Northern Ireland shaken but defiant after mobs set ‘foreign’ homes ablaze

By Friday the violence had spread to other towns, with 17 arrests and more than 60 police wounded by petrol bombs, fireworks and rocks. Officers came from Scotland to bolster numbers.

The red hand of Ulster and images of William of Orange are familiar icons in these parts, but the loyalist insignia became tokens of safety last week, hung from windows and pinned to doors to deter racist mobs targeting migrants for the alleged crimes of two 14-year-old boys.

Last Monday, two boys appeared by videolink at Coleraine Magistrates’ Court, accused of the attempted rape of a teenage girl in Ballymena. Dressed in grey tracksuits, they sat beside each other at a juvenile detention centre and spoke through a Romanian interpreter. That evening, thousands gathered in Ballymena in an initially peaceful show of support for the complainant.

When police stopped the crowd from entering Clonavon Terrace, where the girl alleges that she was sexually assaulted, masked men began making roadblocks and stockpiling bricks and rocks. Five nights of arson and rioting followed.

Inside one of the terraced houses, a visibly shaken Filipino man put his hand to his heart. “Right now I can’t explain how fearful I am. We’re just afraid because we might get in trouble if we don’t put anything on our house,” he told Channel 4 News last Thursday.

“We asked the landlord if they can provide us some flags or anything. They just gave us that,” he said, gesturing to a loyalist flag in the window.

Dozens of homes were targeted, either with windows smashed or fires started. In one video, two young men in face coverings filmed themselves entering the kitchen of a house where multiple fires appeared to have been lit, shouting “f*** the foreigners” before emerging to cheers. Black graffiti on a white pebbledashed wall read “Roma rapists out”. By Friday night the violence had died down in Ballymena but spread to Portadown and there were pockets of disorder in Derry, Larne, parts of Belfast and Coleraine.

These areas, like Ballymena, are associated with working-class, Protestant, unionist, loyalist, and British-identity communities in Northern Ireland and have issues with paramilitary control and criminality.

Chief Constable John Boutcher, head of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), blamed the violence on “racists and bigots” and warned: “We will come after you. We will arrest you. We will prosecute you successfully.”

The force has been releasing images of suspects to the public, and the Stormont government is said to be considering fast-track courts to act as a deterrent.

Outside Belfast City Hall yesterday several hundred people gathered in the rain for a United Against Racism rally. Other demonstrations have taken place or are planned across the country. Participants carried placards and chanted: “No hate, no fear, refugees are welcome here,” and “When migrant rights are under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back.”

Speaking at the rally, Patrick Corrigan, Amnesty International director for Northern Ireland, said the violence over the course of the week had been “driven by racist lies and misinformation”

“Too many of our politicians have fanned the flames of racism rather than put it out this week when they have conflated immigration and migrants with crime and pressure on public services. It is untrue and dangerous in a climate where people are weaponising those sorts of lies.”

Home Office figures to the end of March this year showed that, across Northern Ireland, 2,637 people were in receipt of asylum support. There are no asylum seekers in Ballymena at all. The town’s population was 94% white when the last census was taken in 2021.

“We are so lucky this week that we have not already lost lives and, frankly, we are only a petrol bomb away from racially motivated murder,” Corrigan said.

The Northern Ireland Public Service Alliance deputy general secretary Patrick Mulholland told the crowd he was a native of Ballymena. He said: “Let me tell you this: they did not speak for the people of Ballymena. The thousands who protested against potential sex crimes, they spoke for Ballymena.”

Women’s rights campaigners have also questioned where the public uproar is in cases where rape and sexual assault perpetrators are white. Claire Hanna, an SDLP MP, called the riots a “racist pogrom”, adding: “I campaign year-round on violence against women and girls and I don't see the same people who are exercised about it today campaigning with me.”

The familiar sight of armoured Land Rovers and officers in full riot gear out in force in the streets also raised concerns about the state of the PSNI.

As part of the 1998 Belfast Agreement, Lord Patten recommended that the force should have 7,500 officers with 2,500 in reserve. It currently stands at just under 6,400, with at least 1,000 on long-term sick leave. Hugh Orde, former head of PSNI, told The Observer: “Successive governments have failed to honour the Patten report. The force needs the support and the funding to do its job.”

He added that community leaders had shown “no sign of stepping up . ... I’ve heard nothing from any community leaders to explain, justify or, more importantly, condemn what’s happening.”

Jim Gamble, a former policeman who served in senior roles in Northern Ireland, said: “What we’re seeing is the result of poor politics, poor examples being set and a police service that’s doing the best that it can with very limited resources.”

He said that the areas affected indicated the “malign influence” of loyalist paramilitary groups either endorsing or allowing the violence to take place.

“I used to say we might have killed each other in the past but we’re very nice to strangers. I’m just not sure that’s true any more,” he added.

“In Northern Ireland historically, territory has been marked by painting kerbsides and by murals. But this is taking it to an entirely different extreme, when people feel they have got to put signs in their window so that they’re not going to be attacked.”

Photograph by Niall Carson/PA