Jack Geehan shows how the far-right will not be talked off the street but instead must be removed by mass-action from anti-fascist activists ready to continue the struggle and not become complacent.
A well-organised counter-mobilisation led by the organised left and the broader anti-racist movement across Belfast has seen off an attempt by far-right forces here to claim the streets and intimidate local Muslims and immigrants over the past fortnight. Like their counterparts among fascist supporters of Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (AKA ‘Tommy Robinson’) and the British far right, a motley rabble of loyalists and right-wing Irish ‘patriots’ saw an opportunity in the aftermath of the Southport stabbing tragedy to try to gain a following in Belfast denied them until now.
Over several days leading up to Saturday 3rd August, anonymous posts went up on social media repeating false claims[i] first circulated on Russian social media that the suspect in Southport was a migrant from a Muslim background, calling on supporters to block roads in mainly loyalist areas of the city and threatening to march on the Belfast Islamic Centre. Sections of the left responded quickly, with United Against Racism (UAR) noting that the attempt to punish Muslims and wider immigrant communities for Southport ‘rests on a familiar and completely false narrative that Christianity is under attack, and that Muslims are a threat to our society, rather than an integral part of it’.[ii]
Activists began to mobilise in trade union branches and community organisations, among migrant and refugee communities and the ranks of the city’s vibrant Palestine solidarity movement: on 48 hours’ notice UAR managed to bring more than a thousand people to a counter-protest at Belfast city hall, where a ‘Community Rally Against Islamophobia’ endorsed by some 70 organisations vastly outnumbered the few dozen fascists who turned up. Far right numbers began to grow, however, as the rally wound down: unchecked by the police, they began to toss missiles and fireworks into the ranks of the rally, injuring several counter-protestors.
3 August: Police Hand the Streets to the Far Right
In the hours that followed roaming gangs—led in the Botanic area by Dublin-based fascists who, it was reported, couldn’t find their way to the Islamic Centre[iii]—launched a series of violent assaults on individuals, smashing migrant-owned shops left completely undefended by the PSNI. Residents in the Lower Ormeau Road mobilised quickly to block the far right’s entry to their community, with a strong showing of locals successfully countering the fascists. But elsewhere the PSNI allowed the fascists to march unimpeded. At least two apartment blocks in East Belfast were set upon, with racist graffiti sprayed on the doors in ‘racially motivated hate crimes’. As evening fell a series of vicious attacks unfolded in Sandy Row, with a number of Muslim-owned shops gutted and burned out: one of the owners—Syrian refugee Sam Yousef—said the attacks ‘took us back to [the] warzone in Syria. We thought when we came here we were going to be safe. But when we saw this, it made us feel completely unsafe again.’[iv] International students living in South Belfast reportedly locked themselves in out of fear of being set upon.
Among activists and much of the wider public, there was a sense of disbelief in the riots’ aftermath that a relatively small rump of loyalists and far right fellow-travellers were allowed to wreak such havoc. The PSNI had promised a ‘gold response’ in the days leading up to what was, after all, an openly hatched plan for disruption; police had clear advance warning of the far right’s intent, were fully equipped for dealing with rioting, and are not known for being slow in resorting to force. Yet the PSNI were nowhere in sight when the mob began to attack shops in Botanic—an obvious target—and seemed unable to anticipate that shops in Sandy Row might come under attack, despite a long string of similar attacks by loyalists in the vicinity over several years. In short, despite their pledges to the Muslim community and others, the PSNI left Belfast’s most vulnerable communities to the mercy of far-right wolves: in the weeks since no political party aside from People Before Profit has tried to hold them to account.
