By Bernie McAdam
The recent racist riot and pogrom in Ballymena on 9 June triggered a wave of clashes with police and attacks on migrants in many areas, including Larne, Portadown, Coleraine and in and around Belfast. This followed an alleged sexual assault on a girl by two teenage Romanian boys. Far-right activists hijacked the resulting protest. Migrant families were burnt out of their homes as thugs went on a rampage.
It was only last summer that a far right mob threatened the Islamic Centre in Belfast and ran amok through multiethnic areas, firebombing shops and businesses. Once again in Ballymena the pogromists were from loyalist/Unionist areas. With the Orange marching season approaching, there are fears of further attacks. Loyalist paramilitary groups like the UDA will no doubt try to deepen their control over the far right mobs.
However, it would be utterly foolish to think that the Catholic community is somehow immune to racism. A ripple from the growing far right threat in the South was felt in Newry when, in response to the council proposing a network of sanctuary cities across Britain and Ireland, a far right march was held with dozens of Irish tricolours hoisted. Local trade unions like SIPTU, UNITE and NIPSA along with many other campaigning organisations have called an anti-racist march on 6 July.
The increasing level of anti-racist attacks in the six counties of ‘Northern Ireland’ has to be seen against the backdrop of the global rise of the far right and the election of Trump. However, the peculiar sectarian character and origins of the northern state has enabled an effortless shift from anti Irish/Catholic bigotry to anti-foreigner hatred.
This is not so much a replacement of the former as a fusion of the two strands which coexist and feed off each other, as can be seen in the recent forcing out of Catholic families from two mixed housing estates in in Belfast.
Sectarian and racist state
In fact northern society is still at root sectarian. The Good Friday Agreement does not challenge this character at all, it reinforces it. Indeed it has copper-fastened partition and relies on governance based on the allocation of power and privilege along sectarian lines. The ridiculous spectacle of a power-sharing Executive trying to deal with the racist riots is an expression of this divide.
Take the case of DUP Minister for Communities Gordon Lyons, who disgracefully posted the whereabouts of Ballymena refugees from the pogrom, only for thugs to attack them again in Larne Leisure Centre later that day. Sinn Fein First Minister Michelle O’Neill and others rightly called on him to resign but wrongly said it wasn’t ‘a crisis’. So he refused to resign.
The only way to counter sectarianism and racism is to explain the common class interests all workers have, be they Catholic, Protestant or migrant. The capitalist class are past masters at divide and rule. The Executive is part of the bosses’ state, utterly incapable of fighting the bigotry and incapable of representing working class interests as the ‘price of peace’ seems to be the implementation of Westminster austerity. It is part of the problem.
This means that working class organisations, such as the unions, must take a lead in countering racism and sectarianism. This they might do verbally, but it is a practical question of organising solidarity with migrant workers and building defence organisations.
Union leaders will be a hindrance in this respect. It’s not as if they even have a proven record of tackling sectarianism! Rank and file groups in the unions should be organised to lead the fightback against the far right.
Grassroots and community organisations can also play a vital role in defending migrants, like the Beechmount Residents Collective which has distinguished itself by being a beacon of solidarity in Belfast. There have also been big and impressive anti-racist demonstrations in the north. An anti-racist movement can be built but it must become a militant working class movement which is capable of protecting our communities from attack.
