Several nights of disorder and violence. Incalculable damage to buildings, cars, buses and infrastructure. Twelve police officers injured. Dozens of shops, stalls and businesses belonging to immigrants or non-white owners have been attacked and burned. Live footage, taken from helicopters, of people being chased from their homes. A two-month-old baby was rescued by police as masked thugs go door-to-door evicting any foreigners they can find, leaving at least 27 people homeless. A nurse “with a different skin color” followed by masked people in the hospital where she would soon start her shift.
The last few nights in Belfast have been depressing and terrifying in equal measure, and many are wondering how we got here. Most of the answers to this question have started with the horrific act of violence allegedly committed by a Sudanese national in Belfast, Steven Ogilvie. It is certainly true that this horrific crime has been used by protesters as a rallying cry, just as other heinous acts have been cited as a starting point by far-right thugs from Ballymena and Dublin to Southport – in each case, directly against the wishes of the victim’s family. It’s just that, as a way of explaining everything that’s come since, it’s far from coherent. It is futile to take the far-right at their word when they claim that an alleged crime by a single Sudanese justifies, or even plausibly explains, committing a massacre against every migrant or non-white person they can find. It is also humiliating to note the lack of noise caused by the countless, equally senseless, acts of violence committed by local residents, not least the campaign of wanton destruction the rebels themselves have engaged in over the past few nights.
Some prefer to take two steps away from the above conclusion, blaming the violence not on a specific crime but on long-standing resentment of “unfettered immigration”, to use the words offered by Loyalist MP Jim Allister, in the wake of last year’s riots in Ballymena. Such riots are appalling, the argument goes, but their outrage reflects a legitimate concern; that immigration has simply gone too far.
Again, we risk underestimating ourselves by pointing out that Northern Ireland’s migration rates have never been linked to any increase in crime and represent a tremendous benefit to the economy, from workers in the hospitality and agribusiness sectors to manufacturing and academia. Migrants are the biggest beneficiaries in the health and care sectors, with 22 per cent of carers in the state coming from outside the UK and Ireland, without whom Tracey Reid, chief executive of the Social Care Council of Northern Ireland, says the sector “could not survive”. Such statistics, of course, are broadly similar across the UK and Ireland, and were taken for granted until it became strange for any prominent newspaper or politician to repeat them, in favor of gymnastic distortion to flatter the perceptions and prejudices of those who simply hate immigrants for purely racist reasons. No matter how much they contribute to society and no matter how little they are.
A compelling argument that this is the case can be found in the demography of Northern Ireland itself. Its current population is only two million. According to the latest figures availablenet migration to the state between 2001 and 2023 amounted to about 62,000 people, including less than 2,400 refugees in safe haven. Ballymena, which until this week had been the most prominent site of anti-immigrant violence in the state, is in the Mid and East Antrim council area, which is home to fewer than 5,000 international migrants. this century. Only 3 percent of Northern Ireland’s population belongs to any ethnic minority.
For those of us who find the ongoing discussion of the “immigration problem” dehumanizing and dishonest in any context, it’s revealing to see it set in places where immigration barely exists, not least for what it might suggest about such legitimate concerns elsewhere. We are left to assume that any number of non-white faces, however few, is a sufficiently salient horror to the natives that their concerns are automatically legitimized. Even one, it seems, is too many.
It is true that virulent anti-immigrant rhetoric on social media has seen a sharp rise in recent years. A lot of anger can and should be heaped specifically on Elon Musk. While he deserves scorn for allowing racist narratives to spread on his platform and reinforce them, he is gamely aided by many more moderate and reasonable people who have refused to offer his worldview any meaningful challenge, as illustrated by the BBC News website leading its permanent coverage of the three nights of riots with the words “Belfatack attest” with the words “Belfatack attest” “Belfatack attest”. And while Hillary Benn may be offered some mild praise for calling out the racism of the rebels this week, we should also note that his government’s most visible official response has been Thursday’s promise to cracking down on illegal immigration in Northern Ireland.
Most confusing of all has been the almost total lack of any context as to who exactly is perpetrating all this violence. The reluctance of media outlets to specify that these massacres are the work of loyal far-right gangs is particularly puzzling, given that such groups like to underwrite their work. The LVF and related gangs have for decades spray-painted their labels on the homes of the people they burn, be they Catholics, economic migrants or refugees. Even now their graffiti proudly adorns walls and properties, demanding that they be reserved “for locals only”. I am old enough to remember when the LVF attacked the specially modified home of a severely disabled child because his family was quite Protestant. I’m old enough to remember because it happened less than two years ago.
When loyalist gangs burned Catholic families from their homes in years past, there were few stark, somber pleas for us to understand the arsonists’ concerns. Nor was there a reflexive shock to place such acts in a context that might have appealed to the perpetrators themselves, perhaps drawing direct links between their violent acts and the existence of alleged crimes committed by disaffected Catholics many miles away. That the same logic no longer applies to the massive acts of violence against dozens of non-white people of all nationalities in Belfast, allegedly due to the actions of a single man from Sudan, is as absurd as it is disgusting.
Their targets have changed and social media has no doubt modernized their methods, but this is a story of a staunch loyalist element, decades-long in far-right ideology, emboldened anew at a time when sensible moderates have abandoned any attempt to tell them they can be bigots. The same old group, in the same old places, that long ago calcified their rejection of “non-native” Catholics into active and proudly proclaimed racism.
So how did we get here? I’m not sure we ever left.
(Further reading: Violence in Belfast, Britain’s fury)
