What happened in Ballymena? Why chaos has consumed the small town

Times

16 hours ago

A masked rioter held a lighter to the fluttering living room curtains of a house in Ballymena whose windows had been obliterated by a hail of bricks, when a cautious voice spoke up.
'There's someone in that room right now,' the man said while a mob raged around him in the Co Antrim town.
But concern or compassion was in short supply. 'If they are local, they need out,' said a woman watching the attempted arson. 'If they're not local then let them f***ing stay there.'
Residents have awoken to the aftermath of repeated night-time rioting
CHARLES MCQUILLAN FOR THE TIMES
A wave of unprecedented anti-immigrant violence swept through Ballymena this week after the alleged attempted rape of a teenage schoolgirl.
In the ensuing chaos, migrant families had little option but to flee as gangs in black tracksuits and balaclavas roamed the streets asking 'Where are the foreigners?'
To repel the violent swarm, Union Jacks and Northern Irish flags were placed in windows or hung from existing flag poles on terraced houses in the town's centre. Signs reading 'locals live here' were hastily stuck to front doors. Paraphernalia from the King's coronation was taken out of storage and put on display.
'The Twelfth of July has never come this early'
The sea of colour was arresting even in the working-class town that, as one of Northern Ireland's loyalist strongholds and epicentre of the late Ian Paisley's bible belt, is accustomed to such displays.
'The Twelfth of July has never come this early,' remarked one local, referring to Protestants' annual celebration of the Battle of the Boyne.
By Friday, those flags fluttered alongside scenes of horror. The windows and front doors of targeted houses were boarded up, their occupants long departed.
A buggy sat outside the smashed front window of one abandoned property on Queen Street. Inside was a child's bedroom where a colourful quilt was covered in shattered glass and an empty cot was emblazoned with the words 'little prince'.
Several doors down, there were no such signs of life as the property's interior had been entirely ravaged by fire.
The burning of migrant houses was grimly reminiscent of the onset of the Troubles, the intractable conflict that raged between Northern Ireland's Catholic and Protestant communities over some 30 years. As the sectarian violence took hold in 1969, hundreds of families were burnt out of their homes.
'I saw it coming,' says Slovakian factory worker
For Vladimir, a Slovakian factory worker who has lived in Northern Ireland for 14 years, the comparison to this pogrom felt obvious.
'I saw it coming,' he said. 'I know the country, I respect the country; their culture, their history. And I know how bad it was. But you could predict this trouble easily — it's all connected. Back then it was sectarian and now it's just foreigners.'
Vladimir spoke while sweeping the living room of the house he shares with his Czech partner Pavlina, 35, her 11-year-old daughter and their two dogs. Hours earlier, a gang of youths had tossed a metal bar stool through their front window.
Other homes have had windows smashed
CHARLES MCQUILLAN FOR THE TIMES
To protect the property from further violence, the family hung a Union Jack adorned with an image of William of Orange above the front door.
Two boys aged 14 appeared in court on Monday over the alleged sex attack on the schoolgirl. The charges were read to them by a Romanian interpreter.
Hours later, hundreds of people took to the streets for a peaceful protest. The peace was short-lived.
A crowd broke away and homed in on several properties. The violence proved infectious and a full-scale riot began, with hundreds of people, many in hoods or masks, targeting cars and businesses over three nights, while raining missiles and petrol bombs on the police.
Roma have been targeted after an alleged sex attack
CHARLES MCQUILLAN FOR THE TIMES
Recent years have seen an anti-immigrant movement spread from England to Ireland. Most worryingly, violence is increasingly being used to make a point.
In the Republic of Ireland, arson has become a favoured weapon for radical protesters who have repeatedly set fire to properties earmarked as prospective accommodation centres for asylum seekers.
As with previous episodes of disorder, tensions in Ballymena were inflamed by prominent online agitators. Hundreds of online messages discussing the events reviewed by The Times featured disturbing language that incited violence and used far-right terminology.
Anti-extremism experts said that the opportunity to pin sexual offences on entire migrant communities was 'fertile ground' for extremists.
Michelle O'Neill, first minister of Northern Ireland and deputy leader of Sinn Féin, described the violence in Ballymena as 'pure racism' and echoed calls from Sir Keir Starmer for calm. The Police Service of Northern Ireland said the rioting, which resulted in more than 40 officers being injured, was 'racist thuggery' and the result of 'mob rule'.
