This month’s riots were a mirror image of the race riots which engulfed my home town of Ballymena last year, where - as in the recent situation - a water cannon was deployed by police.
Whilst rightly condemning the mindless violence, the PSNI Chief Constable did make mention of the peaceful protests which had also taken place in areas such as Coleraine, but were vastly overshadowed by the rioting elsewhere.
Th trigger for the current racial unrest is the belief that illegal migrants and asylum seekers are sneaking into the UK via the open border with the republic.
The underlying problem is that when violence takes centre stage, all migrants are tarred with the same brush. Racial rioters do not take notice of the many folk from the ethnic communities who, since 1945, have integrated successfully into Ulster society.
Rioters do not distinguish between genuine legal migrants who are making a positive contribution to the economic life of the UK - especially those who work in the NHS - and the illegal ‘benefits brigade’ who see the UK’s benefit system as an easy ticket to manipulate.
Then there’s the asylum seekers who have genuine reasons, too, for being in the UK because of religious or political persecution in their home lands, such as Christians who have fled Nigeria or the Middle East.
Analysing the causes of the riots recently in my commentating on GB News TV, I emphasised the point that for a long-term solution to the immigration crisis to work, it required radical political surgery, not a sticky plaster.
For Northern Ireland, the problem - ironically since partition - has been the existence of the common travel area between the six counties of Northern Ireland and the 26 counties of Southern Ireland. A generation of folk in Northern Ireland still remember how the south was used as a springboard for the genocide and ethnic cleansing of the border pro-Union community by republican terrorists during the Troubles.
If any flow or even a trickle of illegal migrants coming from Southern Ireland into the UK is to be halted, then manned border posts and check points must be introduced.
That sounds like a very radical option, but there’s a perception that many politicians, community groups and places of worship are afraid to address the immigration ‘elephant in the room’ for fear of the current woke snowflake society branding them as racist, fascist, Nazi or Far Right.
However, given the recent riots - and the fact that next May voters in Northern Ireland will go to the polls in local council and Stormont Assembly elections, political parties will have to seriously address the immigration issue.
However, the real immigration issue is in mainland Britain where the so-called small boat crisis is perceived to be out of control, hence the recent surge in support for the Right-wing Reform UK party with some opinion polls predicting leader Nigel Farage MP could be a future holder of the keys to 10 Downing Street.
The root cause of the UK’s seeming inability to get control of the small boat crisis, which has seen tens of thousands of illegal migrants cross the English Channel to Britain, has been the UK’s lack of an iron wall of ships across that particular sea border.
If ever that point was being rammed home, it was the recent resignation of the Labour Defence Secretary John Healey who cited that military spending ‘fell well short’ of what was needed.
Put bluntly, the Royal Navy simply does not have the ships to create that iron wall across the English Channel which would force the small boat armada to turn back - and we are still not in the teeth of the summer months when the weather in the channel is expected to be better, thus encouraging more migrants to risk the crossing.
Even if a budget was magically approved to build more ships and train more sailors, that development will not become a reality within the next few months.
Put bluntly again, the real problem is the inability of the French authorities to stop the armada of small boats leaving French shores in the first place. If the French security forces were doing their jobs competently and effectively, none of the illegal migrant boats would leave the beaches.
Mind you, the inability of French authorities to control their own borders comes as no surprise. They could not do this in the Great War and they could not do it in the Second World War, so why should we in the UK be so surprised that France cannot hold sway over its own beaches!
Even if the French could gain control of their beaches, what about the tens of thousands of illegal migrants who have already arrived in the UK and have been housed in hotels before being moved into the community? What is radically required in an isolated holding centre along the lines of the American Camp X Ray, which existed in Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay.
Such a detention camp would be policed by the intelligence community so that every migrant or asylum seeker would be vetted to ascertain if they were genuinely fleeing persecution, or had the view - ‘we’re on our way to benefits Britain!’
The genuine migrants seeking political or religious asylum could be integrated into the community while the illegals would be deported to their countries of origin. But no one leaves the UK’s Camp X Ray until their identity is confirmed.
Integration must be the key to migrants and asylum seekers remaining in the UK. In this respect, the Christian Churches have a major role to playing in educating migrants in Western Christian values.
Last year, I attended a Presbyterian missionary rally at which a woman spoke passionately about how her church was assisting such integration in Northern Ireland. However, she emphasised one of the main difficulties they faced was these new comers’ views on women. To migrants - legal and illegal - from some cultures, women are viewed as second class citizens or sexual play things.
Likewise, many migrants arrive in the UK with little more possessions than the clothes they are wearing. Given that migrants have been housed in hotels where they get regular meals and clothing, the perception has been fuelled that UK authorities take the view - migrants before locals.
This perception has fuelled an anger and fear in some communities that migrants are being given preferential treatment especially as many local families are struggling with a cost of living crisis, having to rely on food banks, or even deciding if they can either heat their homes or cook a meal - the so-called ‘heat or eat’ dilemma.
One fact is certain in Northern Ireland. The current political parties will have to radically address the immigration ‘elephant in the room’ before next May’s elections, otherwise the door will be opened electorally for the real Far Right parties to enter the political arena with their hard line solutions.
Time is not on the side of the current local government and Assembly establishment parties if they want to avoid another repetition of this month’s horrible rioting.
 |
| Follow Dr John Coulter on Twitter @JohnAHCoulter John is a Director for Belfast’s Christian radio station, Sunshine 1049 FM. |
