireland would not be as convinced by the Leave arguments as other parts of the UK. The large agriculture sector, it was thought, would want to remain in the EU and to retain access to subsidies and markets.

The largest unionist party - the DUP - is campaigning for a Brexit and, perhaps conscious of a conflict with the major government party, the Ulster Farmers' Union has not taken a position. The Ulster Unionist Party is in favour of remaining but acknowledges some members will vote to leave on Thursday.

Hampton Hewitt, from Portadown, opened his livestock market in Markethill on Tuesday for his three-times per week mart. Cattle are sold on Tuesdays and Saturdays, with sheep sales of a Wednesday.

Some 700 to 1,000 cows pass through his market each week and a large congregation of dairy and beef farmers attend.

Favouring Leave

This week, Brexit was also up for discussion and the opinions here will give those assuming Northern Ireland agriculture wants to Remain pause for thought. Chatter around the sales rings, canteen and yard reveals a majority favour leaving the EU.

Hewitt’s market was built with the help of £500,000 from the EU and the Northern Ireland agriculture department and was opened by Irish rugby captain Rory Best in 2013.

Best’s family are well known farmers in Armagh and he recently declared his support for a Remain vote. Hewitt says Best is highly regarded, but he still has not decided how to vote.

“My heart says vote to go out, my head says vote to stay in. I think I’ll probably vote to stay but that could change between now and Thursday,” he said. “The only concern I would have is that the older people who are voting to go out are thinking they will wind the clock back 40 years, to the 1970s. But the world is a different place. The younger people are definitely going to vote to stay in.”

Lauren Kelly (21), a dairy farmer from Banbridge, does not fit into Hewitt’s generational split. “We’re putting so much into it and we’re getting so little out,” she says of the EU. “We’re just feeding the big cats. All my family , and my boyfriend’s family, they’re going out.”

Single farm payment

Jennifer Grant, who works the front desk at the mart, is also firmly in the Leave camp. “I’d be for Leave, its a personal opinion. It’s the money going over there. For the agriculture community, the single farm payment isn’t enough to cover everything.”

Away from sales ring one, which began its sale of cull and dairy cows at 11.30am, the smell of cooking and humming of a petrol powered generator fill the air.

In the adjoining canteen, George Ross, a beef farmer from Tandragee, is tucking into a fried breakfast. He says he hasn’t voted in 32 years but will do so this week.

“I hope we get out,” he says, while adding that the murder of Jo Cox MP could sway many in England towards Remain. “I am pissed off with the EEC - rules and regulations and all the rest of it. I can’t dig a hole in my own field...I can’t buy rat poison without doing a bloody course for it.”

He says his counterparts in Switzerland get three times what beef farmers in the North get and that most Ulster farmers are voting Leave.

“I’d even go so far as to say 10 to one,” Roiss says.

In the carpark, Colin McCooey from Keady is hoping his mobile barber shop will see some business. He is a part time farmer and drives his barber shop - ‘The Cow’s Lick’ - to markets around the region.

McCooey was previously a truck driver but said that job is not worth doing anymore “because there are too many foreign nationals coming in”.

“The wages are now less than they were 18 years ago,” he says. “The single farm payment is not worth getting (with) the amount of paperwork and bullshit there is.”

Others quietly say they are definitely voting out citing low prices for produce, regulations and “red tape” and the amount of money the UK sends to the EU.

Ivor Broomfield feels that those who shout the loudest may not represent the majority. He is undecided but leaning to Remain.

“It’s nearly like the Scottish one where the out people were much more vocal and maybe more aggressive about it. Maybe the likes of myself, who thinks better in, you’d be afraid you’d be shouted down.”

It is a view shared by former Northern Ireland deputy first minister Seamus Mallon, who lives across the town from the livestock market.

Mallon also drew comparisons with Scotland’s referendum on independence.

“The key factors in this issue are going to come into play. Why did the Scottish referendum fail? It’s the same with this one. Jobs,” he says.

“Northern Ireland, it depends almost totally on agriculture. And speaking about it, I can’t imagine when it comes to their own that they will put themselves in that position [of a Brexit].

‘Grievance culture’

“It is slightly akin to the water issue in the south. It is a metaphor for all of the grievances people have, real or imaginary, and I found it quite amusing in many ways that they all seem to tell you the same thing, the same reasons. I think it is the grievance culture which is strong in the North of Ireland [and everywhere].”

The former SDLP leader believes that, overall, the UK will vote to remain, with a result that could surprise.

“It will be Remain, it might be tight enough but it will be larger than people expect.”