Media: ‘Both Sides Bad’
For the most part, the reality of what occurred on the 3rd was distorted by local media, which seemed to go out of its way to draw false equivalence between the few dozen in the ranks of the snarling, aggressively racist far right (some of them openly indulging in nazi salutes) and the massive, diverse, peaceful anti-racist counter-mobilisation. Loyalist grievance merchant Jamie Bryson, a regular fixture on publicly-funded BBCNI who seems to have salvaged a lucrative career for himself out of the wreckage of Brexit, predictably claimed that the missiles were thrown from anti-fascist ranks, and took aim at PBP MLA Gerry Carroll. On the nationalist side, Irish News columnist Brian Feeney—desperate for a pat on the head from Sinn Féin, it seems—added his weight to the ‘both sides bad’ approach, comparing PBP to the rabidly sectarian TUV.[v]
To its credit, UAR ignored the media handwringing and recognized that there was massive public disgust at the racist violence of 3 August. The reaction of ordinary people outside the small ranks of the far right and its apologists could be seen in the response to an attack by young people on a Muslim-owned shop on the Falls Road in the west of the city: there local people came out in force to defend the shop as soon as word spread that it had been targeted. UAR insisted early on that the only effective response was to organise a mass rally for the following weekend, when the far right—puffed up after being handed free run of the streets—was threatening to ‘go again’ on the following Saturday, 10 August.
Drawing upon a groundswell of grassroots responses already in motion, UAR called a mass demonstration under the slogan ‘Belfast Welcomes Diversity’: some 161 organisations endorsed the call. Significantly, the trade union federation NIC-ICTU, which had held back until now, formally endorsed the rally—giving strength to rank-and-file initiatives already underway—as did all the major organisations supporting Belfast’s refugee and migrant populations. The result was an impressive turnout for a counter-demonstration called for the evening of the 9th that outnumbered the far right ten-to-one, and a massive outpouring of strength on Saturday the 10th, with upwards of 15,000 anti-fascists turning up at City Hall for one of the largest demonstrations in Belfast for a decade. Remarkably, given its size, the Belfast demonstration was the largest gathering on the organised Stop the Far Right Day of Action, outnumbering the many impressive anti-fascist protests taking place across Britain.
A Major Advance: Far Right in Disarray
While anti-racist activists should be under no illusion that the far right threat has been permanently eliminated here, there is no doubt that the rapid response from United Against Racism and the trade union and community organisations who took the streets on 10 August represents a major step forward, and leaves a solid foundation for confronting the fascists any time they try to raise their heads. The impression created in the local and national (British and Irish) media that the far right represents majority opinion, that the bigots are unstoppable, was effectively exposed as a lie on the 10th: anyone who attended in Belfast that day went away lifted by our power in numbers, and by the certainty that even in a city so heavily burdened by a legacy of sectarianism and bigotry, we outnumber the fascists and have the power to stop them—even when the establishment shirks that responsibility.
After the early carnage following Southport, the story across the water has been much the same: anti-fascists have mobilized in their tens of thousands up and down Britain to deny the far right’s bid to claim the streets. We need now to take the same spirit into Dublin and the south, where for too long a virulently racist far right operating under the guise of ‘patriotism’ have been given free rein by a right-wing government to carry out vicious attacks on migrants and refugees. There as here their appeal aims to direct the anger and despair felt by ordinary people over a deepening social crisis away from the millionaires and their friends in government and against the most vulnerable of our immigrant neighbours. The bigots no more represent a majority in Dublin than they do here, and a strategy of mass mobilization, drawing on the experience in Belfast and across the water, must now be pursued energetically.
New Openings for Anti-Fascism
The fruits of such a strategy in Belfast are already obvious. Anti-fascist ranks been lifted by the massive turnout on the 10th, and we see evidence of that in the organisation of local initiatives across the North. Within 24 hours of the rioting on the 3rd, campaigners had already raised some £74,000 to help those burnt out the previous night; the resident’s collective at Beechmount in the west of the city organized an impressive rally on the 12th to send a clear message that immigrants were welcome in the area, and that together the community would resist rent-gouging landlords; on the 15th a cross-community, anti-racist lunch and reception was organized at the Shankill/Falls interface, with 150 people gathering in the face of threats in an establishment used by the local Muslin community; an anti-racist diversity carnival is being planned in East Belfast for September.
