Why Belfast’s troubled past made violence inevitable

0:02Sky News, the full story first.

0:11Belfast's troubled history makes this week's violence in the city even more dangerous. This is why.

0:21you

0:28violence erupted on the streets of Belfast on tuesday night houses a bus and the middle eastern supermarket were set on fire and police cars were also attacked Northern Ireland's First Minister accused masked men of burning people out of their homes. There's nothing community-orientated about terrorising innocent and defenceless families who are fearing for their lives. It is thuggery, plain and simple. This came after a knife attack in the city on Monday, and a video of it was widely shared on social media. A 30-year-old Sudanese man has been charged with attempted murder, so we have to be careful about what we say on that.

1:09But this isn't the first time we've seen this kind of unrest in Belfast recently, as the issue of migration raises tensions in the city. So what are the challenges for an historically divided community, and how might Belfast's sectarian past play a role? I'm Mari Arora, and I'm joined by author, journalist, and counter-extremism expert, Professor Ian Aitchison. Ian, you've been watching closely some of the kind of shocking images that we've been seeing unfolding on our TV screens from Belfast over the past 24 hours or so. What was your reaction to what we've been seeing? Well, thanks for having me on.

1:49It's really important, first of all, to be clear about those scenes. They are appalling destruction. They are reminiscent of the worst sorts of sectarian attacks that we unfortunately have seen in the Troubles in Northern Ireland and in North Belfast in particular. Human beings being burnt out of their houses and having to be evacuated by police officers is something that I want to see people arrested for. Now that of course is the necessary reaction that everybody should have and most people in Northern Ireland will have to those appalling, disgraceful scenes. But it is not sufficient to understand or to fix the problem.

2:30And here's the issue, and I take issue with a lot of the noise that I've seen coming out of Northern Ireland's political class. They condemn and then they change the subject. You know, politicians are brilliant at condemning the thuggery that I've just described. And then they pivot instantly to platitudes about diversity. Instead of admitting that people are furious and frightened about what has happened and the impact of migration into the streets of places like North Belfast. And so there's a lot of political conflation, I think, of legitimate anger with bigotry. So legitimate worries about crime, about integration, about cultural clashes, about national security and migration control are far too often dismissed simply as racism.

3:19So some people in these communities, and again, I'm absolutely not condoning their behaviour. I'm trying to contextualise it, I guess. But they conclude that nobody is listening to them until they riot, which is precisely the lesson we must be desperate to avoid. Let's just take a step back for a moment, zoom out. How much immigration is Northern Ireland experiencing at the moment? I think statistically, the numbers of people who are coming from countries where people look visibly different, in other words, either by race or by religion, North Africa, Muslims coming into Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom, are still relatively small.

3:57I think the problem is that they tend to be concentrated in areas which already have been scarred by sectarian violence, like North Belfast, and which have huge amounts of social deprivation as well. So you're putting relatively large numbers of people into a relatively small area, which has a very long memory of othering people and of objections and tribal affiliations and so on to people contesting power and space over them. and a place, incidentally, where policing is still not normalised. Police officers can't operate in some of these areas outside armoured vehicles wearing body armour and all being armed with automatic pistols for fear that they would be attacked.

4:43So if you put all of that together, despite the fact these numbers are relatively small, you do get a fairly toxic mix of factors. So it is not surprising that there is a reaction to such atrocious and barbaric events as the attack in Belfast a few nights ago. And what have been some of the challenges associated with this demographic change? You say the numbers are small, but the impact is quite significant. So what are some of those challenges? We've got to say that most people who come to Northern Ireland to make a life there, most of them just want to live their lives peacefully. and a lot of them contribute in the economy to jobs that most of the people born in Northern Ireland don't want to do.

5:27And that's a familiar story, frankly, if you look across the piece into the rest of the United Kingdom and Ireland. But of course, if you're moving into an area which has high levels of social deprivation, stressed services already, and very poor housing stock for various reasons that hasn't been renewed, you introduce an element of competition there. And people will perceive if they see people that look different from them living in houses of multiple occupancy and receiving welfare benefits because of their asylum status and so on, hanging around in street corners, they will perceive that there's an unfairness there.

6:03And they will also see their community changing. These communities in North Belfast in particular, extremely tribal communities, it's still a quilt or a mosaic is probably a better word of small estates and streets that are orange or green, according to old tribal affiliations of unionism and nationalism. And so these are tight communities that have endured enormous amounts of pain and hurt during the course of the Troubles, who are very homogenous and who are pretty tight. and it's not surprising again if you see new people coming into a community who are in their eyes failing to integrate or jumping ahead of services that you're going to get resentment and that resentment of course gets picked up and exploited of course it does by bad actors and this has been the case in this particular situation with people on the extreme right trying to foment some of the disorder that's been happening and of course they're comfortable sitting in cyberspace And then what you're getting is kids who are out in the streets rioting, who are likely to be arrested as a result of last night's disorder, who will be up on charges that are exceptionally serious and that will destroy their lives.

