10/04/2026
Today marks 28 years since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, a triumph of peace and hope over violence and division. I write to you as someone who was there with the negotiating team of the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition, who had a seat at the table. I was later elected Deputy Speaker of the Northern Ireland assembly, helping to craft the agreement as we know it today.
On that day, we brokered a delicate peace that laid the foundations of the warm relationships that the warring parties now enjoy. And then came Brexit.
The people of Northern Ireland had voted overwhelmingly to remain within the EU to maintain their open borders and interconnectivity with the Republic. When the referendum returned a victory for Leave, we suddenly saw those foundations set out in the Good Friday Agreement began to crack.
3 years ago, on the 25th anniversary of the landmark peace agreement, European Movement UK went to Belfast to speak to the people of Northern Ireland about the Good Friday Agreement and the massive impacts that Brexit has had on the communities who live there.
The insight they so kindly offered us was extraordinary, and profoundly moving, Dr Thomas Clough. For me, they cut to the heart of why the side lining of our Northern Irish voices since Brexit has had significant, damaging effects on our communities. You can hear what they had to say and share the film to amplify their voices below:
Thousands watched this film when it was first released, and since then the rhetoric around Europe in the UK has become more divisive. While the government presses on with slow, but welcome, progress to reset the UK-EU relationship, parties like Reform are calling for even more isolation and even for the UK to leave the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR).
Brexit, and the dangerous challenges it precipitated for the Good Friday Agreement, was already bad enough. Put simply - leaving the ECHR, on which the Good Friday Agreement relies heavily, would be catastrophic for peace in the island of Ireland.
In this film, the people of Belfast see Brexit as an act of dragging an unwilling Northern Ireland out of the EU. They talk of the progress made since the Good Friday Agreement, and of the massive damage Brexit has done to the provisions and systems that it put in place.
We spoke to people who had lived through The Troubles, heard about the horrors they were forced to endure, and their fear of ever returning to such times. We also spoke to those born after the Good Friday Agreement, so-called ‘peace babies’, who grew up with the stories of war from their parents and grandparents, but who had, thankfully, never had to witness it for themselves.
Regardless of age or background, one thing was made perfectly clear by everyone who we spoke to: the Good Friday Agreement brought a peace that allowed communities to flourish. Brexit threatens to destabilase that peace daily. Leaving the ECHR threatens to tear it down completely.
This is worth watching.
Brexit was a studpid blow to peace all over the world, not just in Ireland.
In this 13-minute mini-documentary, we talk to 13 people who share their personal stories of life before and after the Good Friday Agreement, and their hopes...
