I am not a typical Northern Protestant, with a father who was a left-wing Czech refugee. But part of me identifies with my County Antrim Presbyterian mother, her family and community. As a half-Irish boy growing up in London, a lifelong love affair with Ireland started through my close relationship with my devout grandfather, a lovely man who was an evangelical lay preacher with his own gospel hall outside Ballymena.

That identification made me deeply ashamed at the latest anti-immigrant riots earlier this month, the third summer of such attacks by loyalist mobs on people with brown and black skins in Belfast and other Northern Irish towns. The racist violence, sparked off by a horrific attack by a Sudanese refugee on a 44-year-old man in a Catholic area in north Belfast, apparently attempting to behead him (which was videoed by a passer-by and shared widely on social media), was overwhelmingly in areas controlled by loyalist paramilitaries.

The family of Stephen Ogilvie, the victim of the attack, issued a statement saying they wanted to “make it absolutely clear that overnight unrest is not welcome, and peaceful protest is the only way forward. We have many migrants who make a deeply valuable contribution to our country, including in our healthcare system and hospitality sector, and we depend on them to make our country work.” They said they did not want this “terrible tragedy to be used to divide people or fuel hostility”.

However that is exactly what happened. In the Lower Newtownards Road in east Belfast, a rampaging mob targeted ethnic minority migrants, kicking in their doors and burning a bus and cars in their streets. People came out of their houses “to show they were white”, said one local resident. Masked youngsters, teenagers and younger, blocked streets while recognisable loyalist paramilitaries looked on. As Sam McBride of the Belfast Telegraph put it: “This is one of the strongholds of the Ulster Volunteer Force. No one sweeps through its territory blocking roads and torching buildings without its approval.”¹

The Assistant Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), Ryan Henderson, disagreed, saying there was “no evidence” that the riots were coordinated by paramilitaries. On this occasion I prefer to believe a highly reputable journalist like McBride, who identified one man who threatened him as a notorious UVF member and the man standing beside him as a major drug dealer who was once close to a UDA leader.

ACC Henderson said there was evidence of social media coordination, both inside and outside Northern Ireland. The trillionaire owner of social media network X, Elon Musk, and the English fascist agitator Tommy Robinson (real name Stephen Yaxley Lennon) were among “the high profile figures sharing lists of locations directing demonstrators to where protests could take place”, wrote Seanín Graham in the Irish Times.²

McBride stressed that the violence was localised in mostly deprived areas. “Few middle class residents of Belfast experienced more than mild inconvenience. This is one of the enduring injustices of the post-Good Friday Agreement era. No one in authority would say so, but conditions that would be intolerable in leafy suburbs are accepted when confined to deprived areas.By embedding and elevating paramilitary leaders, society has bought peace and freedom elsewhere, but consigned other areas to oppression.” To be a resident in an area controlled by these leaders is to live in an atmosphere of fear and intimidation; doubly so if you are an immigrant.

“One of the central objections of those objecting to migration in loyalist communities is that disproportionate numbers of foreign nationals are living in their areas. Yet one of the central reasons for this is that rents are lower in areas controlled by loyalist paramilitaries because many local people don’t want to live there,” wrote McBride.

Rioting in Belfast, usually involving sectarian violence, has been endemic for nearly 200 years. The Bombay Street riot in August 1969, in which a loyalist mob – aided by the overwhelmingly Protestant reserve police force, the B-Specials – burned that entire Catholic street off the Falls Road to the ground, was the effective start of the large scale violence of the Northern Ireland ‘Troubles’.

The difference this time is that the attacks were against dark-skinned immigrants rather than Catholics. Colm Walsh, a Queen’s University criminology lecturer who has just completed a study of the anti-immigration violence in Ballymena a year ago, while recognising the frustration of people in Protestant working class areas at poor housing conditions and public services, expressed concern about the increasing levels of race-related violence in the North. “As you see trends in sectarianism go down, you see trends in hate crime go up.”

Unionist leaders were, as usual, less than unreserved in their condemnations of the rioting, although DUP leader Gavin Robinson said “violence, intimidation and racism are wrong.” However he was more concerned about the issue of illegal immigration. He called for the British and Irish governments “to work together on effective immigration controls, intelligence sharing and enforcement at ports and airports, preventing abuse of the system before people ever reach the [Irish] land border.We need a British Isles solution that works for everyone.” Hadi Alodid, the Sudanese man charged with the attack on Stephen Ogilvie, had entered Northern Ireland through the Republic.

