The racial violence in Ballymena repeats a pattern that’s blighted Britain for years. We must wake up to that | Lanre Bakare

IIn early June, violence began. Rumors of one of the foreigners who were attacked by a local woman wandering in a small British town, and broke the windows of homes belonging to “strangers”. A few days later, the police tried to prevent mob from reaching another multi -ethnic area. Ultimately, they invented, looting the stores and burning a house, while the local media reported that violence had evolved into “something like fever.”

It looks familiar? This is not the right, the town of Antim County in Northern Ireland This witnessed several nights of the disturbances in which migrant homes were attacked after reports of an alleged sexual assault on a local girl by two teenagers, and they had a Roman translator who was read by the charges. These incidents have already occurred more than a century ago, during the summer of 1919, with racial violence spread throughout the south of Wales, in the end, in the end, Cardiff and Tiger Bay area.

At that time, a number of things were blamed for violence, including lack of jobs and housing for the return of white soldiers, who felt disgusted with relationships between local women and black men who served in the commercial navy and made Wells Their house during the First World War. The media also played its role. South Wales Daily News claimed that she had not seen a “black layer on a fair and prosperous town otherwise”, before she suggested a fire like the Great Fire in London “will be a gift from God” that can be cleared of Tiger Bay (now known as Butetown).

In Balinina, the spark was the alleged attempt to rape, along with the last flow of immigrants who said to the riots “invading”, “injured” and “destroyed” their society. In the 2001 census, only 14,300 people, or 0.8 % of the total population in Northern Ireland, belonged to a minority ethnic group. By 2021, it was 65,600 people, or 3.4 %. Small numbers are still compared to England (18 %), or Scotland (11 %), but each of these countries witnessed a similar splash of racist violence when immigration was at a similar level.

England also witnessed riots in 1919. There was violence in North Shelds and Liverpool, where a seas called Charles Wowen drowned after it was Mob. Liverpool again watched Balllymena-asque scenes in 1948 when the youth house was attacked, and in 1972 when Skinheads was subjected to a racist mixed apartment property. (Housing is still a flash point; last year, at least Eight African families Half of them, including nurses – They were forced to do so Flee from a property in the city of Interim. The racist killing of Celsu Cocran In the capital, Teddy Boys, a year later.

Throughout the seventies of the twentieth century, the rise of the extreme right -wing National Front, which had 12,000 members of its climax, created a dangerous environment in England: Historian Peter Fryer estimated that between 1976 and 1981, he was 31 people. The racists were killed In Southhall, Brick Lane (in London), Swindon, Manchester and Wides. The politicians also canceled the issue: In 1978, in an attempt to overcome NF, Margaret Thatcher claimed in an interview that “people are really afraid that this country may be overwhelmed by people with different culture.”

There is also a more modern history of violence in England: last summer, the mobs attacked mosques and hotels that include migrants and “foreigners” homes in Hull, Hartbul, Manchester and Liverpool after three children were killed in Soutbort.

Scotland also had, and if delayed, a racist account. Although Glasgow witnessed riots in the race in 1919, it was not until 1989 and the killing of the Somali student, as a group of black and Scottish activists forced a conversation about racism in the north of the border, which was presented until then as “English disease”. Activists against racism were told that there was no problem because there was no simplicity of any black or built in Scotland. In 1991, ethnic minorities made up 1 % of the population, but the Ranedide report showed that there was a A huge rise in racist attacks North of the border, where these small societies have become more clear.

There is a firm pattern that Balllymena is part of: a flow of immigrants, hostility to their existence, and denial that there is a problem with foreigners, then a spark followed by random violence. But many people in Britain cannot see this style – or choose not.

In 1981, 2001 and 2011 in memory, many people think when they hear the phrase “Race Riot” in a British context. Each of those years has witnessed the turmoil in black and brown societies Caused by the police (1981), Right -wing activity (2001) and Mark Dogan was killed (2011), followed by manual revision and commentators who wonder where Britain has erred in race. The events of 1919, 1948 and 1972 quickly move in the forgotten past, footnotes at best; They are definitely not woven in the national story of racial violence.

These incidents – from white violence – are presented in isolation from others. In Ballymena, it is impossible to understand what is happening without engaging with the modern history of Northern Ireland. The fact that most of the people who attacked immigrants and the police were Protestants who migrated their families to the generations of Ireland before he put violence not only in the context of problems, but also British colonialism. But it is also part of a connected chain, linking different ages and parts of the United Kingdom.

This history of violence is part of an inevitable firm pattern, but instead it was manufactured through a set of political failures and distorted and opportunistic media coverage from the far right.

This is the context that made Care Starmer Speech “The island of strangers” Very offensive. That language is not benign. It helps in setting the stage for other unavoidable commodities. Less than a month after the speech, it exploded with the right. Now the speech does not seem to be opportunistic but dangerous, and it is a shameful decision that now sits alongside the “sunken” comments as political intervention that causes sections to achieve short -term gains. NF collapsed in the 1980s, but today’s reform – led by a man Political hero It is Enok Powell – is the pulling of labor to the right.

What happens after that in Northern Ireland is very important. History shows that in the United Kingdom, it is often victims of racist violence who are blamed. After 1919 in Wales, there was a voluntary plan to return home, while the authorities installed a new part of the Drakoni immigration legislation, which forced all sailors to carry an identity card, known as “the certificate of nationality and identity issued to the British colony.” It was a procedure that treated them like criminals.

Immigrants have already begun to leave Balllymena, but, as in Cardiff, many will remain. Their lives will be whether or not the political leadership learn the history of racial violence for Britain.

• Lanre Bakare is a correspondent of the artistic arts and culture. He will discuss his new book, We were thereAt the South Bank Center in London on July 11