Belfast Riots — and the Ghost of Enoch Powell

What Is Happening in Northern Ireland – and what comes next?

The liberal elite have been very happy to report every event in Northern Ireland which has shown the gradual decline of the old sectarian divisions in the Province since the end of the Troubles. But they have been silent about the protests which followed the gruesome racist attack on Stephen Ogilvy – despite the fact that they are in fact a striking example of the success of post-conflict Northern Ireland.

Because the disturbances in the Lower Newtownards Road area of East Belfast were the first cross-community, non-sectarian, rioting in Northern Ireland since the ‘Hunger Riots’ of the 1930s, when working-class Protestants joined in with violent protests begun by their Catholic neighbours against the deprivations of the Great Depression.

One might think that the controlled media and political elite would celebrate this development but, instead, they are pretending that it didn’t happen. Instead, they are blaming ‘bigotry’ among the loyalists whom they so detest, and muttering darkly about ‘fascist troublemakers’ and Elon Musk ‘stirring up tensions’.

This is of course Standard Operating Procedure for these people, who display their innate bourgeois snobbery whenever working-class whites are driven to forcible protests. These people are so ignorant and passive, goes the unspoken liberal narrative, that they are incapable of thinking or doing anything of their own accord. Any militant action is therefore the result of wicked ‘outside agitators’, rather than a response to the failure of the elite’s own policies.

The contempt that these horrible leftist snobs have for ordinary working-class Brits is multiplied when the unruly peasants are also Protestant loyalists. This too is showing through in the mainstream explanations of what is going on in Northern Ireland.

A big piece in the Guardian today is typical of the approach, with its references to how ‘mobs burned Catholic families from some of the same streets’ in years gone by. This studiously ignore the fact that the wave of ethnic cleansing of innocent Catholics which scarred the city in 1969 came after the first wave, in which the victims were innocent Protestants in West Belfast.

Such deceit might just influence readers on the mainland who know no better, but the moment a commentator tries to sell this narrative to loyalists, he totally destroys the credibility of anything else he has to say. When the aim is to calm things down, this is a very foolish thing to do.

The same report notes that ‘elements of republicanism “monitor and suppress” xenophobic displays’. Let’s unpack this comment. The same newspaper which quotes with approval liberal politicians and police chiefs who condemn violence and seek to persuade the public that it ‘never achieves anything’, is here tacitly approving of ‘elements of republicanism’ – i.e. the IRA – acting to ‘suppress’ anti-immigration protests in areas where their threats and violence still hold sway.

The truth is that the liberals, just like the rest of the elite, have a very selective approach to violence. Quite simply, it’s OK when they – or people who share and support their nation-wrecking agendas – do it.

So, for them, what happened in East Belfast the other night is particularly alarming. As several hundred young men from the little Protestant streets off either side of the Lower Newtownards Road gathered to protest, some twenty to thirty more emerged from the Short Strand.

This is the staunchly Republican enclave down by the River Laggan, whose defence from a huge loyalist mob at the start of the Troubles by a couple of elderly IRA men (one a veteran of the British Army) and a handful of kids, was perhaps the most genuinely heroic of all the actions on the Catholic side in the thirty years of horror.

The group who came out this time were, as usual in such circumstances, all wearing balaclavas and double surgical gloves – the mark of serious operators, or younger ones trained by old hands. What was remarkable was that, instead of provoking a violent response, as they would have done at any time in living memory, these Catholics were welcomed by the larger Protestant crowd.

The non-sectarian mob proceeded to force back the riot police and start burning bins. The large bus which was burnt was actually set on fire by an individual wearing an Irish tricolour balaclava. Then, together, Protestant and Catholic rioters moved up and down the side streets, systematically targeting homes occupied by Africans and Roma.

The same cross-community approach was seen north of the city last night. A crowd of 800 protesters from the loyalist Rathcoole estate crossed into Newtownabbey, with a smaller breakaway group confronting a roughly equal-sized body of riot police and sending them running away in a hail of paving bricks.

This is another new development. Back in the day, the old RUC riot police would have mangled the rioters, even if outnumbered. But the new breed of police officer is a very different beast. All of them are university graduates and, for all their protective gear, fearsome equipment and licence to use violence, they are no longer a match for tough lads off the street.

And, in Newtownabbey, just as in East Belfast, the lads on the street now come from both sides of the old Brothers’ War. A small group of Catholics from neighbouring Glengormley defied the veiled threats from neo-Marxist Sinn Fein and joined the loyalist-dominated protest, and the violence which followed.

In this second night of unrest, literally hundreds of immigrants from groups which have made themselves unwelcome were ‘put out’. Some by actual violence, far more by being told to pack up and leave.

The politicians and MSM are hinting that this is all organised. That it is the work of ‘fascist agitators’ or loyalist paramilitaries. This is simply untrue. Outsiders are making supportive comments on social media, but it doesn’t need outsiders to make people unwilling to share their street with undocumented, tax-gobbling African migrants when they’ve seen footage of one of the same gouging out an innocent man’s eyes and trying to hack off his head.

The loyalist paramilitaries are present, of course, but they have thus far taken no role in the disturbances whatsoever, although that might change if heavy-handed policing angers locals so much that further inaction begins to damage their credibility.

Unlike the leftist violence which follows things such as the killing of George Floyd, the anger spilling out in Northern Ireland is wholly organic. The blame lies primarily not with the rioters, but with the political elite whose policies have turned already poor areas of the province into multi-ethnic tinderboxes.

If they had listened to the warnings and to the very legitimate anger of ordinary people, none of this would be happening. They could still bring peace, simply by acknowledging that piling poverty on poverty, and expecting stressed places to play host to hundreds of mollycoddled, and sometimes very badly behaved, outsiders, were foolish policies which need to be reversed immediately.

Needless to say, they will do no such thing. Which is why the most likely result of the Belfast riots is not just extensive ‘ethnic cleansing’ of the biggest city in Northern Ireland, but also the spreading of similar troubles to the mainland. This is not a recommendation, but it is a prediction.

Belfast will in due course calm down, for the simple reason that the protesting crowds will achieve their objectives. Similar scenes on the mainland, by contrast, are liable to have a very different ending. In Belfast, the unwanted immigrants are present in isolated pockets, when the trouble hits their street, they have no real choice but to flee. In most of England, they are often embedded among far larger immigrant communities, and they have other options.

Why, hello, Mr. Powell, fancy seeing you here…!

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