Northern Ireland Assembly Speaker and former DUP leader Edwin Poots claimed that Northern Ireland had the second highest number of asylum seekers in the United Kingdom.However according to the independent fact-checking service FactCheckNI, of the 361 local authority areas in the UK, Belfast, where most asylum seekers in the North are situated, had the 20th highest number of asylum seekers in 2025.

If unionist politicians were mealy-mouthed, at least one judge was not. Refusing to grant bail to an alleged rioter in the High Court, Mr Justice McAlinden warned that “this type of civil disorder and outrageous, racist and thuggish behaviour has to be nipped in the bud and anyone who is convicted of this offence should face a severe sentence because, plainly, racist violence has no place in civilised society.”

“If we look back as far as 1938 and see the Nazis burning people out of their houses during Kristallnacht, what did that lead to?” the judge asked.“History tells you that the acceptance of racist violence leads to catastrophe and it must be nipped in the bud.”

Sam McBride also warned that “unionism risks repelling a growing section of the population – migrants – who could be decisive in a future Border poll.” I agree: repelling people is what violent loyalism does best. I repeat what I wrote after the anti-immigrant riots in Ballymena 12 months ago. “Why do loyalists keep displaying this hate-filled face to the world? Such actions only confirm the image much of the outside world has of Northern Ireland loyalists as ‘beyond the pale’ thugs and bigots. It is fair comment to say that for a community that has few friends in the world anyway, the violent goings on in Ballymena [and now Belfast] will have done absolutely nothing to maintain the few friendships they do have. Their loyalty to the United Kingdom – and particularly to the UK monarchy – is an entirely legitimate political position. Why do they allow it to be sullied by such extremism and violence?”

I feel particularly for my loyalist friends – the likes of John Kyle, Debbie Watters, Sammy Douglas and Jackie Redpath – good and decent people who have worked day and night to make Northern Ireland a fairer, juster and more harmonious society. Racist and anti-immigrant hatred and violence – odious and despicable in themselves – also undermine that noble work.

The ordinary, peaceful citizens of Belfast redeemed the city somewhat on the Saturday after the riots when an estimated 15-20,000 people gathered outside City Hall for an anti-racism rally. Areeg Fareh, from Anaka Women’s Collective, told the crowd: “We have made Northern Ireland our home. We are in communities all around the city. Yes, we have experienced racism. It is challenging and it hurts, but most people here have shown us kindness and understanding.We bring skills and knowledge in a diverse range of areas, from medicine to engineering, from business and computers to art and culture. We have much to give and want to share with you all.”

My friend Paul Nolan, the prominent social researcher, who volunteers with the refugee support group Belfast City of Sanctuary, said:”The day before the rally I had attended a meeting where, one after another, refugees and asylum-seekers told of the terror they had experienced. I felt shame for my city. When I arrived at the rally the numbers seemed small at first but soon the front of the City Hall was thronged as were the adjoining streets. My heart began to lift and when we began the spontaneous chant ‘We are Belfast! We are Belfast!’ it suddenly felt like that could be true.”

And what to do about the continued existence of the loyalist paramilitaries as a violent and disruptive element in Northern Irish society? This thorny question has flummoxed the politicians in three capitals for much of the past 28 years since the Good Friday Agreement. Last year the Irish and British governments appointed a Dutch conflict resolution expert, Fleur Ravensbergen (who has experience of working to end conflicts in the Basque Country, Iraq and the Democratic Republic of Congo among other places) to report back on how Northern Irish paramilitary groups could be wound down. Her report, within the framework of the Independent Reporting Commission set up in 2015 to monitor progress on tackling paramilitary activity, is due in August.

The governments are hopeful that the direct engagement of this impressive woman with paramilitary leaders can lead to an initiative that would bring about movement on an issue that has remained stubbornly resistant to progress for so long. She has been formally mandated by the governments to come up with a mechanism that will lead the paramilitaries – who are a complex and toxic mixture of the criminal, political and local/communal – belatedly to integrate into what is now a largely peaceful and democratic society.

¹ ‘NI’s snarling serpent isn’t migrants, but mob rule of thugs who assaulted me under nose of the police’, Belfast Telegraph, 13 June

² ‘The X factor: how foreign agitators helped spark racist riots across the North’, Irish Times, 13 June