Indian students, workers caught in Northern Ireland unrest

Ireland in the 1930s was not the place to be for a newly married young man who had years to wait until his inheritance came into effect. My Grandad Moore had a choice: scratch out a living as a farm labourer until the land and house bequeathed to him were his, or go to England. There was another option—go to Northern Ireland and work with a local council. With his wife and young baby in tow, he moved up from County Louth in the Republic to a town near Belfast called Lisburn in North East Ulster. A town with a predominantly Protestant majority who, since partition, were wary of anyone from the Republic.

Raised in Catholic homes and in Gaelic traditions, my grandparents didn’t heed warnings from friends and family that there would be a cold welcome for them, despite Lisburn being just over an hour’s drive from where they were both born, in County Louth. “One hour and many centuries’ difference,” as my dad used to say. Yet they moved north in late 1940 and endured the German Luftwaffe raids alongside their neighbours as WW2 reached the UK.

In fact, my grandmother often told the funny story of how she was awakened in the middle of the night by a neighbour and ran—with my Aunt Ann in her arms—to a nearby forest, only to stumble upon an army group hiding there. My grandad, who volunteered for the local fire brigade, had another story: running across a field with fellow volunteers and tripping over something—turned out to be a leather boot, with the foot still in it. Apparently, a German bomber had crashed, and… you can guess the rest.

They made a point of joining in with their non-Catholic neighbours, who wholeheartedly took them in. My Aunt Ann was pushed around in her pram by local kids, who adored my grandad for his size, calm, and kindness. And then it all went Ulster. In July 1941, in the lead-up to the “Glorious 12th” (the celebration of the Battle of the Boyne in 1690), the same local kids threw stones at my granny as she pushed the pram. My grandad was advised to “go South” for the month. Stubbornly, he refused to be bullied. He had a job, a nice terraced house, and a future—or so he believed.

On the night of July 12th, a mob gathered outside the gate of the house and, within minutes, stones had been thrown at the windows. It escalated quickly, and a petrol bomb was hurled into the ground-floor living room. My grandparents escaped from the second floor and fled through the back garden. My grandmother carried a hatred of Northern Unionists until her dying day.

Northern Ireland—torn by centuries of plantations, reprisal killings, suppression of civil rights, state and paramilitary brutality, and enforced religious segregation—is once again in the headlines for all the wrong reasons. After two 14-year-old boys from the Roma community allegedly attempted to rape a young girl in Ballymena, not far from Lisburn, on June 7, nights of unrest followed. Properties were burned, and foreign migrants fled in fear.

Local police called the rioting “racially motivated” as they tried to restore calm. The two boys appeared in court last week, and community leaders were able to pull some of the more hot-headed into line. However, fears remain that another explosion is coming. Through contacts in Ballymena’s All Saints Gaelic Athletic Club and Northern Regional College, I gathered the impressions of Indian learners and workers in the area.

“Extremely frightening. We were told not to leave our accommodation until the disorder was over. I’m thinking now of moving out from here,” says Sunela, a student from Bengaluru. “I work part-time in a shop and the owner told me to take a holiday. I go back on Sunday (June 22nd). Nobody said a word to me, but my classmate got called a [derogatory term for Roma],” says Kaz, a student from Kerala.

“We couldn’t let our kids out for a day and we didn’t go to mass. We live in a Protestant area and my wife ordered food—the courier came and told us we should leave. He was aggressive. I work in a hospital and my colleagues tell me we need to leave. We saw the same last year (disturbances after the Southport murders in August 2024),” points out a medical worker from Goa.

North and South of the border, there is an increasing “othering” of foreign migrants, with some groups coming in for more ire than others. In this case, the Roma community are the target after some Roma immigrants were implicated or charged with serious crimes in both jurisdictions. The unease with these legal migrants from European Union member states has a history going back almost 20 years. One low point was the discovery of an encampment of 100+ Roma on a motorway roundabout near Dublin in 2007, which triggered a migration debate that was deemed closed when those inhabiting the site were deported.

Northern Ireland has a very different relationship with ‘newcomers’, as they must navigate a path between two embittered, embattled, and entrenched sides who, until less than 30 years ago, were actively at war with one another. Certainly, there are members of both the nationalist and unionist camps who are criminally or racially motivated to attack the ‘others’. Likewise, there are members from Catholic and Protestant communities who actively work to welcome immigrants through local or government-funded initiatives. It is the large, unengaged group that is most in danger of being dragged back into the mire of sectarian violence or insular ideologies.

That majority, who saw their ‘province’ dragged out of the EU after Brexit—despite voting 55.78% to remain—have watched their standard of living erode, with inflation higher than the UK average and increasing reports of families struggling to afford essentials like food and energy. This group—largely aspiring lower-middle to middle class—is increasingly disillusioned with the governing class. Their patience is being tested. They see Westminster send billions to Ukraine or talk tough about stopping migrants crossing the English Channel, but do little to keep their own kids in the country once they’ve left school or university.

A senior committee member from the All Saints GAC in Ballymena told me: “Little boys and girls come into the club—all colours, creeds, shapes, and sizes. We train them, cherish them, and around the committee table we lament that once they get their education, they’ll go, never to return. And all we hear from the internet is that this lot [Roma migrants] are given welfare and free houses but don’t integrate or even go to school. We have to bring them into our big, crazy community—or we go back to the bad old days.”

The “bad old days”, known locally as The Troubles (1969–2001), saw over 3,500 people killed—1,533 of them under 25, and 257 under 18. I was born into The Troubles, and grew up with them as normal. I come from a family touched by the same nonsensical violence that still resonates today. We’re under a month away from when one group in Ulster celebrates a 17th-century royal from the Netherlands by burning flags of the Republic of Ireland and Ivory Coast (both flags are the same colour, just in reverse order), as well as effigies of Catholic public figures. Northern Ireland is a powder keg of fratricide, centuries of hate still unresolved. Except now, there is a different ‘other’ to aim for.

Watch this space as July heats up.

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