Why did Ballymena become the latest site of anti-immigration riots?

There have now been five consecutive nights of ongoing violence and disorder on the streets of Northern Ireland, with Ballymena at the focus of the unrest following a serious sexual assault on a teenage girl in the town on 7 June.

Two 14-year-old boys were arrested and charged after the incident, and police in Northern Ireland said the pair used a Romanian interpreter to plead not guilty in court.

After that, calls for “peaceful protest” from the victim’s father were amplified online. Those protests took on an anti-immigration angle and erupted into riots and clashes with police.

Analysis of social media messaging has shown there were already rising tensions in the town before the latest incident, following a decade of rapid demographic change.

Before the protests

On 30 May, eight days before the 7 June incident in the Clonavon Terrace area that triggered this week’s violence, police released a statement regarding a different sexual assault in Ballymena, this time of a 13-year-old girl.

The offence was alleged to have taken place on a public footpath near the Ballykeel housing estates, during daylight hours on Saturday 24 May.

Local media at the time reported the suspect as having “dark-coloured skin, dark brown eyes, and speaking in a foreign language”.

But the online chatter remained relatively contained until after the police announcement on the evening of Sunday 8 June, that they had arrested the two 14-year-olds charged with the Clonavon Terrace incident.

Analysis of posts on X, formerly known as Twitter, shows that there were 114 mentions of Ballymena per day from 3-7 June.

It was mentioned 142 times on 8 June, then surged up to 10,300 on 9 June and 78,300 the following day. The majority of posts originated outside of Northern Ireland.

Rapid demographic change

The descriptions of the alleged perpetrators of the two incidents have contributed to the anti-immigrant sentiment of the violence.

Sky News has seen Union flags and signs saying “British household” or “Locals live here” left outside homes of people keen to avoid being targeted, and has also spoken to Bulgarian nationals in Ballymena who say that they are “terrified” and “scared to get out of the house”.

Speaking in the House of Commons, Jim Allister, MP for North Antrim, which includes Ballymena, said he was “appalled” by the violence. “However”, he said, “the government must be aware of underlying tensions produced by uncontrolled and often undocumented immigration.

“None of that excuses violence, but it is a matter of concern to many.”

Analysis of census data shows there has been rapid demographic change in the town since 2011. No other part of Northern Ireland has seen a bigger increase in people who don’t speak English/Irish as a first language.

At the time of the 2021 census, three in 10 residents of central Ballymena said their first language was something other than English or Irish.

One in eight listed Romanian, with a similar number listing other Eastern European languages like Bulgarian, Polish and Slovak.

That figure is almost seven times higher than the average across Northern Ireland, and amounts to a trebling over the course of the decade.

Almost three-quarters of the total foreign-born population of central Ballymena arrived in the country since 2011.

The average is significantly lower for Northern Ireland as a whole, and England and Wales, where the rate of change has been more gradual.

Of 621 primary schools in Northern Ireland where data is available, Ballymena Primary and Harryville Primary, both in central Ballymena, had the 7th and 8th highest share of “newcomer pupils”.

“Newcomer” is the term used by the Northern Irish Department for Education to refer to pupils who don’t have satisfactory language skills to participate fully in the school curriculum.

How, and when, will the violence end?

Sky’s Connor Gillies, who has been in Ballymena reporting on the violence and talking to locals for the past few days, said on Wednesday that “the talk here is that this unrest is only just beginning,” adding that “it could go on for weeks”.

Meanwhile, locals have expressed that they don’t like the talk from police and politicians that taking to the streets following an alleged sex attack on a teenage girl equates to them being “racist thugs”.

Police have responded to rioters’ petrol bombs and bricks with rubber bullets and water cannon onslaughts of their own. There have been tens of arrests, as well as injuries to more than 50 police officers since Monday evening.

Violence and disorder in Ballymena raged across Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, appearing to have largely abated in the town by Thursday. However, the unrest has spread to other areas including Larne, Coleraine, Portadown and Belfast.

A senior police officer insisted to Sky News that he did have “a grip” on the unravelling situation when questioned by Sky News, but officers from Scotland, Wales and England have been sent to bolster the forces of their Northern Irish colleagues.

Anti-migrant rhetoric

Well-known far-right activist Tommy Robinson, who thanked X-owner Elon Musk for his support when he was released from prison four months early on 27 May, was the most influential poster.

His 14 X posts about Ballymena between 7-12 June reached an average of 1.3 million accounts each.