At the weekend Carla Lockhart MP, a prominent member of the far-right Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), stood with a large group of masked men in Scarva. They were demonstrating in support of the Israeli state’s right to commit genocide and against a pro-Palestinian march. Lockhart was indicating by her presence that she was willing to be the face of a racist, sectarian movement. The masked men were mostly supporters of the neo-fascist loyalist drug gangs like the UDA.

The alleged attack by a migrant on a man in a nationalist part of north Belfast will have created mixed emotions for loyalists. On one hand they are historically in favour of random murderous attacks on nationalists. On the other, the fact that it was allegedly carried out by a migrant gave them an opportunity to take to the streets attacking migrants in their homes, rioting and asserting control of their areas.

Jack McKee, pastor of a north Belfast church, described what happened to members of his congregation: “They’re good Christian people and they’re getting put out just because they’re black.”

None of the reporting in the British press has commented on the fact that the organised racist violence has happened only in areas controlled by the loyalist drug gangs and which vote for the DUP and the even more far right Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV).

It was the TUV’s leader Jim Allister who made the stupidest remark about the attack, citing it as evidence of an alien culture being introduced to Belfast. Long before Belfast had asylum seekers some of the sort of people who would vote for Jim Allister had made hacking people to death a cottage industry in north Belfast.

Thomas Quinn was a fifty five year old road sweeper who was seized by the Shankill Butchers. Lenny Murphy hacked at his throat until his knife reached Quinn’s spine while a group of loyalists watched. Thomas Madden, a friend of my father’s, was grabbed coming out of the pub they drank in. He was suspended from a rope for six hours, parts of his body were carved off, and his corpse had 147 stab wounds. During this ordeal he frequently lost consciousness and was revived. The killers are regarded as heroes by many of the loyalists taking part in the racist violence.

The people who are taking part in the anti-migrant pogroms in Belfast are the direct ideological descendants of the gang that carried out these and an estimated 21 other murders. The DUP and the TUV know this. Any journalist with a slight grasp of the history of the six counties knows this.

I will finish with a personal anecdote.

Emma Little-Pengelly, the DUP’s leader in the Belfast toy parliament, raised the issue of migrants entering the six counties from the south. Some years ago, members of my family befriended a woman who had been trafficked through Europe and was sleeping in Dublin bus shelters with her child. She got the bus to Belfast and made a life for herself and her son. Touch wood, he is going to university later this year to study medicine. They were lucky that they found themselves in a community that makes migrants welcome and isn’t represented by politicians who put no distance between themselves and the pogrom mobs.
For a little bit more on north Belfast and sectarianism, here is something I wrote about the street where I grew up.