Mass opposition to right-wing extremist and loyalist rampage in Northern Ireland
Earlier this month, fascist, loyalist and anti-immigration thugs wreaked havoc in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
On August 3, thugs smashed the windows of hotels and cafes and other buildings in Belfast’s Botanical Gardens and threw fireworks at opponents. Masked men threw chairs through windows and attacked immigrant-owned shops. As the far-right thugs apparently headed for the Islamic Center, up to 100 residents lined the streets in the Holyland district and ended the protests. The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) was initially nowhere to be seen.
That same evening, a Syrian-owned supermarket was set on fire and an immigrant cafe was burned down in the Sandy Row area. Cars were burned and projectiles, including Molotov cocktails and pieces of brickwork, were thrown at police, injuring three officers. Four people were arrested over the violence. In other parts of the city, including Donegall Road and University Street, there were riots and attacks on other immigrant-owned businesses.
Elsewhere, the M5 motorway was closed due to protests in Newtownabbey, and there were protests in Bangor and Carrickfergus.
On 5 August, further violence broke out in the Sandy Row area. A shop was attacked for a second time and armoured PSNI Land Rovers were attacked with Molotov cocktails and bricks. Police fired two plastic bullets in response. A man in his 50s was seriously injured in a racially motivated attack that is being treated as a hate crime. Witnesses reported attackers stamping on the man’s head while passers-by tried to shield him.
Police said loyalist paramilitaries were involved in the violence. Loyalist paramilitaries are full of informants. Sandy Row remains a stronghold of the Ulster Defence Association. At a press conference on August 6, Assistant Chief Constable Melanie Jones was evasive, saying she had “no doubt that there is a paramilitary element involved here, but I am not in a position to say that they are the main organisers or leaders of these events.”
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On the same day, masked men rammed a hijacked car into an estate agent’s office in the Shankill Road area of Belfast, while falsely claiming that the agency was renting out apartments to asylum seekers. Additionally, masked men kicked down doors and attacked immigrants’ homes and cars in the Woodvale area.
Further unrest broke out on 10 August when a Molotov cocktail was thrown at a mosque in the town of Newtownards and cars were set on fire in Belfast. One man was arrested in connection with the Newtownards attack.
The unrest coincided with far-right riots and anti-immigration protests in the UK and the Republic of Ireland, and came amid the annual tensions surrounding the July 12 demonstrations.
Supposedly to commemorate King William of Orange’s victory at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, parades of the Orange Order and Ulster Loyalists are held each year. The streets are decorated with Union Jack flags and pennants, while huge, intimidating bonfires are lit in the Loyalist quarters to commemorate the beacons that guided Prince William to Carrickfergus.
A quarter of a century after the Good Friday Agreement was supposed to usher in a new era of “peace and prosperity,” the Irish tricolor, posters of the nationalist parties Sinn Féin, Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) and the pseudo-left People Before Profit, as well as Palestinian flags are regularly burned on bonfires.
The demonstrations, disguised as community festivals, which showcase Protestant dominance, pass through Catholic neighbourhoods and are every year the cause of confrontations between young people from Catholic and Protestant communities.
Adding to recent tensions is the decoration of the public sculpture “Balls on the Falls” on the Broadway roundabout, which is passed by 100,000 motorists every day. Erected in 2011, the public artwork, officially titled “Rise,” can be seen for miles and was intended to symbolize a new future for the city, focused on tourism and transnational investment. Year after year, however, the sculpture is adorned with loyalist flags and emblems, and this year, an Israeli flag.
Loyalist paramilitaries are attempting to expand their influence across the six counties with swastikas, “Combat 18” (AH-Adolf Hitler) graffiti and “Locals Only” posters aimed at keeping minorities out of a new housing development in Antrim.
As in the UK, the far-right violence sparked mass outrage and resistance. On 10 August, up to 20,000 anti-racism protesters gathered in Writers Square in Belfast city centre. The “United in Diversity” rally was organised by United Against Racism and supported by more than 160 groups, including community groups and political parties.
Among the speakers was Saeb Shaath, who owns a Middle East business in Belfast. He said: “There are 3,000 asylum seekers in Northern Ireland. They are not illegal immigrants. They came here because bombs fell on their homes, the war reached them and they sought refuge.” “Who caused the wars? The imperialists and the Zionists.”
Bashir, whose supermarket was burned down, said: “They call me the unofficial mayor of Belfast, can you believe it? … Four days ago, while I was working, I was attacked and almost killed by six masked men.”
But the political speeches were banal and contained no analysis of the origins of right-wing extremist violence, the serious danger it poses or effective means of combating it.
Sinn Féin MP Deidre Hargey said: “The seeds of Islamophobia, racist violence, destruction and brutalism are abhorrent and do not reflect the Belfast we know and love.”
SDLP MP Claire Hanna thanked those present for “rejecting the joyless, empty rhetoric of the same people who are looking for new ways to divide our community and drive new wedges into society.”
Gerry Carroll, member of the Northern Ireland Assembly and member of the organisation People Before Profit, referred to the social crisis: “The housing crisis is not due to migrants, but to greedy landlords. The health crisis is not due to migrants, but to greed and austerity. We have said before that the enemy does not arrive on a makeshift boat, but on a private jet and a limousine.”
Yet neither Carroll nor anyone else made the slightest mention of capitalism, nor of the policies of successive British governments, enforced by the Northern Ireland Executive Councils, which imposed austerity and systematically cracked down on migrants. Carroll made no mention of the Labour government’s frothing anti-immigrant policies, nor of the unions’ refusal to mobilise workers in defence of living standards and democratic rights.
Instead, Carroll’s empty references to socialist republican James Connolly, who “comes from a migrant family”, served as a smokescreen for the policies of the Labour government, the trade union apparatus and the governing parties Sinn Féin and the Democratic Unionist Party.
In a recent article entitled “Mass protests against Britain’s far right: the way forward”, Chris Marsden, national secretary of the Socialist Equality Party, stressed that there could be no successful fight against the threat of the far right that was not “based on the struggle to mobilise the whole working class against the ruling capitalist class and the war and austerity agenda of their Labour government. Only such a socialist programme of struggle can overcome the divisions among workers systematically stoked by the political elite and the media, and cut the ground from under the far right.”
