Northern Ireland secretary condemns ‘racist thuggery’ after further violence

Hilary Benn says 16 people arrested and 12 police officers injured during second night of disorder

The Northern Ireland secretary has condemned “racist thuggery” in Belfast after a second night of violent anti-immigration protests, in which 16 people were arrested and 12 police officers were injured.

Hilary Benn said during the violence, which followed a serious knife attack on Monday, people were stopped in their cars to be asked where they come from and were targeted because of the colour of their skin.

Asked whether these were racist riots rather than protests, Benn told Sky News: “If you are targeting people on the basis of the colour of their skin how else can you describe them? That is racist thuggery, there’s no question about it at all.”

He said 12 police officers were injured and 16 arrests were made during the unrest, which had left people from minority ethnic backgrounds in Northern Ireland living in “terror and fear”.

The Police Service of Northern Ireland would be receiving assistance from Police Scotland, including dog teams to help with public order control, Benn told BBC Breakfast.

Unrest was reported in Belfast, Derry and Coleraine but there were fewer disturbances than on Tuesday, when mobs targeted people of colour after a knife attack in north Belfast left a man, named as Stephen Ogilvie, severely injured.

A Department for Infrastructure vehicle was set alight as rioters confronted police with bricks and paving stones near the Sandyknowes roundabout in Newtownabbey in north-west Belfast. Rioters attempted to set fire to a derelict property and set alight wheelie bins, with some individuals throwing petrol bombs at police lines. In Derry, police reported items having been set alight on the Ardmore Road. The family of Ogilvie said they were disgusted by the disorder.

John Blair, an Alliance member of the Northern Ireland assembly for South Antrim, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that Newtownabbey had been subjected to unrest by “a mob on a rampage of violence and destruction”.

People in Belfast had been driven from their homes and watched as their families were bundled into police cars to be escorted away, Blair said. “I’ve spoken with these people in the last 48 hours, and they are living in sheer terror. They’re afraid of going to work in case they can’t get home. They’re worried if they get home, they won’t be safe in their homes,” he added.

On Wednesday afternoon, Hadi Alodid, a 30-year-old Sudanese man, appeared at Belfast magistrates court charged with attempting to murder Ogilvie, threatening to kill an NHS radiographer on the same day and possessing a knife.

After reports that Alodid may have been “fast-tracked” through the asylum-claim system in 2023 – filling in a form rather than facing an interview – Benn said the process had been introduced by the last government and was no longer in place, adding that net migration was down 82% from its peak.

“We’re now processing asylum claims much, much quicker,” he told the Today programme. “We are seeking to get a grip on this, we want a fair migration system, but we also honour the obligation we have to people fleeing persecution.”

The deputy first minister of Northern Ireland, Emma Little-Pengelly, said some people participating in violence and disorder were “trying to manipulate a genuinely held concern” about immigration. She added that violence was “absolutely wrong, and we ... have been united and calling for that to stop immediately”.

Speaking to BBC Breakfast, Little-Pengelly said: “What some of these elements that want to create this type of disorder and violence are trying to do is to manipulate a genuinely held concern by many people, a frustration by many people.”