A Mayo perspective on the Belfast riots

by Dr. Richard Martin

As I write, Belfast is in turmoil. Ireland is in turmoil.

A 30-year-old Sudanese national, Hadi Alodid, has been charged with the attempted murder of Stephen Ogilvie, a 44-year-old man from Belfast. Footage of the attack has been widely shared across social media.

Predictably enough, in the aftermath of the attack there were riots in Belfast. Hundreds of masked men went out onto the streets of Belfast and burnt cars, buses and houses.

It is eerily reminiscent of the burning of Bombay Street in the Clonard district in 1969, when innocent Catholics had to flee for their lives from marauding loyalist gangs.

Foreign nationals in Belfast and across the island are living in fear. Up to 27 people were made homeless after a night of rioting and violence.

Addresses across south Belfast are being shared across social media platforms, a so called ‘hit-list’ of homes of non-white residents. This is a pogrom.

Not the pogrom of yesteryear when our Catholic brethren were being burnt out of their homes and streets, it’s a pogrom of people of colour.

Elon Musk has a lot to answer for. His X platform has become a cesspit of disinformation, lies and racist dog whistling.

In this volatile time, a calm perspective is critical and urgently needed.

He is constantly dialling up the rhetoric all the time. He is validating far right agitators and giving them a platform for the dissemination of hate.

Allison Morris, the Crime Correspondent at the Belfast Telegraph, was interviewed on Channel 4 when the riots started.

She said: ‘You know, you convince very, very poor white people that very poor or hard-working brown or black people are responsible for the problems caused by billionaire white men."

And that is what is happening. And it's happening quite successfully in terms of how social media is used.

I know mothers who have 15-, 16-year-old boys who say, if their child is, say, into the gym or into fitness or into anything like that, they look at the computer and all of a sudden they're being bombarded with this far-right, you know, men should be men, you know, macho, misogynist, patriarchal nonsense. And that's what's being done to a lot of these young men in Belfast.

That is no excuse for their behaviour.

But if you think about, there's no logic to a lot of it. I mean, we have a man from Sudan and the PSNI come out at 12 o'clock in the day to say this was a man from Sudan. This is the road he took. This is his path. He was here illegally, all of that. And the next thing you know, you have a Turkish barber's being set on fire.

I mean, there's no rhyme or reason or link to what is happening here. It is just wildly attacking anyone who might look slightly different.

All violence is wrong. Whether it’s perpetrated by whom so ever.

Not far from where the attack happened in North Belfast is the Shankill Road. Between 1975 and 1982 a paramilitary gang led by Lenny Murphy became infamous for their unprecedented savagery.

The Shankill Butchers roamed the streets of West Belfast in black taxis and abducted innocent Catholics and ferociously mutilated them before they were executed with large butcher’s knifes. At least 23 people were killed over that period.

It proved difficult to secure a conviction against Lenny Murphy as he inspired so much fear. Witnesses would not come forward. Those that were prepared to testify were murdered.

It must be said, the RUC didn’t cover themselves in glory investigating the Shankill Butchers either. It wouldn’t have taken Sherlock Holmes to pinpoint the ringleader.

The IRA eventually caught up with Lenny Murphy and murdered him in 1982. Few tears were shed on the Falls.

Later, much later, on January 30, 2005, Robert McCartney was murdered outside Magennis Bar in Belfast. He came from the republican stronghold of the Short Strand in East Belfast.

An altercation broke out in the pub when McCartney was accused of insulting the wife of an IRA member. McCartney, along with his friend Brendan Devine, were attacked.

The throats of both men were cut and McCartney’s wounds included the loss of an eye and a large blade wound running from his chest to his stomach. The fact that the attack was perpetrated by republicans against one of their own caused deep shame and embarrassment for the republican movement.

Here’s an uncomfortable truth. And the punchline. Horrific brutal knife crime isn’t committed by foreign nationals. It’s committed by criminals.

I’m not trying to justify what happened on Kinnaird Avenue. When I saw the footage I was appalled and felt huge anger. What happened was heinous and wrong. But I am trying to find a space for honest balanced reflection.

I’m pro-immigration. It’s not rational or logical to say ‘let’s ban people from Africa from coming into the country’, or ‘we should ban all Muslims’ and rhetoric along those lines.

It’s not logical to say you don’t like a person that you’ve never spoken with or engaged with simply on account of their religious beliefs or skin colour. And what activists are doing is stoking those fears and divisions across social media and western Europe. It is amplifying the message of racism.

Right now, in Mayo University Hospital we have people from all over the world working there. If we told these people to leave, then our healthcare system would collapse.

This is a frequent point I make in immigration debates. That’s usually countered by, ‘we should only let people who are going to work’ or ‘we should only let doctors and nurses in’ and so on. I understand that and it’s important that we have a just and fair immigration system and that the people who enter our country contribute to our tax system.

As it stands most do. A recent ESRI report showed that immigrants are no more likely to claim welfare than native born Irish citizens.

But are we really as a nation going to reject people fleeing war, genocide, and horror?

Given our own colonial history, surely we should have some compassion on those grounds.

Of course, there is a practical constraint on the amount of asylum seekers we can bring in, but this idea that our borders should be shut and no more ‘foreigners’ should enter isn’t just racist. It’s lunacy.

There are roughly 5,000 Sudanese nationals in Ireland.

Are they responsible for the actions of Hadi Alodid? They’re not.

The vast majority are contributing to our society in a positive manner.

Let’s not lose sight of that.