Within days, the city of Belfast has been rocked by racist violence and pogroms against ethnic minorities. The vast majority of working-class people in the north are appalled by these events. Many older people in Northern Ireland will have shuddered at the scenes which are reminiscent of the widespread sectarian violence of the past.
Yet, there has been a courageous and significant pushback last week by community organisations and anti-racist groups, and most importantly, by the organised working-class movement through the trade unions.
A workers’ anti-racist lunchtime rally was held on Friday 12June outside the Royal Victoria Hospital, west Belfast, initiated by the largest union in the north, the Northern Ireland Public Service Alliance (NIPSA), involving workers from several unions. The health service in Northern Ireland is dependent on immigrant workers. Last week, unions reported nurses having to run from gangs outside hospitals. And other workers were targeted. A bus driver, a union member, was ordered off his bus by racist assailants.
On Saturday 13 June, thousands gathered outside Belfast City Hall to condemn the racist street violence and targeting of ethnic minorities over the previous few days. Another anti-racist demonstration was held in Derry city. NISPA general secretary, Carmel Gates, speaking from the Belfast podium on behalf of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, warned the far right that the organised labour movement will come down hard on attempts to cause division in society. As Carmel pointed out, Northern Ireland has gone through decades of bitter sectarian divisions and killings and will not allow itself to be dragged back into wider conflict by the actions of far-right organisations, and by racist mobs and their billionaire backers.
Another platform speaker at City Hall, Padraig Mulholland, Deputy General Secretary of NIPSA, and a Militant Left supporter, recalled how the organised workers’ movement had acted against sectarian outrages in the past. He asked for a show of support from the crowds to support NIPSA’s approach to ICTU that should the racist pogroms and attacks against union members continue, “we will shut down this place”. Clenched fists and raised hands went up from the thousands of protesters.
Earlier in the week, a brutal knife attack in North Belfast was filmed and shown widely. The alleged assailant comes from a Sudanese background, and the victim was a local man, Stephen Ogilvie. He was probably saved by the actions of passersby who tackled the attacker, including Maitiu MágTighearnán who fought off the attacker with a hurl. Despite Stephen Ogilvie’ family and Maitiu Mág Tighearnán calling for calm and not to allow the horrendous attack to be used to incite violent disturbances, the video was quickly seized upon by racists, and far-right and populist-right politicians. Some local politicians and sectarian pundits and so-called community leaders also whipped up anti-immigrant sentiments. Newly minted trillionaire Elon Musk also fanned the flames of racist violence in Belfast through his social media posts.
Far right “hit list”
It has been reported that far right and racists had put together a ‘hit list’ of addresses of immigrant workers and refugees to attack for some months. Therefore, the vicious knife attack in North Belfast was simply used as a pretext and a justification to launch indiscriminate attacks against anybody from an ethnic minority background or against people of colour.
The same right-wing groups and racists organising pogroms had nothing to say about a recent horrific knife killing of Natalie McNally in 2022, in Northern Ireland. Her murderer was sentenced last week for, in the words of the judge, “a brutal and frenzied attack that involved the use of a knife”. As Natalie McNally’s brother observed, this “did not lead to the same angry outcry and mobilisation on the streets”. Nor did any of the murders of the thirty women killed in Northern Ireland since 2020.
Clearly, the far right is not interested in the problem of criminal violence in working-class areas, in general, or about the high levels of misogynist violence in Northern Ireland. They are only intent on finding excuses to pursue their racist agenda.
Far-right social media calls were made for people to go to the streets. For two days, gangs of youths, clad in black clothing and masks, roamed the streets of parts of Belfast, bringing terror to working-class and immigrant communities. Houses of immigrants were stormed and set alight. Immigrant families had to flee for their lives. Children of immigrants were too fearful to go to school. Road ‘checkpoints’ were set up by racist gangs to try and identify ethnic minorities. Local people born in Northern Ireland, were also caught up in this indiscriminate carnage and some lost their homes.
At the same time, many people in working-class communities contacted terrorised immigrants living in their areas, offering to give them refuge and to bring them food. Workers offered to bring immigrant fellow workers to work in their cars to try and minimise the danger of attacks.
Although the numbers involved in the racist rioting was relatively small, especially compared to the riots of the past during the height of the conflict in the north (euphemistically known as ‘the Troubles’), the terrorising led to Belfast’s commercial city centre shutting down early during workdays. Many people commuted from work early, and many other people did not leave their homes at all. This is reminiscent of the worst years of the Troubles, when sectarian tensions, state repression, and the grisly actions of sectarian death gangs led to Belfast city centre becoming a ghost town.
Role of the police
Many people are questioning the role of the Police Service for Northern Ireland (PSNI), given that a monitoring group called The Accountability Project Northern Ireland warned the police over several months that far-right networks were circulating lists of addresses of migrant homes. The group even sent a copy of the socalled ‘hit list’to police in January 2026.
These only underlines, once again, that immigrants and refugees, and working-class people in general, cannot rely on the state forces to protect them against racists and the far right, let alone sectarian attacks. Only working-class solidarity and action can defend working-class communities and cut across the actions of the far right.