Equally important, our enemies are now in deep disarray. Loyalist paramilitaries central to orchestrating the riots have been briefing local journalists and the PSNI that their commanders have “read the riot act” to locals who engaged in violence. Their only real motivation is to hold on to lucrative streams of state funding under their control, and their self-serving retreat testifies to a lack of confidence in the aftermath of the popular anti-racist surge across the city. Attempts to organise an anti-immigrant stunt in Coleraine failed dismally, with a single individual turning up, confronted by fifty or so anti-fascists carrying trade union banners from NIPSA and UNISON. Derry anti-fascists responded effectively too: United Against Racism organised an impressive anti-racist demonstration there on August 7, causing the far right to cancel plans for a demonstration there. On August 17 the social media account used to promote most of the far right mobilisations announced another protest, but in an attempt to thwart anti-racist counter mobilisation, they felt pressured to call the rally at only a few hours’ notice. One dejected fascist lamented prophetically that “there will be a poor turn out and we will look stupid again.” And indeed they did: not a single fascist turned up.
The success of the anti-fascist movement in Belfast has had an important effect in the South too. The sight of so-called Irish ‘patriots’ from the ‘Coolock Says No’ brigade standing shoulder-to-shoulder with loyalists prominent in carrying out sectarian murders against Belfast nationalists[vi] (not to mention the Dublin-Monaghan bombings) has been a step too far, even among some of their supporters. As a direct result of their humiliation in Belfast, the ‘Coolock Says No’ group are now in deep disarray, going so far as renaming their hate-filled group in the hope we will all forget their pitiful foray to the North. The left in Dublin needs to seize the opportunities created by the response in Belfast, and work day and night over the coming weeks to drive a wedge between the small, hardcore fascist rump and the wider layer of ordinary people caught up in their scapegoating and lies.
Sustained Organising
The mass mobilization in Belfast on the 10th of August marks a major step forward in pushing the far right in Ireland back into the sewer. The success did not emerge in a vacuum, however. The mobilisations of the past few weeks have built upon almost a decade of sustained anti-fascist work here. In 2018, when then Britain First attempted to coalesce local fascism around “Free Tommy Robinson” rallies, they were consistently and systemically out-organised and outnumbered by counter-demonstrations. Over a thousand people joined an impressive diversity carnival that reclaimed the city centre for anti-racism, and within months the Britain First group had collapsed into infighting. In 2021 UAR spearheaded the movement here over Blacks Live Matter, organising a demonstration of over 5000 people, despite significant state repression for which the PSNI was later forced to apologise; theywere central also to local counter demonstrations, gathering over a thousand people in Dunmurry in 2023 after Nazi flags were hoisted outside the local mosque, and bringing out more that 600 people near Sandy Row in a powerful response to racist attacks in the area.
This impressive record is not accidental: it reflects a conscious and sustained strategy enacted by anti-racists across the city—particularly those from the organized socialist left with a long history of organising workers on a class basis and across the sectarian divide. To date this has made a major difference in ensuring that every attempt to organize a fascist movement in the city has been met by a robust united front response.
Belfast’s record of anti-fascism offers a concrete alternative to the misguided approaches pursued by the trade unions and state-sponsored NGOs in the south of Ireland over the recent past, which have been based on a belief that the far right should be ignored until they go away; that ‘working class people’ with ‘legitimate concerns’ should never be labelled fascists or racists; or that we should appease the far right by adopting some of their language on the need to oppose ‘open borders’, as with recent Sinn Féin policy. These strategies have proven disastrous, with serious long-term consequences for the left, for anti-racism and for vulnerable migrant communities. The lesson from Belfast is simple: a well-organised united front movement, organised with urgency and confidence, can beat back the forces of fascism.
