From Belfast to Connecticut: Brexit, identity, and the work of peace

Leading up to July 12, as bonfires burned across parts of Northern Ireland for the Twelfth/Orangemen’s Day commemorations, a Connecticut audience gathered to reflect on one of the most difficult questions facing divided societies: who belongs, who decides, and what happens when public symbols make some people feel at home while making others feel threatened?

That question gave added urgency to a Sunday program that began with a private tour of "Journey of Hope: The Irish American Immigrant Experience" at the Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum in Norwalk and continued with a screening of Rory Duffy’s documentary "A Fragile Peace: Brexit and Northern Ireland" at the Gaelic American Club in Fairfield. The day brought together representatives from Irish diplomacy, Connecticut public life, academia, the Irish American community, and cultural organizations for a program that moved from the history of Irish immigration in America to the continuing fragility of peace in Northern Ireland.

Guests at Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum toured the exhibition "Journey of Hope: The Irish American Immigrant Experience", which explores the story of Irish immigration and its enduring legacy in the United States. Set within one of Connecticut’s most remarkable Early Gilded Age landmarks, the exhibition offered a powerful setting to reflect on migration, memory, identity, and belonging all themes that connected to the panel discussion after the screening of Duffy's documentary.

Pictured (L–R): Susy Gilgore, Executive Director, Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum; Kathy Olsen, Treasurer, LMM; Dr. Ashley Morin, Sacred Heart University, Norwalk Mayor Barbara Smyth; Gerard Angley, Consul General of Ireland, New York; Loretto Leary, Co-Chair, Connecticut Ireland Trade Commission, Martin Dunleavy, Connecticut Ireland Trade Commission; Amy O’Shea, Vice President, Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum of Fairfield; and Connecticut State Representative Eilish Collins Main (Stamford, 146th District) in front of artist Tracy Sweeney's painting, Leaving, on display as part of the exhibition at lockwood Mathews Mansion Museum in Norwalk, CT.

Following the museum visit, attendees gathered at the Gaelic American Club in Fairfield for a screening of "A Fragile Peace: Brexit and Northern Ireland". The film examines the impact of Brexit on the Good Friday Agreement, the Irish border, and the continuing work of peace and reconciliation in Northern Ireland.

The timing of the screening gave the afternoon added significance. July 12, often known as the Twelfth or Orangemen’s Day, remains one of the most symbolically charged dates in Northern Ireland’s calendar. A Fragile Peace opens with the image of a bonfire burning with the Irish Tricolour placed on top, a stark reminder that public symbols can carry pride, grievance, memory, fear, and provocation all at once.

That symbolism felt especially urgent this year. Recent controversy in Northern Ireland over bonfires displaying imagery of migrant boats and a replica mosque has drawn renewed attention to the line between cultural tradition, political protest, intimidation, and hate speech. Reports emerged on Saturday, July 11, of a replica mosque being burned on a bonfire in Moygashel, County Tyrone, ahead of July 12 commemorations, and that police treated the display as a hate-related matter. Those events did not go unnoticed during the discussion in Fairfield. Panelists and attendees considered how symbols, flags, bonfires, murals, monuments, memorials, parades, and commemorations can either help communities remember and heal or deepen division and fear.

Consul General, Gerard Angley, and Norwalk, Connecticut Mayor, Barbara Smyth tour Lockwood- Mathews Mansion Museum's exhibition, Revolutionary Roots: Generations of Change

The panel discussion connected the film’s themes to broader questions and explored the relevance of the Good Friday Agreement beyond Northern Ireland. As Ireland holds the Presidency of the Council of the European Union from July 1 through December 31, 2026, the Agreement is again being discussed as a historic peace settlement and a source of lessons for the present.

Brexit was a central focus of the documentary and the discussion that followed. The United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union raised one of the most difficult questions of the entire Brexit process: where should the new border between the UK and the EU be placed? A hard border on the island of Ireland risked reopening memories of checkpoints, militarization, and division. An Irish Sea border, however, left many unionists feeling that Northern Ireland had been separated from the rest of the United Kingdom. The Windsor Framework, agreed by the UK and EU in 2023 and after the filming of the documentary, adjusted the Northern Ireland Protocol in an effort to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland while easing some trade difficulties between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. 

Panelists made clear that technical arrangements alone cannot resolve questions of identity, consent, and belonging. The peace process in Northern Ireland has always depended on more than legal language. It depends on trust, restraint, shared space, and communities' willingness to live with complexity. That complexity was at the heart of the Fairfield conversation.

Northern Ireland and the United States have very different histories, but A Fragile Peace raises questions that resonate on both sides of the Atlantic. Isolationist politics, distrust of institutions, arguments over borders, fear of migration, and disputes over public memory are not confined to one country. The film offered a way to think seriously about how democracies respond when identity becomes political armor and when public symbols become tests of power in contested spaces.

The panel also considered the difficult line between free speech and hate speech. In Northern Ireland, Article 9 of the Public Order (Northern Ireland) Order 1987 makes it an offense to use or display threatening, abusive, or insulting words or material when there is intent to stir up hatred or arouse fear, or when hatred or fear is likely to be stirred up. That legal context sharpened the discussion about bonfires, political expression, and the responsibilities of public life in a divided society.

Loretto Leary, Co-Chair of the Connecticut Ireland Trade Commission and Consul General of Ireland to New York, Gerald Angley reading the names, ages and causes of death of Irish Famine immigrants on artist Rowan Gillespie's sculptures, Statistic I & II in the servants' bedroom at Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum in Norwalk.

The afternoon visit to the Lockwood‑Mathews Mansion Museum and the evening panel at the Gaelic American Club together created a powerful arc: from preserving the depth of Irish American history to confronting the contemporary questions facing Ireland, Northern Ireland, the United States, and the wider diaspora. Taken together, the two events placed the Irish immigrant experience in conversation with today’s debates about identity, belonging, and the shifting notion of the “other” in increasingly divided societies. The history of immigration continues to shape how communities understand memory, displacement, belonging, and identity on both sides of the Atlantic.

Participants in the panel discussion included Gerard Angley, Consul General of Ireland in New York; Dr. Ashley Morin of Sacred Heart University; Rory Duffy, director and producer of "A Fragile Peace: Brexit and Northern Ireland"; Loretto Leary, Co-Chair of the Connecticut Ireland Trade Commission; Connecticut Ireland Trade Commissioner Martin Dunleavy; and Connecticut State Representative Eilish Collins Main of Stamford’s 146th District.

Sincere thanks were extended to the team at Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum for their hospitality and for preserving such an important piece of Connecticut and American history, and to Rory Duffy for bringing "A Fragile Peace" to Fairfield for a timely and thoughtful community conversation. Duffy's film can be rented to view here.

The exhibition, Journey of Hope: The Irish American Immigrant Experience, will be on display until September 6th and was a collaboration between Quinnipiac University, Ireland's Great Hunger Museum of Fairfield, and the team at Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum.

This article was submitted to the IrishCentral contributors network by a member of the global Irish community. To become an IrishCentral contributor click here.