Socialists oppose the calls from some quarters for the PSNI to use plastic bullets against rioters last week. Plastic bullets were used indiscriminately by the Royal Ulster Constabulary (predecessor of the PSNI) during the Troubles. They injured thousands and also proved lethal, with children and innocent adults killed. Such deadly measures can be used against organised labour in the future.
Paramilitaries
The violent racist protests of last week largely took place in Protestant areas of the city and mainly in the most deprived. Far-right elements called for riots on social media. It is not clear how much of a role Loyalist paramilitaries played in the riots and pogroms. In some areas though, individuals or elements linked to paramilitary networks were reportedly involved. The PSNI claimed they had no evidence that paramilitaries orchestrated the violence. Loyalist leaders in some areas may have given the green light or tolerated the racist riots, or found themselves unable to control younger loyalist elements influenced by far right, anti immigrant narratives.
According to the Guardian newspaper, “Instead, there is evidence that some paramilitary leaders chose neutrality, neither stoking nor impeding the violence, to make a point: beware a vacuum”. Belfast Telegraph journalist, Sam McBride, reported how he was threatened and physically assaulted by racist thugs on a street ‘checkpoint’ in east Belfast where the Ulster Volunteer Force has a strong influence.
In Ballymena, however, where anti-immigrant pogroms erupted last summer, “a senior loyalist” told the Guardian that he and “like-minded colleagues” intervened and helped to avert violence.
Anti-immigrant and racist sentiments are not just to be found in Protestant areas. Far-right organisations have been active in largely Catholic working-class areas over the last number of years as well. Last week saw a small rally by a far-right group in Derry city centre. In parts of west Belfast, racist slogans appeared and targeting of immigrants and immigrants and ethnic minority-run businesses have taken place for some time. Last week, Republican figures warned against emulating the racist riots taking place in Loyalist areas and there was also general local community opposition. A reported handful of attempts at organising anti-immigrant protests quickly dissipated.
In the South, as well, there have been sizable demonstrations organised by right populist and far right parties. These forces have won numerous local council seats and ‘Independent Ireland’ won an MEP seat. Some of the far right figures have even made common cause with far right and notorious loyalist paramitaries in the north.
However, in the south, there has also been pushback by local anti-racist organisations and, to a very limited degree, trade union action. In the light of events in the north, this needs to be stepped up, with much greater union moblisation bringing working class people together against racist divisions and for a better life for all.
While there have been far-right and racist gatherings and violence in parts of Britain over the last few years, very often following the same playbook of using isolated violent crimes to try and demonise whole parts of society, in Belfast and Northern Ireland as a whole, the racist actions have taken a much more sharper and violent and organised fashion. Last year, we saw pogroms against ethnic minorities in Ballymena town in mid-Antrim. This led to families being burnt out of their homes in parts of the town. The extreme character of the racist violence in the north is linked to the long history of sectarian division that blights society.
Poverty and desperation
Since the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, political and sectarian violence has fallen dramatically but not disappeared, and paramilitary organisations still exist. They have a base of support, partly through intimidation, but also because in many working-class areas decades of deindustrialisation and austerity and very poor education, training and job opportunities have led to sections of the youth being attracted to paramilitaries. Now we have added the problem of far-right groups gaining a foothold by scapegoating ethnic minorities for the ills of capitalist society.
As Carmel Gates stated from the podium at the Belfast city centre rally on Saturday 13 June, successive government policies have starved working-class communities of essential funding and resources and helped to create the conditions for the emergence of the far right. People in Northern Ireland have had enough of decades of sectarian divisions, she added, and do not want racism and racist divisions layered on top.
Racist street violence can also quickly morph into sectarian clashes, engulfing wider parts of society. As the north enters the summer ‘marching season’, sectarian tensions will grow.
The way to effectively fight racism and the far right is to unite the working class and impoverished communities around common demands for decent and affordable social housing available for all, for a living wage, for jobs for young people and real opportunities in education and training with full trade union rights and decent pay. The National Health Service in the north needs massive investment – it is creaking and has the highest queues across the whole of the NHS. Wages are lower in Northern Ireland than Britain. Poverty is endemic in many areas.
The boast of the establishment parties and capitalist governments that oversaw the Good Friday Agreement, that it would bring peace and stability, and prosperity, has proven to be a fraud. The Stormont power-sharing assembly is based on sectarian headcounts and is regularly paralysed by sectarian-based parties’ manoeuvring. The Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Féin have passed on Westminster cuts to local working-class communities for years.
The right-wing billionaire-owned mass media also is culpable for the pogroms we have seen in the streets of Belfast. Along with right-wing politicians, they have whipped up anti-immigrant rhetoric, attempting to lay the blame for the ills of society at the feet of a small minority.
What is desperately needed in Northern Ireland and other parts of these islands facing the rise of the far right and racism is a political vehicle for the working class and impoverished that can successfully counter their appeal, and against local right-wing parties. The Northern Ireland political landscape is dominated by sectarian-based parties that thrive on divisions in society. The working class needs a socialist voice rooted in the communities that can bring together people based on their common struggle and common misery under capitalism and put forward policies to cut across the racist and the populist right and the sectarian-based parties.
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