UK’s Migrant Sex Crime Wave Reaches Ballymena

Last night, June 9th, saw Ballymena descend into a riot with multiple houses set alight and barricades constructed around the town as migrant homes were targeted. Local anger spilled over in the wake of multiple sexual assaults targeting teenage girls in the town.

On 24th May a thirteen year old girl was sexually assaulted by a man described as ‘having dark-coloured skin, dark brown eyes, and speaking in a foreign language’. The latest case, which occurred last Saturday, 7th June, saw a teenage girl sexually assaulted by foreign teenagers between 7:30 pm and 10:30 pm on Clonavon Terrace. On Sunday the PSNI arrested and charged two fourteen year old boys with rape. On Monday, the teenagers confirmed through a Romanian interpreter that they were denying the charges. The PSNI believes that ‘there [is] a potential suspect outstanding believed to be around the same age as the defendants.’

The scene of the attack, according to a description by a relative of the victim, paints a grim picture. The family of the migrants believed to be responsible had been escorted from the area before the riot took place, if local intel is to be believed.

Yesterday a large crowd gathered in the Harryville area of Ballymena to ‘vent their anger’ and ‘to stand with the family of a teenage girl who was sexually assaulted’. It is estimated that around 2500 people were gathered. The crowd moved along the Larne Street and Queen Street areas towards Clonavon Terrace, where the attack allegedly occurred. The PSNI blocked the route to Clonavon as the crowd approached. Being unable to advance, tensions escalated, and missiles were thrown towards police lines. At some point the cordon was broken, and throngs of masked men poured into the breach. Cheers went up as a door was kicked in and windows were smashed.

The Irish News remarks that one woman said ‘If they’re local, they need out. If they’re not local, let them f⸻ stay there,’ in response to being informed that a house under attack still had people inside. Missiles were thrown at houses and rioters attempted to light curtains on fire through smashed windows.

The riot continued late into the night. At quarter past eleven, the Fire Service was dealing with two fires on Clonavon Terrace; at around half twelve another house was set alight on Larne Street; after midnight the PSNI pushed the rioters at Clonavon Terrace out; at almost one in the morning PSNI riot vans began to evacuate residents from properties at Clonavon.

In the aftermath of the riot, four homes had been set ablaze, six houses had shattered windows and splintered doors, fifteen police officers had reported injuries, one rioter had been shot with a rubber bullet, and a twenty-nine year old man had been arrested and charged with riotous and disorderly behaviour. The PSNI announced that it would pursue the perpetrators of the arson attacks, which were being considered as “racially motivated hate crimes.” In nearby Cullybackey a petrol bomb had been thrown at a car which caused it to catch fire, and ignite a nearby house.

Many of the residents this morning packed their cars with belongings and left, the smell of smoke still lingering in the air. TUV leader Jim Allister said ‘Within Ballymena there has been rising concerns about the sheer scale of migration into the town and that would have been a factor in the wholly peaceful protest.’ He added that an ‘influx’ of foreign people in Ballymena, ‘often arriving freely from the Republic under EU movement rules has driven rapid demographic change.’

The 2021 census data of the area in which the attack occurred is bleak. Over half of the residents arrived in the country between 2011 and 2021. The majority of residents do not speak English as their primary language, and almost none have any proficiency in either Irish or Ulster Scots. The majority have no recognised educational qualifications and work in menial labour while renting. The majority population is male and single. Residents from Ireland and Britain are almost outnumbered by Bulgarians and Romanians alone. This data is from four years ago and it is likely that the population figures are significantly worse than the data suggests.

Many Irish Nationalists expressed their support for the riot and some commended the targeting of migrant homes, finding common cause with the anti-migrant sentiment expressed by the protesters and rioters, while others were more critical. On The Nolan Show, Stephen Nolan claimed that people ‘just a few yards away from police’ were ‘battering doors down’ and some commentators have directly accused the rioters of UDA affiliation.

Evidence does suggest that UDA involvement is a possibility. TUV leader Jim Allister claimed that ‘individuals from outside the area came with the express purpose of causing disruption’. Some reports noted that a ‘faction of masked individuals broke away from the main group, stockpiling bricks and bottles, building makeshift barricades and launching attacks on nearby homes’ which resulted in ‘a sustained and coordinated assault that lasted for hours’.

The pre-meditation, stockpiling, and planning all suggest that the riot was planned in advance and did not erupt as a spontaneous outburst. A similar riot occurred last year in Belfast after the first in a series of anti-immigration protests at City Hall. Following the protest, the gathering marched towards the Ormeau Road, where they attempted to force their way into the estate and mocked the victims of the Sean Graham bookmakers massacre, Catholics who were murdered by the UDA in 1992. The targeting of homes is a known method in the UDA arsenal.

In late May, Catholics in Annalee Street, Belfast found their homes coming under attack from Loyalists. Masked men threw bricks through five selected homes in an attempt to intimidate Catholics out of their houses. It was later learned that the UDA were responsible for the attack. Earlier in May, the nearby Skegoneill area suffered similar intimidation. Catholic households were targeted, and the PSNI delivered warnings to residents that their homes were under threat. At least one family moved out. The UDA were again found to be responsible. Sources reportedly claimed that ‘The UDA wants them out because they’re Catholic’ and that a UDA ex-prisoner is responsible for greenlighting the campaign of intimidation.

In reaction to the targeting of migrant housing, one person noted that Loyalist riots in the North have a much more unrestrained and direct character than rioting in the South does. ‘[T]hey display a willingness to directly attack immigrants, their homes and businesses in a way that the Irish nationalist far right doesn’t have’. The historical record would agree. The Troubles was kickstarted by a sustained and serious period of rioting and gun battles in 1969 that escalated into the burning of Bombay Street. Loyalist mobs forced their way into Catholic housing estates and, supported by sniper fire, burned the terraced houses. British soldiers were deployed to quell the rioting, but held back as Loyalist mobs set fire to Catholic housing, only deploying tear-gas after the damage had already been dealt.

Reaching further back into Ulster’s history one finds the Peep-of-Day Boys and Orange Boys, Protestant agrarian organisations in Ireland who would attack Catholic homes and churches at dawn, or the peep of day. The Orange Order was formed out of these organisations and persists to this day as an anti-Catholic force in Ireland.

A bitter irony is that in Ballymena, the Loyalists in that townland had protested and intimidated Catholics and their church in Harryville, which has now become the site of tension and riot between the self-same Loyalists and the newly arrived migrants. What was it all for? some might ask of them.

This publication has repeatedly condemned any attempt at unity between Nationalists and Loyalists. The two groups are fundamentally at odds, even if both are under the same assault from mass migration. Any attempt at unity is sure to be abortive and will cause lasting damage to Irish Nationalism and Republicanism.

Ireland is surely leading the world in anti-migration unrest and disorder–one cannot help but be reminded that as the riot in Ballymena was taking place, another riot was underway in California in support of migration.