Initially, the commotion began with cries from the horde as it inundated the narrow terraced streets, voicing its mission to cleanse the town of what they labeled as “scum”. This was swiftly followed by the smashing of glass as rocks pulverized windows. The inferno that succeeded devoured curtains, sofas, carpets, books, and framed pictures, until smoke engulfed the summer sky.
Though they mirrored scenes from bygone eras and distant lands, these events transpired in Northern Ireland this week, under the relentless gaze of rolling news and social media, which captured a chorus of glee and hatred. “Where are the foreigners?” the mob’s shouts echoed.
The targets were families with distinguishing features — different nationalities, ethnicities, skin tones, and languages. The objective was expulsion, or worse. “There’s someone in that room,” a voice trapped on video remarked. “Aye, but are they from around here?” a compatriot replied. “If they’re local, they need to leave. If they’re not, they should stay put.”
No fatalities were recorded in Ballymena, the County Antrim town that erupted in violence and continued to burn for the rest of the week, nor in other towns where smaller outbursts of mischief echoed these events. However, families fled, dozens of police suffered injuries, and Northern Ireland confronted stark questions regarding race, xenophobia, and intolerance.
Thirty years prior, the Good Friday agreement marked the end of the Troubles. Republican and loyalist paramilitaries, with their vision for a unified Ireland and a region firmly planted within the UK, respectively, wound down the cycle of violence.
Peace ushered in the novelty of immigration and diversity. In the 2001 census, a mere 14,300 people, a mere 0.8% of the total populace, belonged to a minority ethnic group. By 2021, this figure had leaped to 65,600 individuals, representing 3.4% of the populace. Despite this, Northern Ireland remains predominantly white when compared to England (18%) and Scotland (11%).
Nevertheless, many residents in Ballymena, a predominantly working-class Protestant town 25 miles north of Belfast, harbor a sense of invasion, infestation, and disruption by foreigners.
The discord was not ignited solely by the hundreds of young men who hurled projectiles and donned masks; older residents, during lulls in the mayhem, voiced their support for the tumult. “We yearn to have our voices heard. If this is the only way, so it must be,” remarked a woman in her thirties, who opted to remain unnamed.
The Police Federation of Northern Ireland declared that its officers, by drawing the mob’s ire, had forestalled a pogrom.
The spark was allegedly an assault on a teenage girl by two 14-year-old boys, who appeared in court with a Romanian interpreter and were charged with attempted rape. Loyalist factions in other regions seized this as their incitement to protest. “It’s time to stand up and bar these illicit migrant gangs from descending upon our town, bringing with them pedophiles, drug pushers, traffickers, and prostitutes,” a group in Portadown proclaimed, urging a march on a hostel.
This animosity has a straightforward, oversimplified rationale: some communities harbor a dislike for outsiders — a broad, evolving category in Northern Ireland known as “them ‘uns”. Protestant loyalist mobs in Belfast once torched Catholic homes at the onset of the Troubles in 1969. Ballymena earned notoriety in the 1990s and mid-2000s with sectarian attacks on Catholic schools and churches.
Loyalists in adjacent towns have been accused of a sporadic campaign of paint bombs, shattered windows, graffiti, and menacing posters, all aimed at non-white residents.
“Some areas harbor fundamental racism, which I’ll express charitably as a robust sense of social and cultural solidarity,” remarked Malachi O’Doherty, a commentator and author of How to Fix Northern Ireland. Communities accustomed to living on the same estate may bristle at outsiders securing houses that could have otherwise passed to friends or relatives, he noted. Whether it’s Catholics or Roma, it’s perceived as a weakening of that community.
Just 4.9% of Ballymena’s populace is non-white, according to the 2021 census, and very few of the newcomers are asylum seekers. Yet, there’s a widespread belief in the proliferation of “subsisting refugees”, and skepticism towards official statistics. “What we’re reading differs greatly from the government’s narrative,” said a resident in his fifties. The riots were overdue, although, he conceded, the noise disrupted his sleep.
The current unrest has a seasonal characteristic: summer is when loyalists — and to a lesser extent, republicans — assert their identities through parades with drums and flutes, and by kindling bonfires, traditions that fuel tension and confrontation.
Catholics have joined Protestants in anti-immigrant activities and have staged their own protests in Catholic areas, though these eruptions tend to be smaller and less frequent. “Catholics almost take a sectarian delight in not being bigoted. ‘We’re not like them,'” remarked O’Doherty.
In spite of its rough reputation, Northern Ireland fares better in terms of housing, unemployment, and poverty than numerous parts of England, Wales, and Scotland. Nevertheless, it boasts some of the UK’s lowest educational attainment levels and the highest rate of economically inactive individuals, metrics that hint at the hopelessness and alienation felt in certain Catholic and Protestant working-class areas.
An education system that largely segregates the two main groups also tends to isolate minority ethnic students, said Rebecca Loader, a social science researcher at Queen’s University Belfast. “You have schools with no diversity and schools with high diversity, possibly separated only by a few miles. Certain groups of people never encounter each other. It’s not conducive to meeting and learning about others.” Also, Northern Ireland’s curriculum addresses racism very little, unlike curriculums in Britain, particularly Wales, she noted.
Two factors, neither of which is unique to Northern Ireland, have exacerbated this tension. One is politics. Leaders across the political spectrum have denounced the violence and called for calm. However, critics argue that some unionist parties — representing loyalism — give mixed signals by defending “legitimate protest” and amplifying myths about immigration.
Political unity fractured on Thursday after Gordon Lyons, the DUP communities minister, complained on social media about not being consulted regarding a leisure center in Larne hosting families displaced from Ballymena. Shortly afterward, a mob set the center ablaze. Northern Ireland Secretary Hilary Benn urged Lyons to reflect on his comments; Sinn Féin’s First Minister Michelle O’Neill suggested he should step down.
Paul Sceeny, an interim manager at the North West Migrants Forum in Derry, noted that growing international aversion to immigrants was affecting Northern Ireland. “People are becoming more emboldened to use racist slurs. It’s part of a larger pattern,” he remarked.
The other factor is social media. Protest organizers leverage Facebook, TikTok, and other platforms to garner support and broadcast outcomes. In Ballymena, rioters reportedly requested likes, follows, and gifts from viewers during live streams of house destruction.
In the daytime calm this week, while authorities cleared streets of debris and foreign families prepared to leave, youths congregated over smartphones and dissected footage, almost as actors reviewing a performance, seeking ways to improve for the next event.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/jun/14/facile-explanation-for-ballymena-outbreak-of-hostility-northern-ireland-racism