Vigilance Needed
Anti-racists have scored importance victories in the last few weeks, but vigilance is needed. The hopelessness and despair that pulls people behind the far right’s racism and misogyny is fed by a social and economic system that is in deep crisis, and which can offer no way out. Social media remains saturated with vile racist propaganda boosted by profit-driven algorithms. Loyalist paramilitaries, indulged and financed by a sectarian state, continue to wield disproportionate influence, including in areas that many immigrants are now making their homes. We need a confident mass anti-racist movement north and south that can push back against the far right and take the fight to governments that have let ordinary people down on both sides of the border. That fight can only be built through a struggle that breaks down the divisions encouraged by those at the top, that takes the fight to their shock troops on the far right, and that unites all who call this place home.
[i] Early on Russian social media named the suspect as ‘Ali Al-Shakati’, claiming he was “an asylum seeker who came to the UK by boat last year and was on an MI6 watch list.” Later reports noted that the Welsh-born suspect, Alex Rudakubana, was from a ‘struggling’ but devoutly Christian home ‘heavily involved with the local church’, and had been suffering from mental health issues that went untreated. See Lucy Thornton, ‘Inside the religious family of Southport suspect Axel Rudakubana,’ Mirror 2 Aug 2024:https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/inside-religious-family-southport-suspect-33381466.
[ii] ‘Statement from UAR and Supporting Organizations,’ 3 Aug 2024: https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=884266567067695&set=pcb.884266677067684
[iii] Alexander Poots, ‘My Day with the Belfast Rioters,’ Unherd 5 Aug 2024: https://unherd.com/2024/08/my-day-with-the-belfast-rioters/ .
[iv] ‘They don’t want us to feel safe: Businesses pick up the pieces after overnight violence in South Belfast,’ Irish News 4 Aug 2024: https://www.irishnews.com/news/northern-ireland/they-dont-want-us-to-feel-safe-businesses-pick-up-the-pieces-after-overnight-violence-in-south-belfast-U627BASP4ZFCVEWXQIGFAKQFDY/.
[v] Bryson post from ‘X’ is reproduced with response from one of those injured on the day at https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10161664735074485&set=a.488534109484. For Feeney’s attack see ‘Feeney on Friday: TUV and People Before Profit and have one thing in common, Irish News 9 August 2024: https://www.irishnews.com/opinion/feeney-on-friday-tuv-and-people-before-profit-have-one-thing-in-common-they-are-both-blasts-from-the-past-HBPV63Y6YZFLDKLXJSKOZ4WRF4/. An edited response from PBP was printed on 16 Aug: https://www.irishnews.com/opinion/letter-brian-feeneys-attack-on-people-before-profit-comes-straight-out-of-right-wing-playbook-KIQS6BCN4VDHDMDO7GINMVK4QI/.
[vi] Among those prominent in anti-immigrant protests in Belfast are loyalist Michelle Thompson, who in 1992 was ‘convicted in connection with the cut-throat killing of a young Catholic mum’ lured to a UVF-owned property in East Belfast. Among those prominent in fascist ranks on the 10th were Shankill loyalist Glen Kane, who was part of a gang that battered 35-year-old Catholic Kieran Abram to death in 1992. See ‘Evil bigot who lured Catholic mum to her death is behind anti-migrant campaign,” Sunday World 21 Nov, 2023:
https://m.sundayworld.com/crime/irish-crime/evil-bigot-who-lured-catholic-mum-to-her-death-is-behind-anti-migrant-campaign/a1104154558.html?fbclid=IwY2xjawEuA_ZleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHYc-WDcHYLv2BK0YGVLDYWmie43-noc-wU-t_-IhR3sEjlqs-OmQK2LkWg_aem_7YZiNw7M8MtRz-VgtADEiw; and ‘Unholy Alliance: Dublin protesters stand side-by-side with loyalist sectarian killer as mob united in hate,’ Sunday World, 4 Aug 2024: https://www.sundayworld.com/news/irish-news/dublin-protesters-stand-side-by-side-with-loyalist-sectarian-killer-as-mob-united-in-hate/a626064215.html.
