Red Statement On Belfast Riots

A terrible attack on a health worker has been used as an excuse to attack other health workers. That’s the insane logic being applied in the North right now.

For the third summer in a row, racist pogroms have blighted the North. The latest wave of violence is the most severe yet, with violent mobs running wild through the streets of Belfast, setting fire to houses while shouting “get the foreigners out.”

So far an estimated 27 people have been made homeless, with many having to be rescued from their burning homes. The youngest of those rescued was a two-month old baby. None of these people have anything to do with the attack that was used an excuse to trigger this violence.

This wave of thuggery was sparked by a horrific knife attack on Stephen Ogilvie in North Belfast on the night of Monday 9th June. Video footage circulated online showed that the attacker was a black man. A Sudanese asylum seeker has since been arrested and charged with attempted murder.

The far-right loyalist paramilitaries immediately set to work stoking an atmosphere of fear and rage, just like they did before the riots in South Belfast in 2024 and Ballymena in 2025. Rather than blaming the individual responsible for the knife attack, the finger of blame was pointed at the entire community of migrants and minorities of every description.

Calls were issued for “protests” to block roads, local businesses were ordered to shut, along with calls such as “wear dark colours and be ready to fight.” It’s clear that violence was the plan from the start. This response runs in stark contrast with the statement issued by the victim’s family:

“We have been left feeling disgusted by the scenes that unfolded yesterday across Northern Ireland in the wake of what happened. We want to make it absolutely clear that to do this in response is not supported by our family, and peaceful protest is only ever the way forward. We have many migrants who make a deeply valuable contribution to our country, including from within our healthcare system and hospitality sector, and we depend on them to make our country work. We do not want this terrible tragedy to be used to divide people or fuel hostility - do not do this in the name of our loved one as we do not share the same values.”

It is disgraceful that a family going through this terrible ordeal is forced to step into the role of peacemakers. It is equally disgraceful and ironic for the far-right and paramilitaries to blame immigrants for “importing violence” to the North. Between 2024/25 only 5.7% of people arrested for a violent crime were from a minority background. In the wake of these indiscriminate attacks and other recent events, it is clear that home-grown violence is the more common threat.

The far-right claim to be motivated by “protecting women and children.” Northern Ireland is statistically the least safe place in Europe for women. 30 women have been murdered here since 2020, yet the vast majority of the killers were both local to NI and previously known to their victims. For example, these pogroms occurred less than a week after the sentencing of Stephen McCullagh, a man from the North, arrested for the murder of his pregnant girlfriend Natalie McNally.

In court the murder was described as: “a brutal and frenzied attack that involved the use of a knife.” Similarly, these riots unfold on the same week that former DUP leader, Jeffrey Donaldson, is in court accused of rape and sexual assault. Why were there no protests in response to these events? Why no protests at DUP offices?

Moreover, it is important to emphasise that workers are far more at risk of harm at the hands of their own government than from a random act of violence by a foreign-born national. The Russian revolutionary Lenin called the state “a power which arises from society but places itself above it and alienates itself more and more from it. What does this power mainly consist of? It consists of special bodies of armed men having prisons etc., at their command.”

In all capitalist societies, the state is an inherently violent institution and is granted a monopoly on violence in order to keep workers in line. We just don’t think about it this way because it is normalised and often not as plain to see as masked men smashing windows and burning homes.

But our landlords can evict us. The banks can repossess our homes. These acts are both allowed and facilitated by the state and their armed bodies of men, such as the PSNI did when assisting the eviction of the family from Clovelly Street, Belfast on the 28th April. Both the British state and the machinery of the state here in the North have committed countless acts of violence including murder and intimidation.

Another example of state sanctioned violence is the continued erosion of public services, especially our National Health Service. Any cut to its funding creates longer waiting lists, which subsequently lead to late diagnoses of fatal diseases, which cause deaths that could have been prevented. From lack of housing to mental health cuts the system daily commits acts of violence against the working class. Any policy decision like this is a direct act of violence against workers.

