Pogroms in Belfast past and present

JVL Introduction

Owen Jones writes powerfully of the pogroms against immigrants in Belfast over the past week. He rightly berates the media and politicians who have fuelled the flames even though they berate the “protesters” for “going too far”. While politicians and media connect this violence with the need for “effective immigration controls” and “control over our borders” they pave the way for this aggression; some go further as Jones outlines and report outright lies, easily debunked with the smallest amount of research. We can also ask why marches in support of Palestinian rights are labelled “hate marches” but these and other actions against migrants, refugees and asylum seekers are not. We might also ask where was the COBRA meeting that followed the dreadful attacks on Jewish people (and earlier on Jewish property) in Golders Green.

More positiviely, huge demonstrations in opposition to this racism were held in many parts of the UK with Belfast seeing possibly its largest ever demonstration. Much more needs to be done.

For many in Belfast the fire bombing had particular resonance, not only of the millions who had to flee Ireland from the famine but more recently during “The Troubles”; and so, before Jones’s article we also post a poem “The Refugees”, written decades ago by Bobby Sands while he was in prison.  He was not writing about people fleeing wars and persecution in far off lands but about 1969 when Catholics were hounded out of their Belfast homes by so called “Loyalists”. The reference to the modest homes they left behind to flee to a refugee camp, poignantly reminiscent of the small terraced houses that were torched last week.

This is also to alert readers to the launch of Zeteo UK and there are links to subscribe at the end of the piece.

This article was originally published by Zeteo UK on Thu 11 Jun 2026. Read the original here.