The Lead Untangles: Peaceful protest into riots in Ballymena

We look at how violence has flared in Northern Ireland over the past week and hear from Ballymena-based journalist Kathryn Johnston as she looks at what can be done

Behind police lines in Ballymena on Wednesday night - John Breslin/Irish News

What is happening in Ballymena? Allegations of a sex assault against a 13-year-old girl. A peaceful protest morphs into riots focussing on members of Ballymena’s migrant community. Attacks on police with fireworks, petrol bombs, and boulders. Cars burned out, houses attacked. Police use baton rounds and water cannon in vain attempt to control rioters. This week’s Untangles comes to you slightly later than usual this Friday as we hear from Kathryn in Ballymena.

At a glance facts

On Saturday 7 June there was an alleged violent sexual assault on a 13-year-old girl in Ballymena in the area of Clonavon Terrace in Ballymena South.

The following Monday, two 14-year-old boys appeared in court charged with the crime, speaking through a Romanian interpreter. Both deny the charges.

That evening, a crowd of over 4,000 people attended a protest at a car park in the nearby Harryville area. The protest – largely – was peaceful, but as it ended over 300 people, most of them young boys and men, made their way to the area where the young girl had been assaulted, which borders on the back of Ballymena’s large, highly fortified police station.

As soon as the protestors reached Clonavon Terrace, they broke windows in houses both there and on neighbouring streets. They kicked down doors and broke into occupied houses as they searched in vain for other suspected perpetrators. Other groups of youths and men launched petrol bombs, fireworks and bricks at officers from the Police Service for Northern Ireland (PSNI).

The next day, police issued a statement about a further arrest: ‘A 28-year-old man was arrested yesterday evening, Monday 9th June. He has been unconditionally released from police custody following questioning.’

This rioting has become a pattern up until Wednesday night and has spread to other towns, including the setting alight of Larne’s leisure centre - while children’s swimming lessons were taking place - when the Communities Minister, Gordon Lyons, revealed that it had been used to temporarily rehouse refugees from the violence in Ballymena.

Context

Ballymena was originally a very prosperous Unionist borough. However, the 21st century has seen a collapse in well-established industries like Michelin, Japan Tobacco International (JTI), and Wrightbus.

This decline in manufacturing industries coincided with a surge in migration to the town. Polish workers arrived in the first surge, and later Romanians and Roma groups, as well as Bulgarians, moved into Ballymena.

Inadequate public housing and asylum services were compounded by this economic failure, and the town is a faltering shadow of its once comfortable past.

A scarcity of meaningful employment for the 31,000 Ballymena residents at the 2021 census has inevitably contributed to growing unemployment figures, as well as poverty and social exclusion.

Violent and brutal crime is part of the town’s legacy from the Northern Ireland troubles. Although the Good Friday Agreement, which established a peace process and an eventual shared government, was signed in 1998, there are many terrible events in Ballymena and its hinterland which cast a long shadow over the town’s present and future.

What are our politicians saying?

Michelle O’Neill, Sinn Fein First Minister of Northern Ireland has said that the violence in Ballymena over the last two nights is "pure racism, there's no other way to dress it up".

Jim Allister, the local MP for the Traditional Unionist Voice party, suggested the “very distressing” scenes were a product of unhappiness at “significant demographic change in the area” caused by “unfettered immigration”.

By Tuesday, however, he was saying on X that ‘Tonight’s further senseless violence in Ballymena is helping no cause, just destroying our own town and getting young men criminal records. Stop it.’

Sian Mulholland, who represents the moderate Alliance Party of Northern Ireland (APNI) for the constituency as a Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) said on Wednesday ‘What we need now is calm and leadership from politicians to call out this behaviour before someone loses their life.’

While Tommy Robinson is never far away.

Back in the real world, death is “only a petrol bomb away”, Patrick Corrigan, Amnesty International’s Northern Ireland director warned as he told how the Ballymena riots had been stoked by disinformation on social media.

What are the police saying?

Yesterday the Chief Constable of the Police Service for Northern Ireland, Jon Boutcher, held a press conference to brief journalists about the situation.

‘Criminal justice will take its course,’ he warned, calling this week’s events ‘wanton, disgraceful behaviour that is absolutely race-motivated".

Boutcher promised grimly, ‘We will come after you, we will arrest you, we will prosecute you successfully.’

And as if to underline this, the Chief Constable said, ‘We've identified a third suspect who is currently outside the jurisdiction.’ ‘But’, he added, ‘we will be bringing him back into the jurisdiction’.

Last night was largely peaceful, though there was some sporadic rioting in both Portadown and Ballymena.

What comes next?

As Lenin said, what is to be done? There are several central issues. Racism, femicide and the crisis in young white masculinity. Not to mention Ballymena’s paramilitary past. At the end of this month there is a Pride parade in Ballymena – our first. Already four protests have been lodged.

And it is just coming up to the traditional 12^th July Orange Order celebrations – a time when feelings are heightened and on the 11^th night, effigies, images and flags are traditionally burned on the top of massive bonfires.

Several years ago, bonfires in Ballymena torched an Irish flag a move designed to provoke a reaction and heighten tensions in the town. With marching season ahead, whose effigy will be burned this year?

One thing is for sure. Politicians, community leaders and our public services have a tough time ahead of them. If anyone has an answer, get in touch.

About The Lead Untangles: In an era where misinformation is actively and deliberately used by elected politicians and where advocates and opposers of beliefs state their point of view as fact, sometimes the most useful tool reporters have is to help readers make sense of the world.

The Lead Untangles is delivered each Friday by The Lead and focuses on a different complex, divisive issue with each edition. If there’s something you think we should be featuring in Untangles, drop ed@thelead.uk a line. Our thanks to the Irish News for the use of an image in this week’s edition - you can see their coverage and support their on the ground reporting.

About the author: Kathryn Johnston is an author, broadcaster, researcher and freelance journalist. She has contributed to The Sunday Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Belfast Telegraph,  The Times, Irish Times, BBC, Ulster Television and many others. Together with her late husband, Liam Clarke, she wrote and published Martin Mcguinness: From guns to government. Kathryn is a member of the Belfast Branch Committee of the National Union of Journalists, and a member of the Irish Executive Council of the NUJ.