Fear and fury in Belfast

The train into Belfast was empty, save for myself and one girl who looked far too young to be vaping. Passing parallel to North Belfast’s working class housing estates on the way into the city, small groups of men dressed all in black could be seen congregating — some slowly making their way towards the locations of planned protests.

The attempted beheading of a man in his 40s, named locally as Stephen Ogilvie, in a residential area of North Belfast by a Sudanese immigrant who used an asylum loophole to be granted leave to remain in Northern Ireland, sent shockwaves through the region and beyond. A dense thicket of grey cloud loomed overhead, shrouding the city.

I arrived into York Street train station as the first protestors arrived into the area — a small group of women carrying placards. “Did you vote for mass immigration? Me neither,” one read. “Women and children not safe in this area,” read another. The pulsating din of a distant helicopter rumbled above our location. It would prove a constant presence throughout the night.

By half past seven, around 300 men, women, and children, some dressed all in black wearing balaclavas or face masks, others in their ordinary clothes, congregated on the York Street interchange, blocking off one of the main arterial routes through the city. 

A few hundred metres away, a smaller group, more tangibly bellicose, blocked the Westlink, the dual carriageway connecting three motorways exiting Belfast. Street signs and rubble were dragged from overgrown roadside underbrush, placed strategically in the middle of the road. A backlog of cars extended beyond view; the drivers of those at the front, bemused, exited their vehicles to film proceedings, precipitating those who had not yet done so to mask up. 

One car attempted to speed past the roadblock, almost hitting a woman holding a sign. Several men, all in black, subjected it to a series of attacks with their fists and feet; it escaped with dents on the sides and a broken window. In the midst of the chaos, a tour bus arrived at Cityside Retail Park, decanting a busload of Chinese tourists into the complex, oblivious of the protest, making their way towards the miniature golf facility. In the distance, a convoy of water cannons shuttled past. A child in a Spider-Man costume watched from his mother’s shoulders.

At around 8pm, a line of police Land Rovers converged outside the student accommodation blocks on York Street. Shortly thereafter, a dispersal order was announced, encouraging protestors to return home. The armoured vehicles, flanked by riot police, pushed the line of protestors back towards the train station. Small projectiles were thrown; the majority of onlookers watched, bemused. Two journalists with large cameras and English accents were told in no uncertain terms to leave. They left. The Sky News helicopter hovered above as a mother encouraged her young child to wave at it.

The police pushed protestors back towards the York Street interchange, after which they retreated to the interface area of North Queen Street, often a site of trouble between Catholic and Protestant in years past. Now, groups of men from the Catholic side watched, bemused, as several hundred people descended on the area. 

A roadblock was erected in the middle of the street. Shop signs and a sofa, wooden furniture and buckets of rubbish, were set alight to cordon off the road from traffic. Down a side street, young men, many of them presumably teenagers due to their small, wiry frames, ransacked a partially demolished wall for bricks. Nearby, others tore sheets of fabric and decanted plastic cartons of petrol into glass bottles. A man, out for his evening jog, quickened his pace as he passed the burning sofa. An armoured police jeep sat at the entrance to the road and watched, briefly, before departing. Across the city, stories emerged of similar scenes, a well-organised affair which kept the police at a distance while destruction occurred in residents’ own neighbourhoods.

Nearby, in Tiger’s Bay, a unionist enclave near the area, thick plumes of dark smoke protruded upwards into the sky. Heading towards the area, it became clear that the smoke originated from several cars parked at houses in the area, which had been the recipients of some of the petrol bombs earlier in the evening. Car windows disintegrated as flames reached out from them, loud pops sounded as tires exploded and body panels warped beyond recognition. Residents watched from the footpaths and gardens, some in pyjamas, others in all black. Children filmed for their TikTok and Snapchat, disobeying orders from the organisers of the riots not to capture people on film. A South Asian man watched from between the curtains of a nearby upstairs window — understandably hesitant to join his neighbours outside. 

The cars, presumed to belong to immigrants or foreign nationals residing in the area, were targeted rather than the houses themselves due to the high prevalence of social housing in the area. The aim, I was made aware, would be to drive away these outsiders, allowing the homes to be used for local people. In an area of such high social deprivation, the young generation — for those involved did skew towards youth — are aware that there is a limited social housing stock, and that these houses are not inheritable. Wanting to have the chance of living in the area they grew up in, some frame this as their only remaining option. 

Emergency response vehicles eventually made their way to the area. As rain began to fall, crowds dispersed and fires were extinguished. Elsewhere in the city, residents were not as fortunate, as cars engulfed in flames spread fire to nearby houses. Local residents and immigrants alike were affected, their homes being destroyed. 

After midnight, the area around North Queen Street and Tiger’s Bay was eerily silent. Fresh paint dripped down the shutters of an African food shop, spilling out onto the footpath. The sounds of police sirens and stifled conversation had vanished. Not a soul was to be seen. All that remained was the distant hum of the helicopter overhead, and the tense, charged air of a rainy night.