The recent rioting and pogrom in Belfast was met with the trite, facile interpretations and responses we have grown all too used to hearing. Proffered explanations ranged from attributing the violence to trouble-stirring social media postings, to loyalist paramilitary intervention, to lax border controls accommodating freeloading, dangerous foreigners (invariably dark-skinned).
The responses that followed were as predictable as they were anodyne. Every political party in the Assembly condemned the disturbances, although unionism qualified its criticism. At the same time, the other political parties made little effort to analyse the root causes apart from the safe option of rejecting racism and violent protests.
Missing from all this was a properly penetrating analysis as to what caused the disturbances to reach the intensity they did or, more significant still, what are the possible consequences of what happened.
Let’s not forget that, in the days preceding the Belfast pogrom, there were several racially motivated incidents. A disused premises on Belfast’s Shankill Road, being converted for use as a grocery shop by an Indian businessman, was burned out in an arson attack. In Mid-Ulster, Moygashel loyalists continuously displayed an anti-Muslim poster, deemed illegal by the PSNI. While in County Down, the DUP’s Carla Lockhart MP was joined by several elected representatives from the Ulster Unionist Party and the TUV to take part in hurling abuse at people demonstrating against the Zionist genocide in Gaza.
Against this background and in spite of some reporting, the June pogroms were clearly not spontaneous. There can be little doubt that the rioting was organised and led by loyalist groupings. Moreover, contingency planning to take advantage of any opportunity must have been in place for some time prior to the brutal attack on Stephen Ogilvie. The fact that, within hours of the knife attack, lists of names and addresses of migrants were distributed to hordes of young men dressed and ready to wreak havoc indicates the degree of preparation.
Lending a measure of spurious legitimacy and encouragement to those involved in perpetrating the pogrom was political unionism. In a well-practised routine, unionist politicians spoke from both sides of the mouth. Following their ritual condemnation of violence, they began pointing at supposed lax immigration control at Dublin airport and an open border resulting from the Common Travel Area.
Making sure there would be no mistaking the underlying racist message coupled with demands for a fortified border, Jim Allister’s TUV produced a hideous cartoon. The offensive piece was illustrated by a bus, apparently loaded with dark-skinned people including women wearing hijabs, all displaying banners proclaiming access to: free housing, free money, free healthcare and free benefits.
Whether consciously designed to do so is difficult to say, but by underlining the supposed economic objective of the so-called migrant invasion, the message resonated with many in working-class unionist areas. Globalisation has now resulted in the deindustrialisation of what once was a source of relatively well-paid employment for a majority of working-class unionists. Currently, the scene is one of unemployment and hardship, exacerbated by criminals exploiting the misery with drug dealing and extortion. All of which contributes to fuelling anger leading to the inexcusable victimisation of migrants living in predominantly loyalist areas.
There is, of course, a long and cruel history of such loyalist offensives in the North, until more recently directed against inhabitants of Catholic districts, especially in Belfast. To a certain extent, this bitter experience of previous persecution goes a certain way to explaining the very obvious absence of anti-migrant violence in republican working-class districts. In fairness too, it has to be said that Sinn Féin activists on the ground have used their influence to prevent anything similar developing in areas where they have a presence.
Nevertheless, there is no room for complacency or self-congratulatory applause. While the relative peace in non-unionist areas of the six counties is to be welcomed, there is disturbing evidence that elsewhere across Ireland, the ugly face of anti-migrant racism is all too prevalent. For three years running, 2023–25, Dublin was the setting for violent far-right racist rioting.
Last month witnessed several hundred demonstrating outside the Dáil against the EU Migration and Asylum Pact. Many protestors carried tricolour flags, others were shouting the lie that ‘Ireland is full’ and several repeated the loaded slogan, ‘Tiocfaidh ár lá’.
More alarming still was an event in Belfast, staged in August 2024, when far-right elements from the Republic joined loyalist thugs in an anti-migrant demonstration. An event made truly remarkable by the flying of both the tricolour and the union jack together, fronted by a banner reading, “Coolock says No”.
While both reactionary loyalist elements and their southern Irish counterparts remain, for the time being at least, on the periphery of mainstream society, there is cause for concern. Loyalism, while not abandoning religious sectarianism, is adopting a distinctly racist position. Coupled with a developing racist far-right presence in the Republic, there is the basis for a dangerous and potentially powerful fascist movement emerging across the island.
For centuries the empire used religious sectarianism to divide Ireland’s poor and working class and thereby facilitate its controlling stake in the country. Should a referendum, in decades to come, result in reunification rendering sectarianism ineffective, might a dark hand promote fascist-supervised racism to fill the place vacated by religious antagonism? Imperialism has for long maintained itself by practising a strategy of divide, conquer and rule.
We have a proud history in Ireland of resistance to oppression, but it is essential that we don’t let our guard drop. As Rosa Luxemburg told us, it’s socialism in a workers’ republic or barbarism under racist fascism.
