4 August 2024 - 5:33pm
Sandy Row, Belfast
When the sun set last night, youths rioted in Sandy Row, a working-class Loyalist community tucked behind Belfast’s city centre. Turning the corner from the main road, bustling shops and bars suddenly morphed into an eerie scene of armoured Land Rovers and police cordons, smouldering bins and broken paving stones, as firefighters made safe the burned-out husk of a Sudanese cafe and barber, an early target for the night’s disorder. Police in full riot gear, some toting baton guns, formed shield walls or sheltered behind their armoured vehicles from occasional rocks and bottles, as Union Flags and red, white and blue bunting hung limply overhead.
“Unfortunately it’s turned into a riot situation now,” a woman, who after a pause gave her name as Marie Morgan, describing herself as a media activist, told me. “They’ve been firing rubber bullets, and as you can see there’s young children here as well, and there’s been no warning they were going to fire those.” There was no evidence of their usage in my presence. Marie was chatting with friends at the doorway of their flat, behind a police cordon: the night was unusually warm for Belfast, and Sandy Row residents had gathered to watch proceedings. Locals were suffering from high rates of homelessness and housing insecurity, Marie complained, but a block of flats slated to be converted for use as social housing was now being used “to store illegal immigrants.”
Partly due to Protestant movement to the suburbs and outlying towns, working class Loyalist areas are experiencing the highest rates of demographic change in Belfast as migrants dispersed from the British mainland are resettled in previously homogeneous, tight-knit communities, dominated by paramilitary factions. It is not always a recipe for harmony. “Nobody’s racist here, we just want the best for our community,” Jenny, a young woman who had just walked barefoot through the smoke-filled no-man’s-land between police and rioters, carrying her high-heels in her hand from a night out, said, before accusing recently arrived migrants of “preying” on local women and girls. “And God help them wee ones in Southport,” she added, “This is where it’s all came from, all of this.”
On the other side of the police cordon, masked youths had set fire to cars as barricades, blocking the PSNI from moving deeper into the area. They whooped as they threw stones and aimed fireworks at the dazzling blue lights of the police lines, smashing up masonry in the flame light for ease of hurling. The air was thick with the stench of burning plastic and rubbish from the bins that had been set ablaze. A crowd had gathered to watch the riot, drinking, and vaping. “Put that there camera away,” one ski-masked lad ordered me, “or you’ll have it taken off you.”
Outside the Royal bar, bedecked with British and Israeli flags and doing roaring trade behind steel shutters, drinkers watched firefighters extinguishing the blaze of the burned out Sham supermarket, a Syrian-owned store with flats above, long a focus of local attacks. Armoured Land Rovers had surrounded the pub. Behind them a giant electric traffic sign blinked “DELAYS EXPECTED,” perhaps superfluously. Other ethnic minority stores had been left untouched: drinkers gave differing reasons for why this particular shop had been targeted. “Everyone has their own beliefs, whatever they want,” said Jenny, after emerging from inside the pub with a drink. “But some of their beliefs are wrong, and belittle women.” Her black friend beside her, tottering on her heels, nodded as she watched the firefighters buzzsaw through the charred shop shutters.
As a line of PSNI Land Rovers curved past the pub in convoy, an older drinker berated them in a thick Belfast accent. “You’re the fuckin’ scum of the earth,” he shouted, as riot police in bulky body armour and round helmets filed past like astronauts behind their shields. “Do your Sinn Féin masters’ bidding, you bastards,” he shouted, “Fuck the lot of yous.” England’s riots may have sparked the current round of disorder, but there’s a specifically local undertow of Loyalist disaffection brewing in this rapidly changing community.
