What’s changed in the County Antrim town two months on? | UK News

It’s been two months since scenes of hate and violence erupted on the streets of Ballymena, County Antrim – and the after effects are still evident weeks later.

Many homes remain boarded up on Clonavon Terrace, which bore the brunt of rioting described by the police as “racist thuggery”.

The target of much of the aggression was the town’s Roma (Gypsy) community and other foreign nationals. Some who fled say they are not coming back.

“Locals live here” posters, which first appeared by residents trying to protect their homes from being attacked, are still affixed to front windows on Queen Street.

For some, the eight weeks since the rioting has seen a change in Ballymena – North Antrim MP Jim Allister said there had been “an exodus of largely Roma and some other eastern Europeans”.

“It has transformed the feel in the area. There’s no longer people standing around our street corners here,” he told The State of Us podcast.

However, for others, they’re still protesting, albeit peacefully.

The organisers write online that their aim is to protect women and girls in the community from “Roma gangs”.

We tried to speak to people at a gathering last week to hear more about their concerns but were asked to leave.

There is also still fear among the communities targeted by the violence, with News NI finding that people from or close to ethnic communities affected largely do not want to speak out.

It is understood that up to 60% of Roma people in Ballymena left during the riots, some to other parts of Northern Ireland and others returning to home countries such as Bulgaria and Romania.

It’s not yet clear how many will return.

Gary Lamont, who is from the area where the riots erupted, understands why people took to the streets and also why people would describe them as racist – but, in his view, this “doesn’t reflect the problem”.

“There was so much immigration into this area literally overnight in a way that the area just could not cope.”

He said people felt their voices were not being heard by local agencies and politicians, with meetings and engagement “fizzling out”.

As far back as 2018, there has been reports of tension in Ballymena over the influx of Roma people.

The spark that lit the fuse in June came after a protest over an alleged sexual assault of a teenage girl. Two 14-year-old boys, who spoke in court through a Romanian interpreter, deny charges of attempted rape.

The peaceful protest was held in support of the girl and her family, but crowds poured onto the streets and disorder broke out over several nights, spreading to other towns such as Larne and Portadown.

After almost a week of rioting, more than 60 PSNI officers were injured and 53 people, aged between 12 and 56 were arrested – 46 have been charged.

Jim Allister, the town’s MP, told hosts of The State of Us podcast Tara Mills and Declan Harvey that while the violence was wrong, it had transformed the area.

“Historically this was a very settled part of town. It changed in recent years.”

Available data shows a mixed picture.

Northern Ireland was described as the “least diverse” part of the UK, according to research published by the Northern Ireland Assembly earlier this year. Based on international migration, only 3.4% – or 65,600 – of Northern Ireland’s population are from a minority ethnic group.

Census figures from 2021 show that population density in the area around Clonavon Terrace was approximately 51 times the Northern Ireland average, and four times the average for Ballymena as a whole.

It also recorded that 14% of people living in the wider area around Clonavon Terrace were Roma.

The changing demographics led to issues with integration and language barriers, as well as suspected criminality by some, said Mr Lamont.

Simona Lazar, chief executive of UK-wide Roma-led charity Union Romani Voice, has said while some within the Roma community commit crimes – much like in all communities – it is for the police to deal with those issues.

She has called for more to be done to protect members of the Roma community in Northern Ireland.

One Roma community member in County Armagh, who reported being threatened by a man wielding a knuckle-duster, told News NI he and others were living in fear.

According to Allister, HMOs (houses of multiple occupation), in which large numbers of people share a home, are a major factor behind the increase in the Roma population.

The MP said they had become a “big problem in the area” and were “largely unregulated”.

“There are ways of ducking and diving through the rules,” he said.

“The further you get from Belfast, HMOs seem to be largely uncontrolled.”

The Register of Houses in Multiple Occupation across Northern Ireland is managed centrally by Belfast City Council – it told News NI it was “not aware of any unlicensed HMOs in Ballymena”.

“Any concerns regarding unlicensed HMO usage in any location in NI are investigated by the NIHMO (Northern Ireland Houses of Multiple Occupation Unit),” it added.

Others have pointed to a lack of political leadership, deprivation and housing issues for the underlying tensions.

Demi Laverty, a community worker in the town, said “political negligence” and a lack of public services has led to “socioeconomic deprivation”.

“People have been left with no other option but to blame something that they’ve been made to feel fearful of,” she added.

Ms Laverty said the violence and anger was an outlet for some people’s frustrations but “wasn’t an adequate representation of the majority” of people in the town.

Some have criticised the ongoing protests’ purported aim to protect women and children.

Elaine Crory, from the Women’s Resource and Development Agency, said women and children were among those harmed during the riots.

She said people should look at individual perpetrators of violence rather than “whole groups of people”.

“If there’s a problem with intimidation in the area, it’s not connected to the racial background of the person who’s allegedly doing it.”

Ms Crory said of the 28 women murdered in Northern Ireland in the last five years “if there were no immigrants in this country, that number would be 27”.

She said there were greater resources than ever before to address violence against women and girls now.

“When somebody says they’re protecting women and girls… make sure their motivations are as pure as they say they are, and if they really are that pure, there are things that you can do.”

It’s clear that Ballymena will be feeling the aftermath of June’s violence for some time to come.

“There are many, many victims in all of this,” said Gary Lamont.

“Most of all those who have been put out of their homes, the police, those injured officers, the landlords, all of that.

“But there’s also those young people’s lives. They are going to be particularly heavily punished going by what we hear.”

For Demi Laverty, the violence should be a wake-up call.

“If young men and people from our country have been made to feel so disillusioned in regards to political representation and feeling like their voices haven’t been adequately represented… that fear and that anger’s gonna spill into other things.”