It is clear to working people that those who helped whip up this atmosphere from the sidelines, such as the billionaire Elon Musk and former Tory Nigel Farage, do not share the same class interests as us workers. Farage’s Reform UK is a party funded and supported by billionaires like Musk. Their goal is to use the immigration debate to divert workers’ attention away from economic issues and blame all our problems on migrants, rather than the bosses and landlords that are the real cause of our hardship.

Because the ruling class are all too aware that a united, mobilised working-class could sweep them aside with ease and put an end to their exploitation. Stoking hatred and division is the best tool in their arsenal to keep us at bay, so that they can keep on squeezing us for every penny of profits they can reap. The bosses fear losing control and so a wing of the boss class has turned to funding a great distraction.

The same goes for loyalist paramilitaries involved in the pogroms. They exert control through fear and intimidation so that they can extract their own source of profit from the estates they claim to represent: drug dealing.

This is yet another source of violence against working-class communities and another one far more common than a random attack by an asylum seeker. They are illegal “businessmen”, who therefore fully support capitalism. Their interests lie closer to the likes of Musk than the average Protestant worker.

In 1918, the German revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg wrote something that could have been written today, she wrote:

“It is one of the features of modern civilization that the mass of people, whenever the shoe pinches for one reason or another, make a scapegoat of members of another race, religion, or colour in order to release its pent-up ill temper. It is then able to return refreshed to the regular daily life. It is understood that those best suited to serve as scapegoats are national minorities that have previously been socially neglected and mistreated. And just because of their weakness and the precedent of mistreatment, further cruelties are easily administered without fear of reproach. In the United States it is the Negro who is discriminated against and persecuted. In Western Europe this role has often been forced on the Italian. It was around the turn of the century, in the proletarian section of Zurich, in Aussersihl, that a pogrom flared up against the Italians in the wake of the murder of a child.”

In summary, in times of capitalist crisis, the bosses will place the blame for society’s ills on minorities. This is because these groups are already living an unstable existence on the fringes of society. As a result, any acts of reprisal can be easily carried out, with little fear of consequences. The violence acts as a pressure release for those carrying it out and the bosses are let completely off the hook.

Luxemburg made this analysis over 100 years ago. This scapegoating is nothing new. It’s part of the same-old playbook by the capitalist class. They return to it each and every time they need to direct attention away from a crisis of their own creation. The scapegoat changes but the method stays the same.

This is the overall purpose of the far-right: to create a situation of disorganisation and confusion to prevent any form of working-class unity across sectarian, racial or national lines. They will never offer any real solutions to the problems faced by working people. Only distractions and disunion.

Northern workers and poor people living in the estates have every right to be angry about their current situation. According to CATU, 1 in 5 people are living in poverty. 50,000 families are on the social housing waiting list. And private rentals have increased by 51% over the past five years.

But these problems are not the fault of refugees that arrived with nothing but a plastic bag full of their belongings. The blame lies squarely at the feet of the capitalist state. A state which has failed for decades to build enough social houses, and a state that does nothing to tackle rising private rentals, while allowing 47,000 houses to lie empty. Terrorising minorities will do nothing to change this. The only thing that can is class struggle.

It is encouraging to see our trade unions rally in support of their members, for hospital workers and ethnic minorities. It is important for workers to show our solidarity and stand firm against physical attacks towards our working comrades and all attempts to divide us.

But the most effective way to root out racism is by eradicating the conditions that breed it. In order to do this, unions will need to mobilise and fight the real force destroying our lives and communities: the continued austerity policies of Stormont and Westminster. Class struggle can forge class unity and when we fight together it will be clear as day where the lines are drawn and which side of the picket lines the far-right agitators and their wealthy supporters stand on.

Spoiler: it won’t be on ours. They’d rather be scabs and strike-breakers than stand in solidarity with workers.

We will continue to fight for all workers and combat any efforts to drive a wedge between us. We fight for a rebellion to put workers in the driving seat of a planned economy. Join the Red Network. United we stand. Divided we fall.