The Pig Smugglers

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32216, 7 February 1970, Page 5

The Pig Smugglers

(Newsweek Feature Service) MARKETHILL (N. Ireland). After the tension and fury of recent months, it is almost a pleasure to find Irishmen fighting one another over something slig h 11 y less momentous than religion and civil rights. This new and thus far milder—war is over pigs. It begins—as does so much of the unrest in modern life —with an economic inequity. A pig among Protestants here in Northern Ireland is worth $4l at the market. But let that same pig journey southward across the border and take up residence among the Roman Catholics of Eire, and his market value rises tremendously. Even among the most placid of citizens, the temptation to indulge in the art of pig-smuggling would be enticing. But in Ireland, where the 50-year-old border is barely tolerated let alone respected, the temptation seems irresistible.

The result: 4000 lawless pigs pass deviously across the border each week.

It’s one of the easiest smuggles in the world. The border meanders some 300 miles across the island, now a little stream, now a country lane scarcely wide enough for a bicycle, now an invisible line slicing across a ploughed field.

A handful of sleepy customs huts marks the more obvious crossing-points, but some 500 “unapproved” roads and countless paths and trails provide safe passage for both pig and proprietor. For the most part, the smugglers simply truck the pigs across. But as if things weren’t already difficult enough for customs officers, the law stipulates that no arrest can be made unless the smuggler is actually seen with his contraband as he crosses the border. The more scrupulous smugglers, therefore, truck their pigs to the border, shoo them across and then round them up on the other side. Since there is no law against a pig crossing the border on his own power, the apprehended smuggler would have a legal defence.

Until recently, the officials generally looked the other way, even on the rare occasions when there was something to be seen. Livestock, grain, butter and many other goods passed easily back and forth. But lately, the climate of opinion has changed, at least in the south. There, the 130,000 - member National Farmers’ Association has come to the realisation that an annual influx of some 200,000 “foreign” pigs can do nothing but drive down the price of pigs in general. Also, according to the N.F.A., it costs the Eire government $2.4 million a year in subsidies paid to a few southern receivers of northern pigs. Since the government is practically powerless, southern farmers are beginning to take the law in their own hands. Vigilante car patrols now cruise the tangle of halfforgotten roads along the borders and check secluded crossings. But the smugglers are organised, too. All too wellorganised. say some southerners, who charge that there are several “Mr Bigs” who mastermind the-entire smuggling operation. Smuggler’s Image Nowadays, it is not unusual for smugglers’ cars and trucks to be equipped with heavyduty steel bumpers to crash through vigilante road blocks. Trucks often travel with guard vehicles, front and rear, and are equipped with two-way radios to intercept and jam customs officers’ frequencies. No-one has been killed so far, but shots have been fired, there have been wild car chases along the narrow roads and fist fights have been reported. Smugglers dragged one customs inspector from his car and beat him up as a warning to others. One vigilante recently found the drawing of a pistol scrawled menacingly on the wall of his house. Still, it will take a lot more than a few beatings to convince most Irishmen that there is anything sinister and un-lrish about smugglers. The truth is that almost everyone along the border has at one time or another done a little plain or fancy smuggling. The people see nothing reprehensible in dishonouring a border they never liked in the first place. “One of the difficulties is getting people steamed up," says Matt Kearney, a leader in the vigilante movement. “Until recently, the smuggler was a sort of hero around here. Everybody knew him. even the customs guards, and , nobody minded. What we're '

trying to do is break his image.”