Statistics

The dramatic rise in the number of "racial incidents" in the north over recent years is illustrated clearly by statistics.  Between 1996 and 1999, more than 350 race-motivated attacks were reported, a 400% increase on the previous period.  The number of attacks on children also doubled - rising from 8.5% of total attacks in 1996 to more than 16% in 1999. The annual total increased from 186 to 269 incidents between 1999 and 2000 - a rise of 45%.  Over the last two years these high levels of attack have continued.  226 racial incidents were reported between April 2002 and April 2003, with 185 such attacks in the previous year.  Also, due to victims’ fears over coming forward and their lack of confidence in the police tackling racist violence, the official statistics are likely to significantly understate the extent of the problem.

The truth is that Northern Ireland is fast-becoming the race-hate capital of Europe, breaking the UK’s record for the number of racist attacks: spitting and stoning in the street, human excrement on doorsteps, swastikas on walls, pipe bombs, arson, the ransacking of houses with baseball bats and crow bars, and white supremacist leaflets nailed to front doors.

Attacks

In the last few months, the Chinese community, the largest ethnic minority in the north, and which has had a presence here since the 1960s, has borne the brunt of most of these attacks. A local estate agent in the Village area of south Belfast has been warned not to accommodate ‘Chinese, Blacks, or Asians’. Ten tenants have already been forced out via a systematic campaign of racial abuse. Last month, Ugandan and Romanian families were burned out. A six-foot plank was hurled through the front window of the home of a Pakistani woman who was eight months pregnant. She and her brother-in-law had moved in just twelve hours earlier. A Swedish family were burned out of their homes in Lurgan, presumably because they spoke with an accent (!), and a few miles away in Portadown there is continuing friction around the proposal to build a mosque in the area.

Role of loyalism?

With the standing down of the South Belfast commander of the UVF, following the racist attacks in the Village area, denials of loyalist paramilitary involvement ring hollow. Earlier in the year David Ervine, in an interview with Matthew Collins published in the February edition of Searchlight magazine, stated that he was in no position to “legislate for arseholes” and that;

“Racism is not acceptable to me and the UVF leadership has assured me that they are not going to sanction racist attacks, nor am I going to stand by and allow it to go unchallenged.”
Links have and do undoubtedly exist between loyalism and fascism, both are ideologically based on British nationalism. While perhaps the leadership of loyalism may, in the words of Patrick Yu of the Chinese Welfare Association, “seem very serious” about taking responsibility and confronting racism it remains to be seen just how effective people like Ervine will be in confronting racism. They have already stated that the BNP is welcome to stand here – while of course denying that they will get many votes. Whether the standing down of the UVF commander who “sanctioned” racist attacks in the Village puts a stop to such attacks remains to be seen.

According to a report in the Observer newspaper (December 28th 2003), a leading UDA figure in the area stated;

“…he would not tolerate or sanction any attacks on the ethnic minority community by any of his members.”
South Belfast DUP spokesperson Mark Robinson has claimed that it was merely a coincidence that racist attacks were taking place in loyalist areas.   Even after the attack on the home of a Muslim family, and death threats against Muslim leaders in Craigavon, some local councillors were still denying that there was any racism there.  Former Unionist Party Mayor Fred Crowe said;
"I do not accept that there is racism in Craigavon.  It would be better if the police did their job in the area and concentrated on paramilitaries and drug dealers."
The PUP have supported Filipino workers in Antrim, and recently issued a joint statement with NICEM condemning racist attacks. A small number of loyalists were also present at the recent anti-racist rally in Belfast. Many loyalists are undoubtedly sincere in their anti-racism and identify fascism and nazism as ideologies which many of their parents and grandparents died to rid the world of in W.W.II.

Combat 18, the WNP and two BNP's

Combat 18 (a violent paramilitary nazi organisation named after the position of Adolf Hitler’s initials in the alphabet) banners have been reported at Seaview football ground. Nick Griffin, British National Party (who have tried to recast themselves as the respectable face of British fascism) leader, has been reported as visiting ‘disaffected’ loyalists in recent weeks. The White Nationalist Party, a split from the British Nationalist Party, have according to the Sunday Life newspaper, been recruiting throughout north Antrim, mainly in Ballymena, but with cells also in Portadown and south Belfast. Another of the groups currently circulating hate literature is the November 9 Society. Also known as the British Nazi Party, the group takes its name from the anniversary of Kristallnacht - the night in 1938 when Nazi mobs went on the rampage throughout Germany, killing almost 100 Jews and destroying thousands of Jewish-owned businesses. The BNP is thought to be preparing to target Dungannon and the area covered by South Tyrone borough council, where there is a growing population of Portuguese migrant workers.

Both the WNP and British Nazi Party have denied responsibility for the recent increase in racial tension. One source for the BNP has claimed that:

"The people who go out to commit those type of acts are unhinged. And whether they read our literature, or anyone else's literature, if they are that way inclined that's what they will do."
So when the words (hinged, naturally!) on the leaflet say:
"Asylum seekers would be asked to leave immediately; if they refused they would be marched to the coast, by the Army, and told to swim"
…anyone reading the words, agreeing with them, and attempting to put them into action are somehow ‘unhinged’ while the authors are not.(?) (Sunday Life, July 13th 2003).

The Far Right on the move?
Tactically, the far right wants to be in place and ready to capitalise politically on any “explosion” in the number of asylum-seekers entering the North. Already the government and media across the UK and Ireland are doing much of the ground work for them – with regular scare stories about “gypsy invasions”, “floods of immigrants”, “maternity tourism” and “welfare scroungers”.

The far right’s key date will be the summer of 2005 when local government elections are scheduled, with speculation that the BNP, NF and WNP will try to repeat some of the election successes of the British National Party in England.

As libertarian communists, members of Organise! and others in the north, need to rise to the challenge. We are aware of how racism is used to scapegoat failed economic policies, and to divide our class. We need to counter this with our own vision of multi-culturalism, flourishing in a world without borders, and without the fiction of racial difference.
Al