During the morning of Monday, 9 June 2025, two 14-year-old boys appeared before Coleraine Magistrates’ Court via video link from a juvenile detention centre. They had allegedly assaulted a local teenage girl two days earlier, sometime between 7:30 and 10: 30 PM, on a public footpath near the Ballykeel housing estates, close to Clonavon Terrace in Ballymena, the largest town in County Antrim, Northern Ireland. The two were arrested by the following evening. During the court hearing, a Romanian interpreter read them the charge of attempted oral rape, which they denied. There was no application for bail and they were remanded in custody, due to appear at the next Youth Court sitting in Ballymena on 2 July.
Later that day, a peaceful vigil for the assaulted girl, in the Harryville area of Ballymena, turned violent. By the following day, a full-scale riot had broken out. Mostly young protesters, many of them dressed in black, masked and hooded, threw bricks, rocks, masonry, furniture, and petrol bombs at police in riot gear. Armoured vehicles blockaded streets to contain the disorder. Property was damaged, windows shattered, and bins, cars, and houses set on fire. Signs reading “British household” and “locals live here” appeared on house fronts, as home owners sought to protect their residences from the unwanted attentions of the rioters. People of ‘foreign origin’ displayed Union Jacks and other paraphernalia in front of their homes to confirm their loyalty to the United Kingdom. Some locked themselves inside their homes while others have since fled Ballymena for places of safety elsewhere in the province.
Fuelled by social media, the protests rapidly spread to the towns of Carrickfergus, Lisburn, and Newtownabbey, all in County Antrim; Coleraine (County Derry); and the capital city of Belfast on 10 June, where similar scenes were witnessed. On 11 June, Larne Leisure Centre was targeted, having been earmarked as an emergency reception centre for immigrants who had been evacuated from their homes. Gordon Lyons, Minister for Communities and Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) MLA for East Antrim, was criticised for disclosing this fact on Facebook and for complaining that he had not been consulted on the matter. As a consequence, the leisure centre could no longer be used for its intended purpose. The riots reached Portadown in County Armagh by 12 June. That day, eighty officers from Police Scotland arrived in Northern Ireland. Derry (Londonderry) and Newry were to follow by 13 June. The police response to these riots has included the deployment of water cannon and plastic baton rounds, and the use of dogs to control the crowds.
Ballymena is a predominantly Protestant working-class town and a Unionist stronghold, located 25 miles northwest of Belfast. Its pro-British sympathies are confirmed by a profusion of Union Jacks within its municipal limits, and its religious affiliations by its label as the “buckle” of Northern Ireland’s very own ‘Bible Belt.’ The Reverend Ian Paisley, who needs no introduction to anyone familiar with Northern Ireland, notably grew up in the town, where his father served as a Baptist preacher from 1928. He later served as MP for North Antrim, a constituency which includes Ballymena, for forty years from 1970 onwards. Factory closures, such as that of the JTI Gallaher cigarette factory in 2017 and the Michelin tyre factory in 2018, have led to a loss of 860 and 877 jobs respectively, with a negative impact on the town’s economy. Since 2011, an influx of immigrants, mostly East European and some Filipino, has changed the demographics of the town, which has an above- average foreign-born population. Matters have been made worse by reports of an earlier incident of sexual violence in the town on 24 May. Jim Allister, Traditional Unionist Voice MP for North Antrim, within whose constituency Ballymena falls, has denounced the riots, while suggesting that “unfettered immigration” contributed to the situation.
Racial tensions in Northern Ireland are far from new, even though the province is the least ethnically diverse component of the UK. In the 2021 census, only 65,600 people (3.4% of the total population) were listed as belonging to a minority ethnic group. The sectarian violence of the “Troubles” has now been overtaken by xenophobic and racial hate crimes. Last summer, in August 2024, east Belfast thus witnessed sympathetic riots, fuelled by misinformation about the killer’s identity, following the brutal murder of three young girls in Southport, just across the Irish Sea in northwest England. Figures from the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) show that 1,188 racially-motivated hate crimes took place between 1 April 2024 and 31 March 2025-the highest since data recording began in 2004. An independent review of the Northern Ireland Executive’s 10-year Racial Equality Strategy for 2015 to 2025, published by The Executive Office on 23 December 2024, confirmed that there was much needed to be done to improve relations between established communities and new arrivals in Northern Ireland.
The Northern Ireland riots are yet another manifestation of growing anti-immigrant sentiments in Western Europe. When things are not so good, people need to point fingers and blame someone for their predicament. The message is clear: immigrants are mostly not welcome. Apart from pressures on housing, schools, the health service, and social welfare, some blame “illegal migrants” for the drugs trade, human trafficking, prostitution, sexual violence, and other societal problems. What is significant to note is that opposition to migrants and asylum seekers appears to transcend Northern Ireland’s sectarian divide. Unfortunately, the issue of violence against women has been appropriated by people with a racist agenda, one which is not going away anytime soon.
Ashis Banerjee