7:15This is crazy and it's actual cowardice as well to put those people out on the streets. But for all of that, you have got to say that there is more than a kernel of truth to what is animating these disgraceful scenes. and politicians simply do not want to talk about it. There's no honest debate about integration and assimilation and responsibilities in communities across Britain and in Ireland. What's happening here is the hard work of integration, if you like, is being outsourced. So Stormont and Westminster talk about welcoming refugees, for example. They leave this integration to overstretched schools, churches, community groups in the toughest areas.

7:56And then people are acting as if they're shocked and surprised when these areas explode. Now, you've talked about that legacy, historical legacy of sectarianism, of division. Explain to me how that legacy affects the way in which Belfast is dealing with, responding to, or maybe failing to respond to these challenges around immigration. What I've tried to do is explain that in terms of a history of contested space and identity, particularly in North Belfast. But there are other areas as well that have seen riots such as Portadown in North Armagh outside Belfast, where sectarian identity is entrenched.

8:41And when you have that baseline of mistrust of others that actually has exploded in the past into outright sectarian violence, including murder, certainly burning communities out, feelings that communities are isolated and under siege, and you have an intense feeling of vulnerability because of your constitutional position, whether unionist or nationalist, and you introduce new people into that equation. It's not surprising that without proper integration, without proper management and control, and with politicians who seem completely unable to do anything except rush to tell people to shut up after atrocities happen and people are venting their anger, rather than trying to understand that anger and repurpose it, then you're going to get serious problems.

9:32How do politicians deal with this? How should they be dealing with this? You've spoken about how they're failing in their duties, essentially. As I say, there needs to be more honesty injected into the debate. We can't simply respond to every atrocity that involves migrants who've come to this country illegally, or in the case of the alleged assailant this week who've come to the country through legitimate asylum means. So we have to say there is a major problem, and stop being mealy-mouthed about it, with uncontrolled migration. And we need to start controlling that. The security services need to start clamping down on people who are in this country, either legitimately or illegitimately, who may cause problems and who are likely to be involved, for example, and radicalised into violence and so on, and contain that problem and remove it.

10:24But we've no capacity to do that at the moment, because, of course, having left the European Union, we don't have the treaties and guarantees that operated that allowed asylum seekers and refugees and small boat migrants and so on to be returned to the country that they left if it's a safe country. And this isn't an argument to relitigate Brexit. Brexit's happened and we have to deal with the democratic outcome of that. But that is an issue. Our relationship with the Irish Republic and our land border with the European Union is an issue that needs to be sorted out. But we have to say this country's got finite resources and it's got finite patience also with people who are exploiting the system to come in here.

11:06And we've got a national security problem, of course. And it's not just with the people that we know about that come into the United Kingdom, either through small boats or various other means or indeed through the Irish Republics. open backdoor into the UK. It's with the people that we know nothing about who've arrived, because they haven't been picked up by anybody, not even our sort of rudimentary border control has picked them up. Okay, so we have seen this kind of unrest in Northern Ireland in recent years. This isn't the first time. If nothing is done, if the politicians don't act, if things continue the way they are, where are we heading?

11:44I think the situation is serious, but it's not yet out of control. So that's the first thing to say. I think we can get a grip on the problem in the ways that I've described, but that takes political will. And I don't think this Labour government has a political will to go anywhere near some of the things that I'm talking about. So we might need to wait until another government comes in. But the answer to people worrying about the far right and populism is not to ignore the problem that's been expressed from the grassroots. This issue, this concern and fear about the impact of migration is not manufactured in cyberspace by the extreme right.

12:24It is certainly manipulated by bad actors, but it's genuine. So that needs to be acknowledged and properly dealt with. If it's not properly dealt with, what I think we will see in GB in particular is a continued sectarianization of society where you've got towns and cities across the country who are increasingly segregated according to identity, according to political belief. And that is an awful prospect. We need a country that welcomes everybody who wants to come here and welcomes people who want to come here legally. we need people to come here legally to work in this country and to contribute to this country.

13:06But it has to be on our terms, if you like. And I suppose the argument on the progressive left, they would say, hold on a minute, we want to embrace people's differences. We don't need everybody to be the same, to look the same, act the same, and actually let's celebrate those differences. And you would argue that's not necessarily the way to look at it? But we're all different. And I certainly don't want to be part of a country that is completely homogenous in terms of what it looks like or what God or no God is worshipped by those people. But I think it is perfectly reasonable to say to people, if you're coming to this country, this country has a culture and a history and values and a way of life that is important to the people who live here.

13:50I think what people are finding, particularly as politics changes, is that you've got politicians that will spout any end of stuff about diversity as our strength and so on and then an electorate that is saying well on the ground actually it doesn't look like that mate and you know we're sick and tired of platitudes that get trotted out every time there's an atrocity. Ian thank you so much for your time. That's all for today now don't forget to email your episode suggestions to why at sky.uk and this is why we'll be back again tomorrow.

14:27Thank you.