But community leaders in the largely Protestant town said that the eruption was inevitable after years of simmering tensions.
Much of this frustration has been targeted at the local Roma community, whom some locals accuse of failing to integrate, engaging in antisocial behaviour and having links to organised crime.
While condemning violence in his reaction to the rioting, Jim Allister, the North Antrim MP and leader of the Traditional Unionist Voice party, pointed to an 'influx of Roma' and 'oversubscription of migrants'.
'People are not racist. They have had enough'
The Clonavon Terrace area of Ballymena became the epicentre of the violence on Monday when a terraced house identified as the home of the two teenage suspects was set alight by rioters.
When Emma Little-Pengelly, the DUP deputy first minister, travelled to the neighbourhood on Wednesday she was confronted by townspeople who said their concerns had been ignored.
Reuben Glover, a councillor in her party, said: 'These people have been dumped here.' Beseeching Little-Pengelly to act, he said: 'People are not racist. They have had enough.'
In the area of the town where the majority of the violence took place, 494 people identified as white and 265 as Roma in the 2021 census.
Other locals directed their opprobrium at private landlords who lease often dilapidated properties as multiple occupancy households, driving up wider rental costs.
Recent years have seen the once prosperous town hit by factory closures. The large employers that remain, such as Moy Park, which makes chicken products, often rely on migrant workers to fill vacancies. Meanwhile, Ballymena's housing estates remain under the influence of loyalist paramilitary gangs.
A community leader from the town's Harryville area said: 'The issues of private landlords, migration and a neglected area have come together. We got to a stage where the dam burst because of tension that was building up.'
Another, who asked not to be named for fear of being targeted, described confronting marauding rioters as they went door to door seeking homes occupied by migrants. He pleaded with a group of some 30 rioters: 'There are good, hard-working foreign nationals living here.'
One of the masked men replied: 'There is no such thing as a good foreigner.'
The community leader said that Catholics had joined Protestants on the streets. 'The irony in it is quite astounding,' he said.
Northern Ireland has experienced an increase in immigration in recent years but on a small scale, remaining the least diverse part of the UK. Only 6.3 per cent of the population was born outside the UK and Ireland in 2021, compared to 4.5 per cent a decade earlier.
'Filipinos live here'
The proportion of foreign-born residents among Ballymena's estimated 31,000 population is higher than the wider picture in Northern Ireland. But at 16 per cent, it is almost exactly in line with the average across the UK.
The wave of anger that swept through Ballymena this week prompted many locals with links abroad to take drastic precautions. Residents from the Philippines, who are vital in staffing the health and social care sector, placed signs on their doors reading 'Filipinos live here'. The efforts were futile.
Iveta Bajanova, 41, a Slovakian who has lived in the area for 14 years, was sitting at home with her children when her windows were smashed and front door kicked through. A group of men tried to storm in only to be stopped by her partner. 'I used to enjoy my life here but now I'm scared,' she said from the boarded up doorway.
Iveta Bajanova outside her home
CHARLES MCQUILLAN FOR THE TIMES
The house of a Filipino night-shift worker at the local Wrightbus factory was firebombed in Cullybackey, a village outside Ballymena.
The violence has led to disorder in other towns. In nearby Larne, a leisure centre that had housed families displaced from Ballymena was attacked and set on fire on Wednesday night.
Relatives of the teenage girl whose alleged assault triggered the episode have been left in dismay, feeling that her voice has been lost. In a statement, they said: 'As a family we would like to let people know that we were in no way involved or condone any trouble.'
With uncertainty about the days ahead, Ballymena's foreign community have been left to ponder their future.
For Marin Gyemant, 36, the decision has been made. The baker, who has lived in Ballymena for six years, has started looking up flights to return to Bucharest in Romania, as have some of his friends.
The front window of his home was smashed on Tuesday night as his two children, aged eight and six, were inside. 'They were screaming 'What are we going to do now',' he said.
Vladimir has slept little this week, spending evenings on the ground floor of his flat beside 80 litres of water in case the property is firebombed. 'Let's wait and see,' he said. 'We are getting ready.'