On Saturday, Aug. 3, Belfast in Northern Ireland joined many towns and cities across England as residents held an anti-immigration rally outside the City Hall. It was triggered by the same issue, pitched against the immigration that some believed had led to the death of three young girls in Southport, even though by now the initial lie, that the perpetrator was a Muslim refugee, had been debunked (he was in fact a Christian, born in the U.K.). There was abundant evidence from online posts that there was potential for violence at this event, billed by attendees as a protest. And sure enough, the group didn’t stop at shouting slogans outside the City Hall, and didn’t stop on Aug. 3.
The police allowed the group out of the central square where they started, which in retrospect was a major strategic error. The demonstrators did not have the necessary permission from the Parades Commission to march, and yet they were able to make their way to South Belfast, regrouping outside the Belfast Islamic Centre. Given that they had stated this aim on social media, there was a large police presence. But this didn’t stop the sort of violence that many towns in England had already witnessed. The mob instead made its way to other Muslim targets, attacking individuals and businesses as well as attempting to enter a number of hotels housing asylum-seekers. Since then, there have been sporadic attacks across the city and beyond on other ethnically owned businesses, Islamic places of worship, homes of nonwhite families and other individuals, and the police, as well as arson.
Protests and parades are contentious issues in Northern Ireland, where every July the Orange Order (a Protestant fraternity) takes to the streets in celebration of the victory in Ireland of the British Protestant King William III (William of Orange) in 1690. They have long been a touch point for violence between loyalist Protestants (also known as “unionists” for their commitment to the Union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland) and republican Catholics in Northern Ireland (also known as “nationalists,” referring to the Irish nationalist cause, aiming for a united island of Ireland).
Eventually, the rioters were stopped, but not by police. In a republican area, members of the local community met them. In the face of mass resistance, the group dispersed, in one of the more inspiring outcomes of the city’s week of fear, anxiety and mayhem.
Though the week saw many racist attacks, it has also seen overwhelming anti-racist responses, culminating in a 15,000-strong demonstration on Aug. 10, a huge event in a city with a population of 350,000.
However, these numbers of counterprotesters weren’t there from the start, and tracking the actions of both sides over a week of tension, not to mention the action and inaction of leaders, tells us a great deal about the issues and what the future holds.
The race riots happened in loyalist, working-class areas (Sandy Row in south Belfast as well as in east Belfast), but this doesn’t mean that the protesters can be neatly defined. The working class includes nonwhite people, of course, and huge numbers of white working-class Belfast citizens have turned out on the anti-racist counterprotests. But there are reasons that the riots started in these neighborhoods, whose recent history is of decades of neglect and a lack of investment. In all key areas, from housing to education to infrastructure, the austerity measures of the U.K. central government over the past 14 years have left deep marks on working-class communities across the country. This provides some ideas as to how to mitigate violence in the future.
But first we need to answer the question of how a lack of public services leads to someone taking out their anger not on local elected politicians and political parties that have failed them but by burning the premises of an immigrant who started a local business.
For me, it’s personal. As someone who was raised a Catholic (though I would describe myself as not so much a “lapsed” as a “completely collapsed” one) from the mainly working-class area of Coolock in Dublin and who helped organize the anti-racist counterprotest at Belfast City Hall at that first racist rally, I was shocked to see across from me a banner proclaiming: “Coolock Says No.”
The banner was familiar to me. It came from recent race-related violence in Dublin, including the destruction by arson of a building earmarked to house asylum-seekers. The message was that Coolock was rejecting refugees and indeed any immigration. To see this banner being flown alongside the Irish tricolor, the British flag and the Northern Ireland flag, held by people standing beside loyalists who have traditionally been, to say the least, in profound disagreement with those from Dublin, was bewildering. People who wanted the reunification of Ireland, who had traveled from Dublin to express their strong anti-immigrant feelings, were standing shoulder to shoulder with people with anti-Irish and anti-Catholic sentiments, including a convicted loyalist paramilitary killer, and were later that evening feted as heroes in a local loyalist pub, after the pogroms and violence.
This unity has since evolved; it initially evaporated, though there are signs it is re-forming. Within Irish racist circles there was condemnation of those who brought that banner up to Belfast to stand with British loyalists. Later that week, some were beaten up at an anti-immigration march in Dublin by other racist factions, and the official “Coolock Says No” group distanced itself from what had happened. That seemed to be the end of any cross-border, cross-community racist unity: At the anti-immigration rally on Aug. 9, there was no sign of the Dublin contingent. However, at the time of writing (Aug. 11) , there are rumors of loyalist anti-immigrant protesters intending to join a “Dundalk Says No” anti-immigrant event in that city, just south of the border in the Republic of Ireland.
