August 4, 2024 - 8:00am
Belfast
Having moved to Northern Ireland last year, I’d expected the often violent anti-immigration protests currently roiling the Republic to cross the border this summer. But I didn’t expect the new febrile mood to come via England.
Belfast’s Saturday protests, in support of the parallel English riots, began with a series of blockades across major traffic routes into the city-centre, significantly concentrated on Loyalist, or ethnic British areas of the city. Judging by preceding Facebook activity, this was an action heavily dominated by Ulster Protestants, yet with an entirely new attempt to engage local Catholics.
Yet in the city-centre itself, where anti-immigration crowds, separated from their opponents at City Hall by armoured PSNI Landrovers, confronted pro-migration activists, perhaps the most striking element was the number of Irish tricolours being waved beside Union and Ulster flags, carried not by local Catholics — who were in attendance — but by protestors who had travelled up from the Republic.
“This is the best thing that ever happened in this country,” one protestor from Drogheda, in the Republic, draped in an Irish tricolour told me, “Now we can come together against the real enemy.” Indeed, protestors from the Republic, at the front of the crowd, were by far the most vigorous and aggressive in confronting the counter-protestors on the other side of police lines, themselves seemingly mostly drawn from Northern Ireland’s Catholic community. “Look at youse all,” one Dubliner, standing in front of a “Coolock Says No” banner, shouted at the pro-migration protestors, who were waving Palestinian, LGBTQ+ and trade union flags, “you don’t even have one fucking tricolour, no Union Jack, nothing from this island.”
On the other side of the Landrovers, trade union leader Mick Lynch, flown in from London, gave the pro-migration protestors a speech arguing for international socialism, as the crowd on his side chanted “Nazi scum, off our streets.” Organisers from the Irish Republican Socialist Party, previously the political wing of the INLA, watched their opponents waving tricolours with disdain.
Eventually, the anti-migration protestors moved off, heading in an unexpectedly large file towards an Islamic Cultural Centre — a mosque by another name, though not described as such due to local sensitivities — in a formerly Protestant district of South Belfast, currently undergoing rapid demographic change due to dispersal of migrants from the mainland.
With the mosque closed off by PSNI riot police and armoured vehicles, the protestors followed a ski-masked Dubliner, who apparently did not know the city, into random South Belfast side streets. Rocks and bottles were thrown at alleged migrant hotels, as some protestors attempted to batter down the glass doors with pavement tables. In Belfast’s Holylands area, a student district, the hitherto unimaginable sight of protestors waving Union Flags, a tricolour and the Israeli flag side by side, dancing to happy hardcore, occurred before police dispersed the gathering. In the Lower Ormeau Road, local (ethnic Irish) nationalists, some mixed-race, angrily confronted the marchers, calling the police “dirty rat fucks” and “scumbags” for permitting the protest to wend its way to their area.
“I don’t know why they were allowed to make it to our side of town,” Fionulla McComb, a local activist for a pro-Palestinian group, Mothers Against Genocide, told me. When asked about Southern attendance, she added “There are organisers within working class communities spreading poison among them, they don’t understand who the real enemy is,” before berating a weary-looking policeman in a riot helmet, as the PSNI separated the opposing sides. The previously non-sectarian mood of the protest withered as anti-migration protestors chanted “UFF” and “UDA” — the acronyms for proscribed Loyalist terrorist groups — at their Catholic opponents, before melting away as Ulster’s fickle weather put paid to the confrontation.
As it stands, Northern Ireland’s traditional ethnic conflict, and the Left-wing organisational power of the country’s Nationalist community, still defines the country’s political order. If England’s disorder — or that of the Republic — continues to make ground in Northern Ireland, it will intersect with this dynamic in unique, and perhaps unexpected, ways: cross-border splits within Irish nationalism are possible, as are strange new alliances.
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SubscribeWhat a crap show. I really have no idea what’s going on here. I very much oppose open borders, but I’m trying understand the motivation of these protests.
The motivations of the FSB to stoke Division via use of covert social media, and the ability to monetise clickbait that feeds itself off sowing Division are v clear JV. Whether it’s weakening the West by sowing Division or Grifters making themselves rich, both are highly motivated.
John Gray writing in The New Statement back in April.
https://www.newstatesman.com/comment/2024/04/biggest-threat-freedom-west-liberalism-itself-john-gray
Gray really is worth reading
You forgot to mention the lizard people.
The lizard people. There you go.
