Far-right mobs have taken to the streets in race riots which have swept across Ballymena, targeting the homes of foreign families with arson attacks. The outrageous scenes of violence from loyalist thugs – almost certainly coordinated with the help of the UDA – are reminiscent of the pogroms which, in 1969, sparked the Troubles.
The rape of a young girl was cynically exploited as pretext to whip up a pogrom mood against immigrants. At the time of writing, we have witnessed three nights of rioting in Ballymena, accompanied by flare-ups of “sporadic disorder” across loyalist communities. A leisure centre in Larne was attacked and another night of rioting followed in Portadown. Similar smaller incidents also spread across Coleraine, Carrickfergus, Newtownabbey, and parts of Belfast.
These loyalist, far-right gangsters have sought sympathy by playing on the genuine concerns of many with violence against women and children. However, they are nothing but disgusting hypocrites who clearly have no concern with unleashing a campaign of violence in their own communities, terrorising all women and children in the process. This tragically includes the victim, who has only been further traumatised by these riots.
Videos from the riots show the racist terror in all its ugly colours. In one such video, a person was being attacked in their home. A voice is heard calling, “If they’re local, they need out. If they’re not local, let them f****** stay there.” Other reports tell of families putting British flags on their doors and in their windows to avoid attacks. Images of loyalist gangs in balaclavas targeting non-British homes will conjure up horrific memories for the Catholic communities who have lived through all of this before.
This filth has also spread across social media like a wildfire. One post calling for a protest in Portadown read: “It’s time to take a stand and stop welcoming these illegal migrant gangs flocking into our town, paedophiles, drug pushers, human traffickers, prostitutes”.
DUP MLA Gordon Lyons used social media to inform his constituents that “a number of individuals were temporarily moved to Larne Leisure Centre in the early hours of the morning following the disturbances in Ballymena.” Having heard loud and clear that the ‘illegal migrants’ were in Larne, a gang of loyalists attacked and set the leisure centre on fire just a few hours later.
The situation in Ballymena has somewhat calmed down since. However, disorders keep on flaring up across the North. The atmosphere remains tense, and hundreds and thousands of families live in terror of being the next target.
We have no trust in Stormont or the PSNI to put a stop to this chaos. The institutions of British rule are responsible for sparking these riots. Only the working class has the interest and the ability to cut across the divide and defend all communities in the North.
But once again, the left has been caught napping, and the most vulnerable in society have been left to face the consequences. An anti-racist protest organised in Belfast in the days following the riots shows that workers and youth are willing to stand up against the violence, but simply denouncing racism is not enough to protect communities from these attacks.
Riots and pogroms must be met with the weight of the organised working class to kick them off the streets. The enormous strength that was shown in the public sector strike should be mobilised for this on the basis of a militant campaign to fight back against the violence, the cuts and the whole of the racist establishment.
Establishment to blame
Politicians from across the North and in Britain have been scrambling to condemn the violence. But it is precisely with them that the blame for the violence rests. Let’s be clear: it was the establishment in Britain and the North who have consciously stirred up racist, anti-immigrant and sectarian sentiments to distract from the real issues facing workers. In doing so, they have made riots like this inevitable.
There has been a deluge of racism in the Irish and British media for a number of years. This racism is perfectly in tune with the policy of the ruling class across the West, which has used immigrants as a scapegoat for the unending crisis the capitalist system finds itself in. Ireland is not immune from this process. On the contrary, now we are seeing this poison reflected in its most extreme form, in the reactionary dregs of loyalism. That was on display in Ballymena.
Not only has Starmer’s Labour itself been playing into anti-immigrant rhetoric, but they have demanded Stormont make £113 million in cuts. Stormont under Sinn Féin have agreed to carry this out. Sinn Féin are doing this because they want to show they are capable of running the North in the interests of ‘everyone’. But with the economic and social decline of the North due to decades of austerity, combined with its total neglect by Westminster, instead of uniting communities, the question of where cuts are to be made will only lead to further polarisation.
As just one recent example of this, a couple of weeks before the riots began, the Antrim-based manufacturing group Jans Holdings collapsed, announcing 100 redundancies in its wake. May this year was announced as the month with the most redundancies – 560 confirmed and 780 proposed – since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
Without any militant working-class alternative, all of the anger this generates is only entrenching support for the most extreme fringes of loyalism.
Unionism raises its ugly head
Since their last electoral debacle, the DUP, seeing the TUV and UUP nipping at their heels in the polls and with nothing concrete to offer to their unionist voter base, began consciously leaning into anti-immigrant rhetoric to try and beat the orange drum in a desperate attempt to hold onto some of their waning support. Immigration is not a devolved issue, and so they can point the finger exactly when the loyalist anger is felt: at their abandonment by London.
On Monday, just before the riots broke out, Paul Frew, an MLA for the DUP, blamed Westminster’s neglect of illegal immigration as the reason for the sexual assault in Ballymena. Jim Allister – TUV MP for North Antrim – has been putting on the same performance in Westminster. This blatantly fanned the flames that burned across Ballymena that night.
The disgusting hypocrisy of DUP members blaming immigration for these abhorrent assaults should be noted! As was highlighted in the Belfast Telegraph, a former DUP councillor for Ballymena, William Wilkinson, was sentenced to seven years in jail for raping a woman. Davy Tweed, another former DUP councillor turned TUV member, was convicted of child sexual abuse.
Then there is Jeffrey Donaldson and his sexual offence charges, the DUP’s links to the UDA, whose members have been accused of sexually exploiting teenage girls, and the high profile case of the paedophile ring operating in the North out of Kincora with the full knowledge, and participation, of leaders of the DUP and the Orange Order.Clearly these criminal politicians are the biggest gang of predators in Ireland. They don’t care a straw about the safety of women. All that matters to them is advancing their political careers.
Socialism or barbarism
That the riots began in Ballymena is also noteworthy. Ballymena is a Unionist stronghold which was for half a century the seat of the Paisley ‘dynasty’. But the consistent mood of demoralisation, abandonment and above all betrayal felt in loyalist communities led to the unseating of Ian Paisley Jr. in the Westminster elections last year.
Jim Alister and the TUV were able to outflank Paisley to the right by talking harder about the Irish Sea border, showing how anger against the unionist establishment is being funnelled back into the most extreme fringes of Unionism. Allister himself expressed that the election results were a “very clear indication that the unionist people of North Antrim will not be taken for granted”.
This reflected the mood of resentment at years of neglect. As one Ballymena resident put it: “I think he’s [Jim Allister] always just told the truth. We’ve just been lied to so much by the DUP and others. He’s always been honest about what’s happening.” Of course, the TUV is far from honest. The only difference between them and the DUP is that, since they are not in power, they can more opportunistically play into the frustrated mood of these communities.
This is only possible, however, because of the lack of a militant working-class alternative being provided from the left and trade unions.
The events from last week should be a serious warning. The North is just one accident away from descending back into sectarian violence. Unless we build a genuine revolutionary alternative, barbarism lies ahead.But this is not a foregone conclusion. Workers should take inspiration from their heroic traditions, from the great Belfast dockers’ strike of 1907 and the outdoor relief strike of 1932, which both demonstrated the power of the working class when united.
What these movements had in common was an anti-sectarian, communist leadership which strove to unite both communities against their exploiters. Only by building such a leadership can we claw Protestant workers from the clutches of Unionism and drive to sea the horrors of racism and sectarianism.