This bridging of the sectarian divide, united by hate, was not my only shock that day. At the same gathering, the anti-immigration group unfurled and waved an Israeli flag. Not 10 feet away, a member of the racist crowd was prominently giving a Nazi salute. This is the topsy-turvy world of contemporary racism. Even more worrying is that these views seem to be seeping into the mainstream, or at least are normalized enough among some to be freely expressed. A local was interviewed on the BBC and asked if he felt sorry for his neighbor, who was clearing up the debris after his business was burned down. The response was extreme. “He shouldn’t be in the community. … As far as I’m concerned there’s too many foreigners here. This was a lovely place once, now it’s stinkin’. … I don’t want them here. …. This is a white community. It always has been and it always will be, hopefully.” He finished with the defiant and familiar “I’m not racist.”
On Aug. 5, we came out again, when another anti-immigrant protest was planned, outside a hotel rumored to be housing asylum-seekers, though this turned out to be pure online misinformation, embellished by stories of refugees partying and treating the staff like slaves. On this occasion, we were outnumbered: about 25 of us and maybe 70 of them. (There was also a strong police presence, for which I was grateful.)
This occasion brought out another shocking element of the far right, which was the presence and use of children, some as young as 6 or 7, who were sent into our group by adults to function as spies, reporting on our conversations. There were also women in the same role, some pushing prams. These people claim they want to protect their children and women from immigrants, and yet here they were using them to eavesdrop, not to mention exposing them to hatred and conflict. A particularly terrible example of this is seen in a video taken on a Belfast street showing a young girl no more than 10 skipping down the road holding her mother‘s hand, singing “Pakis out, Pakis out” to the laughter of the adults around her. (“Paki” is a racist term of abuse for someone from a Pakistani background.)
We have to recognize that there is real racism in our communities, alongside anger over lack of investment, jobs and public services. According to the BBC, the Police Service of Northern Ireland said it does not doubt that a paramilitary element was involved in the recent riots. The links between these loyalist paramilitaries and the English far right and fascist ideology go back decades: The now-defunct Britain First party was actually founded in the north of Ireland.
We also need to address the online disinformation driving racist ideology — radicalizing people by propagating lies and white supremacy ideology. Elon Musk, Andrew Tate and Tommy Robinson, among many others, have been spreading racist views to their millions of followers on mainstream platforms. Just as we have seen Nazi salutes on the streets of Belfast, we have seen outright racism coming out from dark corners of the internet to places where it is easily seen and spread. It is plain to see that the riots in Belfast were based on lies, because the focus of the anger was immigration, while Northern Ireland actually has very little: 3.4% of the 1.8 million inhabitants in the north of Ireland belong to ethnic minority groups, and as of March 31 this year, 2,748 people were in receipt of asylum support — the lowest number of any U.K. region and down from 3.030 in March 2024. It’s a nonissue and yet it fueled attacks on people and property.
But despite the very real racism here in Belfast and the tense, anxious and exhausting week we have just experienced, I am confident we will not be divided by class, race or sectarianism. The anti-racist rallies grew and grew, culminating in the Aug. 10 rally of 15,000 people taking to the streets in support of all kinds of diversity. Ethnic minorities, the LGBTQ community, Muslims, trade unions, community groups, women and feminist groups, environmentalists and members of the arts and culture community marched together against racism, division and hate. A notable feature was the large presence of the young.
Politically, we saw Sinn Fein and the SDLP (the two main Irish nationalist parties) join with the cross-community Alliance party and left-wing parties such as People Before Profit, the Socialist Party, the Workers Party, anarchists and the Green Party to stand against racism. Noticeable by their absence have been the unionist parties: the Democratic Unionist Party, the Ulster Unionist Party and the Traditional Unionist Voice. The reality is that we will not have an effective response to this racist violence without bringing loyalists onto the anti-racist side. Unionist political leaders have condemned the violence with the usual “law and order” framing, which is welcome but is incomplete and insufficient. What we also need is for them to join with us, both to support a diverse society and also in helping to deliver investment in all our communities.
For the moment, at least, the racist elements of Northern Ireland — vastly outnumbered by those protesting against them — have been routed. But this is only the beginning of the work that needs to be done. The far right has been growing and becoming mainstream for years, and the lack of investment persists. Both elements have to be addressed or we will see more violence from this small part of the population.
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