It’s not complicated. They’re a response to the open borders globalism that is pauperising these people and destroying their communities.
Arcane sectarian divisions in Ireland, blending with modern neoliberal divisions, in some. Not that interesting.
Mothers against Genocide? Do me a favour. That never came from working class West Belfast. And Fionnuala McComb (to use the correct spelling) sounds like one of these middle class political cosplayers, like the Just Stop Oil mob.
This is shaping into a class conflict. One one side, the working class who are sick of being pushed around by middle class lefties. On the other, the middle class lefties with this week’s fashionable cause.
This is shaping into a class conflict.
That’s what it’s always been. Mass immigration makes rich people richer by making poor people poorer. That’s why middle class property owners love it and rent payers and wage earners hate it. It’s quite simple really.
Meanwhile, last Wednesday in Kirklees
“Twenty eight sexual predators who preyed on vulnerable females in Kirklees have been given jail sentences totalling almost 400 years.
A further two men were sentenced at Leeds Crown Court today (July 31) as part of Kirklees Police’s long running Operation Tourway investigation into non recent sexual abuse.
Ebrahim Pandor and Amjad Hussain were both sentenced for offences committed against a single female victim in Kirklees between the years 2004 and 2012.”
You will not have heard about his as the BBC and MSM as they buried the story.
Also they chose to use a picture of the Southport suspect as a cur little kid rather than a more recent picture which would have given a wholly different impression. Another blatant piece of manipulation
100%. But in the autumn there will be a second expression of this Progressive State’s core ideology. Currently we are seeing them and their weedy State Media predictably accuse the Deplorable raycist Working Class of hate and terror (somehow obliterating all memory of Ames, Manchester Arena & Airport, Reading, Rotherham, Telford, non stop Gaza Mobs, Azeri, London Bridges, BLM Mobs, Batley, Southend, London’s knife crime epidemic, Nottingham, the Sectarian Election, Open Borders…and the genuine horror of Southport, the trigger). Come the autumn, this new style Labour will open a second wider front in its bitter class war; a punitive tax raid on those passive middle classes who have saved money in pensions and investments. That makes them non Working People. They must surrender wealth to fund the vast pensions of the dead eyed immoral young doxtors who inflicted suffering on thousands in their strikes. NHS Heroes? I think not. This class war follows up the first salvo of destructive vindictive attacks on Non Doms, private schools and private landlords. They are stunningly mediocre, naive and dangerous. Too many of us do not fit their warped toxic of good and bad.
It isn’t Britain’s riots that have spread to Belfast. It is the Republic of Ireland’s riots that have spread to Belfast. Ireland was the first country in Europe to see large scale, repeated rioting with broad-based support directly against mass immigration.
The Republic of Ireland rioting has been most prevalent in traditionally left wing areas because of the dispersal policy accelerating the flow of migrants to more economically depressed areas. These are areas that in recent years have dramatically shifted support to the traditionally left wing Sinn Fein in a desperate attempt at change from the increasingly liberalist duopoly that has governed Ireland since independence. Sinn Fein, the party whose rhetoric was once Ireland for the Irish, was an instinctive choice.
But this voting shift occurred just at the moment the new leadership of Sinn Fein abandoned left wing politics for modish identity politics and mass immigration. Sinn Fein didn’t actually represent the large number of voters who had just started voting for it. This voting alliance couldn’t last forever and it didn’t. Irish people were now not just angry at liberalism and unsustainable immigration and the worst housing shortage in Europe, they were angry at the *entire* political establishment labelling them far right fascists for complaining. To paraphrase JFK, those who make peaceful change impossible will make violent change inevitable. And so riots broke out in Ireland.
Around Europe, as elites watched in shock, many ordinary people sympathised with the Irish rioters. And not a small number asked themselves if they too should join in what clearly is a common argument with a pan-European elite and their obsessions of identity politics and mass immigration.
In the UK a party with the smallest vote support (17%) in history has won a landslide and commited to more identity politics and even more massive immigration. It was only a matter of time before the example set by the Irish was followed by the UK. The only unpredictable factor was when, not who or where. The who and the where were going to mirror Ireland: traditional left wing leaning areas no longer represented by the established left wing parties, economically poor yet facing surging immigration. The when was going to be a random spark. Belfast was always going to riot if Liverpool, Sunderland and the rest did.
