Riots in Northern Ireland: this is also about racism

My dad died two days before Christmas in 2023. On the day of his funeral rain poured from the heavens. We waded through thick mud to get to his grave. “Christ,” my brother remarked, “it’s like the f**king Somme.”

In Northern Ireland, protestant burials are often small, private affairs. Only close family go and you must be invited to attend. When we arrived, we expected a small number of people. To our surprise, there was a crowd. My dad was a solicitor and, in his later years, he’d specialised in immigration law. Some of his clients, many of them refugees, had turned out to pay their respects to him and my dad’s partner, who was Iranian.

That gesture meant everything on a miserable, awful day. When my dad was dying in the Ulster Hospital, he was cared for by NHS staff from across Northern Ireland and the world. We should thankful that people have come to Northern Ireland to help our health service. It would all but collapse without them.

Others don’t see it that way. Northern Ireland, a country defined by its violent past, has decided that every non-white person must suffer collective punishment for the actions of one man.

It takes a lot to shock people in Belfast but the brutal attack on Stephen Ogilvie on the 8th June by a refugee has horrified everyone. I know someone who arrived in the aftermath. I felt physically ill when I heard the details. They are too horrifying to write.

In the wake of the attack, Northern Ireland has once again descended into violence. This is the third summer of pogroms, protests and road blocks. In 2024 unrest broke out in Northern Ireland following the Southport attack and in 2025 it was in Ballymena when two Roma men were accused of sexually assaulting a young woman.

This time, there are checkpoints in loyalist parts of Belfast, masked men asking for IDs as they decide who is allowed in or out. Houses occupied by foreigners are being methodically targeted. A hit list of properties circulated on Whatsapp by various far right groups, their addresses obviously scoped out in advance. Online, people are compiling lists of immigration lawyers who work in the city. The atmosphere in the city is tense and unnerving.

Racism doesn’t just happen during the summer. Only four weeks ago, Amnesty International warned that racist violence was, “spiralling out of control,” in Northern Ireland. The PSNI recorded 1, 517 racist hate crimes in the past year, the highest on record.

There is no doubt that immigration is putting pressure on the system in Northern Ireland. Our public services are on their knees. The NHS is close to collapse, patients waiting years before they are seen for basic surgery. In the housing sector, where I work, homeless numbers are rising to record levels due to the lack of available housing. Mears places asylum seekers in working class communities, areas of high housing deprivation, so this is adding to housing stress. However, the root of these problems lie with local politicians, not with migrants and refugees.

Working class communities, which include migrants and refugees, suffer the most from Northern Ireland’s economic malaise. They suspect, rightly, that some middle class people would rather hold a sign welcoming refugees than have anything to do with them and the hardships they face.

Economic issues provide important context but focusing on legitimate concerns obfuscates the nature of the violence. People are writing, “whites only,” and swastikas on walls close to where people were intimidated out of their homes. Black people are not being chased out of their homes because rioters disagree with the Common Travel Area. What are we doing here?

Racism isn’t confined to one community in Northern Ireland but all the violence has occurred in protestant, loyalist/unionist areas. There are nationalists who support the riots, but they are staying quiet. Sinn Fein represents working class republican areas and Irish republicans connect with the Irish immigrant story. The republican struggle is linked to liberation movements in Palestine and anti-apartheid South Africa. In 2025, attempts to intimidate migrants in republican west Belfast were stopped quickly. This attitude could change in the future but, for now, the lack of similar action in protestant areas is embarrassing.

Being from the protestant community myself, being a unionist, this has been a shameful few days. I’m embarrassed to say I’m from Belfast.

It’s simplistic and lazy to argue that racism occurs more in protestant communities because we’re stupid, hateful people. Because we are descended from colonisers, the argument goes, we are ethnically inclined to hate other people. This ethno nationalist logic assumes that racism is natural and inevitable. That nothing can possibly be done about this.

There is a strong, anti-racist tradition in the community dating back to the 18th Century. Mary Ann McCracken, a Presbyterian, supported catholic emancipation and the abolition of slavery. Until she died at the age of 89, she could be found at the Belfast docks handing out abolition leaflets. Such was her opposition to slavery, she never touched a drop of sugar. There is a plaque in the Shankill library in tribute to the seven local men who travelled to Spain to join the international brigades and fight against Franco in the Spanish Civil War in 1936. When Britain First set up in Northern Ireland, they didn’t get the support they expected. According to Hope Not Hate, a member of the political group, “….noticed over time that Britain First’s “patriotism” was not welcomed by most of the Unionist community.”

Many protestants/unionists and loyalists are disgusted with the events of the past few weeks. That fact is little comfort to people who’ve been intimidated out of their homes. They don’t need to hear that most people are nice. Who cares when ethnic minorities are being ethnically cleansed from Belfast and nobody is doing anything to stop it. Racism has always been a problem in Northern Ireland, but particularly so in protestant areas. This isn’t a working class problem either. Racism comes from the top, not the bottom.

For most of its history, conservative unionism has dominated unionist electoral politics. The Ulster Unionist Party ran Northern Ireland for most of its history. The DUP, which emerged from the Free Presbyterian Church, now dominates unionism. Local protestant churches tend to be right wing and support conservative political causes. On that spectrum of opinion comes anti migrant, racist sentiment.

There have always been links between Northern Ireland and the far right, a connection that should have been squashed like a bug long ago. Combat 18, a neo nazi terrorist organisation, has links with the loyalist paramilitaries. Britain First, a far right political party, was founded in Northern Ireland in 2022.

Racism is tolerated in unionist politics. Politicians who’ve made racist remarks are always re-elected and treated with respect. Racist politicians are lauded and treated as statesmen. Take Enoch Powell, who made the infamous Rivers of Blood speech, was an Ulster Unionist MP. When he died in 1998, he was lauded by ulster unionists for his commitment to the union. David Trimble said, “Enoch Powell made a tremendous contribution to the public life of the whole of the UK.”

In recent years, elements of loyalism and unionism have become swayed by the Trump/Thiel aligned radical right. After the attack on Stephen Ogilvie. Jim Allister, blamed it on an “alien culture,” rhetoric straight from the Thiel playbook. It’s a strange choice of words in a country where we tried to kill each other for thirty years.

Online, some unionist and loyalist accounts talk about the great replacement theory and the invasion of Islam. American style aesthetics have been adopted by unionists. Jesus flags fly alongside union flags in parts of East Belfast. There are calls for Christians across Northern Ireland to march together to fight Islam and carry large, wooden crosses. This is why talk of economic concerns misses the big picture.

Growing white supremacist sentiment is growing down south as well. In the Republic of Ireland, fascists held solidarity marches in support of those that rioted. People talk of, “Ireland for the Irish,” and embracing traditional Catholicism to protect Ireland’s borders.

 

There is horrifying potential here. After centuries of fighting between green and orange, they could finally unite under the banner of racism. Fascists know this as well.

 

If Belfast’s poorest areas are left to rot and people’s lives fail to improve, the far right will gain further ground in Belfast. If politicians across the board in the NI Assembly fail to tackle festering racism in their local areas, the far right will gain ground in Northern Ireland. More than anything though, Belfast is a warning to the world. We are the future, not the past, if violence continues to happen.