Thursday briefing: What ​sparked ​days of racially ​charged ​violence in Northern Ireland

The Guardian

a day ago

Good morning. Over the past three nights, Ballymena, Northern Ireland, has been rocked by riots. At least 17 police officers have been injured, while homes, businesses and vehicles have also been damaged.
The unrest erupted after a vigil on Monday for a teenage girl allegedly sexually assaulted by two 14-year-old boys. The boys had appeared in court earlier that day and were charged with attempted rape, where a Romanian interpreter read them the charges.
Police said the unrest escalated into racially motivated violence, with mobs targeting foreign residents in the County Antrim town. They broke windows and tried to set fire to curtains, leaving families terrified in their homes. On Wednesday, a fire broke out at a leisure centre during a third night of disorder.
Smaller protests took place on Tuesday night in Lisburn, Coleraine, Newtownabbey, Carrickfergus and Belfast. In one video shared online, a woman tells the rioters: 'Be careful, lads.' A man then informs her there were people living in one of the houses being attacked. She replied: 'Aye, but are they local? If they're local, they need out. If they're not local, let them fucking stay there.'
Liam Kelly, the chair of the Police Federation for Northern Ireland, which represents officers, said police prevented 'a pogrom with consequences too painful to contemplate'.
For today's newsletter, I spoke to Rory Carroll, the Guardian's Ireland correspondent who was on the ground in Ballymena, about what we know so far about the violence, long simmering tensions around immigration and what the area is bracing for next. That's after the headlines.
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Before the Good Friday agreement in 1998, there was very little immigration to Northern Ireland, Rory Carroll tells me. The Troubles and the wider history of the area meant it wasn't really a destination for migrants, but after the peace process, immigration crept upwards – slowly at first and from a very low base.
About 293,000 long-term international migrants are estimated to have arrived in Northern Ireland between the years 2001 and 2023, according to Northern Ireland assembly research published this year. The latest census in 2021 shows that about 3.4% of Northern Ireland's population are from a minority ethnic background – compared with 18.3% in England and Wales, and 12.9% in Scotland – making it the least diverse region in the UK.
'People here feel it happened very quickly,' Rory says. 'Some areas have seen a significant number of arrivals, including parts of Belfast, and also here in Ballymena, which is largely a working-class, loyalist area. There are a cluster of streets where a lot of migrants have ended up, particularly from eastern Europe. There has been resentment.'
Rory spent much of yesterday speaking to residents, who told him they were 'overwhelmed', or 'being overrun'. While there is some acknowledgment that 'many of the migrants bring skills and do good things in terms of opening businesses, and might be their friends, they say others are causing lots of problems, and that they feel that politicians, public representatives, and the police are not heeding their complaints'.
Rory says that the grievances are twofold: one, that some migrants are 'freeloading' off taxpayer-funded services, and two, that they're involved in crime. The perception is that these problems are being ignored by the authorities.
The similarities to last year's anti-immigrant riots
The clashes in Ballymena feel similar to last summer's anti-immigrant riots that spread across England and parts of Northern Ireland. Rory covered the rioting in Belfast last summer, in the loyalist area of Sandy Row. Foreign-owned businesses there were targeted for attacks, looting and intimidation.
'It was a similar story that you hear in Ballymena,' he says. 'Local, long-term residents not exclusively but largely, white, loyalist, Protestant working class feel that they had an influx of foreigners, many of them non-white, and that no one consulted them about it and that the identity of their local area has been changed.'
There was a crucial difference this time, Rory adds, as the latest riots in Ballymena were in response to a specific local alleged crime: two 14-year-old boys, charged with attempted rape. 'People are extrapolating from that and saying it's just the tip of the iceberg,' he says.
In Ballymena, many talked about their communities being left behind, similar to the rhetoric we hear around England's 'red wall' seats – and while they've had industrial decline and some economic hardship, 'the statistics tell a more complex story' when it comes to Northern Ireland, Rory says.
'Northern Ireland gets a lot of subsidies from the rest of the UK and has lower housing costs and lower cost of living. The sense of alienation and grievance and the perception of being forgotten and left behind is very real, but in terms of poverty and extreme poverty, those rates are actually worse in northern England than the average similar equivalent rates here in Northern Ireland.'
What are people saying on the ground?
The situation in Ballymena is grim. Immigrant families who live in the cluster of streets that were attacked are 'extremely fearful', Rory says, while others have left.
'There are houses that are boarded up, windows have been smashed in, and several have been burned. I spoke to a Bulgarian-Polish family and they're in the midst of packing up, about to leave because they feel unsafe. Some want to return to Bulgaria after 15 years here,' he said.
Other immigrant families are trying a different tactic. 'One family are putting up these printed stickers with notices that say 'Filipinos live here' along with the British flag,' Rory adds. 'They're trying to specify their identity, because they feel Romanians and other nationalities are the focus of anger and protests.'
Some of the white local residents he spoke to are, to Rory's surprise, giving support to the riots. 'They all say it's a shame that it's come to this, violence isn't good, but that there's no other way for outsiders, the government authorities, the likes of ourselves, the Guardian, to pay attention to them. They feel that they've been ignored for so many years and so they feel that the riot was unfortunate, but necessary,' he said.
Rory quotes 32-year-old Danielle O'Neill, 32, who told him: 'The riots have a valid point; we are being overpopulated … It sounds like I'm racist but I'm not. It's like an invasion. I don't feel safe walking the streets any more. Just yesterday one of them was following me and eyeing me up.'
She went on to tell Rory: 'If they can terrorise our kids, we can terrorise the town.'
Who is driving the backlash?
The anger isn't just bubbling among one community. 'In this case, this is bringing Catholics and Protestants together in combined rioting against the foreigners,' Rory adds.
He had people, who are Protestant loyalists, out at the riots last night tell him that they saw 'lots of Catholics from the other part of town' who were there with them.
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'They welcomed them. They say it's brilliant that now they have Catholics and Protestants united in a common front against Johnny Foreigner. And that fits with last August, at Belfast city hall, at an anti-immigrant march, where you had loyalists with British flags marching alongside Dublin anti-migrant activists who had the Irish tricolour. They were marching side by side. You don't often see that in Northern Ireland.'
What comes next is unclear. Police made several arrests on Tuesday night, which could deter further violence, but social media could continue fuelling things, Rory says. 'Some people are coming in from other parts of Antrim in solidarity with the local rioters. It's unclear whether tonight Ballymena may or may not kick off again. But then it's very possible that trouble could spread to other parts of Northern Ireland.'
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