Now of course we are treated to the same response that *accelerated* the riots in Ireland. Apparently we are expected to believe that the most left wing boroughs are all filled with far right fascists. When future historians examine what actually happened, what they’ll write about is these riots arising out of the breakdown of the left wing voting alliance. It’s no coincidence that these riots have erupted after the established left wing parties won historic victories in Ireland (Sinn Fein) and then the UK (Labour) and with zeal proceeded to antagonise their traditional voters. In that sense, if we’re pointing fingers, Starmer and all he represents is one of the major causes of the UK riots.
That’s fine and informative reporting by AR, for once able to show his credentials as a live journalist rather than constructor of theories.
His move to NI (unusual in itself, no doubt for personal reasons) is of benefit to Unherd readers. Not a peep of these subtleties in the msm.
No great fan of the Author, and worth remembering he’s a privileged Public school boy and Oxbridge Anthropology grad, but he earned some respect when reporting in Syria. One wonders if he then thought where best in the UK might be a tinder-box and headed for NI, and thus has to kind of justify that?
As the Article concludes the sectarian bedrock will make it a struggle for the working class, whatever that might be in this day and age, to unify consistently in NI. The sectarians won’t let that happen as it’d undermine them.
—-worth remembering he’s a privileged Public school boy and Oxbridge Anthropology grad—-
And?..
How is this relevant? My agreement or disagreement with any author does not depend on their background. I am interested in what they have to say.
The upside of your comment is that now I know that AR has received good education.
Absolutely, all this anti-public-school-university-graduate rhetoric shows is a massive chip on the shoulder.
Agreed. And also screams “Yet another class enemy found!”
Well, small wonder: chips on the shoulder and clas hatred are closely interrelated.
A bit off topic: I enjoy your comments very much. Not always agree (which is normal :-)), but always appreciate them.
Are you sure that this “anti-public-school-university-graduate rhetoric” has no reason?
.
“I don’t know why they were allowed to make it to our side of town,” Fionulla McComb, a local activist for a pro-Palestinian group, Mothers Against Genocide, told me.
The writer quotes McComb to demonstrate her prejudice; which is presumably what you were trying to do in flagging up the quote as prejudice by AR, but only ended up showing yours too?
Sorry, you didn’t understand me, mea culpa.
I always think that the Devil is in the details, and I like this nice piece of AR article. It’s a beautiful detail, I congratulate him!
Merely a current variation on the “Whence do you speak, Comrade?” from the Heyday of Marxism…
That’s well spotted.
No great fan of the Author, and worth remembering he’s a privileged Public school boy and Oxbridge Anthropology grad
Which makes it even more surprising that he challenges the establishment narrative. Good for him.
I don’t know how many parents refrain from sending their kids to public school because they fear the stigma will damage their prospects. But the children can’t be blamed if they were sent to one.
No great fan of the Author, and worth remembering he’s a privileged Public school boy and Oxbridge
What stopped you from going to either?
I think the point being made was that the products of Public School then Oxbridge seem to assume they have above average abilities for analysis and proficient government, indeed are an inherently competent “ruling class”.
Regrettably the results of the past few decades of their efforts have proved…unsatisfactory.
Silly ad hominem attack on Roussinos from you. Do someone’s arguments have validity is the question, not whether they were educated in a public or state school.
Yes I really wish Unherd would engage in more on-the-ground journalism. I don’t want to have to go to other websites to get news. Unherd is fine for commentary but sometimes you have to reverse engineer what actually happened out of the opinion pieces about it, or go to other newspapers to learn the facts.
‘…but by protestors who had travelled up from the Republic.’
These must be the outsiders that two tier Keir wants to crack down on.
Is he going to close a border?
Why would he when they can just be arrested, charged and returned if they break our laws?
Since the governments are not listening to the people on this issue of immigration, sooner or later there will be a mass event against the illegals. Sooner is better .
Lots of middle class native British are upset with toxic massimmigration as well. They are just more vulnerable to losing their jobs if they openly dissent.
The endless mutating strands of tribal sectarian people who aren’t that bright. Fascinating to read about and follow (no not really)
Ethnic British? There are millions of people living in Great Britain with Irish ancestry. Are they classified as ethnic Irish. Probably not. Northern Irish protestants are British citizens with mostly Scottish ancestry. Many or most Northern Irish Catholics would rather not be British citizens.
Ethnicity seems to be as confusing as Race. Some even consider Muslims a Race. They are not, just as Christians are not a Race. If we continue to confound and promote questionable definitions the problems will only intensify.
I have always been an assimilationist. Division causes division.