A Smooth Transition in Belfast from Sectarianism to Racism
By SHARON GREER
Within one week of arriving in Belfast on July 17, two racial incidents occurred in the South Belfast area. The first one happened on Fane Street only one block away from my Aunt’s home where I was staying.
A FAMILY fled for their lives through the back door of this house when it was the target of a racist attack.
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I had heard the sirens late that night but never imagined it would have been this incident exploding all over the early news the next day. A Bangladeshi man, his Irish wife and five year-old daughter had been driven from their home by petrol bombs.
Fortunately the man was downstairs at the time, while his wife and child were asleep upstairs. When the attack began he was able to gather up his family and narrowly escape through the back door.
In newspaper reports the Bangladeshi man claimed that in the 11 years he had lived in Northern Ireland, he had been harassed well over 20 times, occurrences ranging from name calling by children to stone throwing.
Another vicious and ruthless attack with petrol bombs happened within three days of this particular incident. Three Nigerian men were petrol bombed from their homes in South Belfast.
The family on Fane Street live near a railroad track with an overpass leading to a Loyalist area known as The Village. There has been much speculation about the involvement of one of the Loyalist paramilitaries. As indeed is the likelihood in the case of the three Nigerian men.
Since the “peace” process in Northern Ireland over the last decade, there has been a slow but steady increase in racial harassment and attacks on ethnic minorities. The statistics from the Police Service of Northern Ireland’s (PSNI) latest annual report show that from 2001/02 to 2003/04 the total number of reported racial incidents had risen from 185 to 453 – a dramatic increase in a short period of time.
It seems the shift from sectarianism to racism has been a smooth transition for the groups responsible for these despicable acts.
RUTH PATTERSON is a DUP member who has been a City Councillor for three years.
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When I attended a civic reception at Belfast City Hall a little over a week later, I met one of Belfast’s City Councillors, Ruth Patterson. Ruth is a Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) member whose leader is the Reverend Ian Paisley. She has been a City Councillor for three years representing the Balmoral Ward in South Belfast.
On August 2, I met with Ruth Patterson for an interview on the escalating racial attacks in South Belfast. However, before beginning on Ruth’s comments, I’ll return briefly to the night of the Civic Reception.
I was attending a three-week summer school program offered by the Institute of Irish Studies at Queen’s University. There were 52 foreign students in this program, mainly consisting of Americans. During our reception a few of us were invited by Ruth to view the Council Chamber.
A number from our group were drawn to Ruth’s vivacious and friendly personality and we were all feeling optimistic by Ruth’s little speech about communities and citizens in Belfast showing more “tolerance and respect” to each other.
After several minutes in the Chamber, someone asked Ruth a question about her political relationship with Sinn Fein, a Republican political party with 15 members on City Council.
Much to everyone’s shock, Ruth replied, “I hate, loathe and despise those people (referring to Sinn Fein)” and she claimed that “Nationalists didn’t want to work.” The chamber reeled with stunned silence. No one had been prepared for so inappropriate a statement from an elected representative.
When I met with Ruth on August 2 for our interview, I asked her who she thought was involved in these racial attacks and how was City Council moving towards dealing with a very serious issue that was rapidly getting out of control.
She responded, “attacks have been centred in the South Belfast area and have intensified particularly in the last year, in what we call ‘clubbing night spot districts’. In those areas there are a lot of Oriental and Indian restaurants that are the types of businesses and premises where foreign people would come naturally to work and live.
“Unfortunately they are being targeted, and I know at the start paramilitaries were involved, particularly the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) in the South Belfast area. They did tend to have a lot to say in who was being attacked and what was being done to them.
“As of late, I have been made very much aware that the paramilitaries are taking a back seat in racism – they now no longer want to be involved or associated with them. But at the same time they have created a monster that they maybe now have no control over.
“The fact that there are young children and young people out there willing to shout abuse at a foreign gentleman or lady as they walk past – they have now no control over that because the young ones have seen them doing dreadful things to people, they in turn think they now have the right to do the same kind of thing.”
In relation to a response by Belfast City Council, Ruth responded, “as a council in relation to racism, we can certainly get the message out there, but as a council actively taking something to do with it, that remains to be seen.
“We may very well be setting up a committee to deal with racism in the very near future. Personally, I am involved and I have set up an initiative called, ‘The Racism Round Table’ and we meet every four to five weeks.
“We have a lot of government bodies, we have the Churches involved, the police involved, the schools involved. We have all the agencies involved who assist and help ethnic minorities find jobs and houses. We even have the Royal Victoria Hospital involved, because if a hospital or school is actively inviting these people to come and work in this country, they should be obligated to provide adequate housing for those people when they come to live here.
“Northern Ireland is a relatively small country, you know. There is room for the indigenous community of Northern Ireland, yes, but there’s not a lot of space left for anybody else to come in. And unfortunately, particularly within the South Belfast area, within The Village, Donegall Road and Sandy Row areas where a lot of these attacks have taken place, we have found that communities there, because there are other issues which affect those communities on a daily basis, affect them very, very badly. The lack of housing, the lack of high academic attainment, the frustration – there is no school within their area.
“Those issues need to be addressed to build confidence within that community so that they can actually reach out to other communities and say, ‘Welcome in. We really want you here to build a stronger community’. But I would like to see ethnic minorities take a more pro-active role in the communities in which they live.
“At the minute we see that they themselves are too frightened to talk with people in the community. And again, the local people from the communities are too frightened of speaking out against what is happening for fear of reprisals or becoming a target from maybe a paramilitary group or the group going around causing these problems. There is a fear factor on both sides – both the ethnic minorities and the local community”.
Two very revealing statements made by Ruth that perhaps reflect her innermost feelings are her comments about “....not a lot of space for anybody else to come in,” suggesting her own discomfort and uncertainty around ethnic minorities.
Her reluctance and edginess around pointing the finger directly at the Loyalist paramilitaries responsible for these racial attacks, saying, “I have been made very much aware that the paramilitaries are taking a back seat”, and “....at the start the paramilitaries were involved, but they now no longer want to be involved”.
In my interview with Ruth Patterson, I noticed the number of times she said fear, frightened, scared, reprisals, targets, and I thought sadly on the conflict in the last 30 years in Belfast and Northern Ireland. And of the long struggle and suffering of the Irish people to lift themselves out of a sectarian war, only to be changing directions and taking a nasty turn towards racism.
I left Belfast City Hall that day feeling a mixture of sorrow, compassion and pity for a woman whose politics I could never agree with, but at the same time on some personal level actually liking Ruth. I couldn’t help thinking that if by a twist of fate she had been born in Canada or the United States, her life would indeed have been a very different story.
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