Riot-hit Sandy Row faced years of neglect and is 'under so much pressure' says DUP councillor

Tracy Kelly indicated that much of the land is now derelict, whilst housing has been under pressure from an influx of migration.

While condemning the rioting, she spoke up for those who attended the non-violent protests that preceded it on Saturday.

She is a DUP councillor for the Botanic region of Belfast City Council, which covers the loyalist-dominated Sandy Row and the linked neighbourhood of The Village further down the Donegall Road.

She has lived all 47 years of her life in either the Village or Sandy Row.

"I know this area like the back of my hand," she said.

"It's hard for me to witness what's happening. It's quite sad to witness your own community getting shops burnt out, getting cars burnt out.

"A young fellow working in the hotel the other night got his car burnt. A lady in the Chinese got her car burnt. This is local people working here. It's not right. It's heart-breaking."

She spoke about the background of the area, before the riots struck this week.

"If you look at Sandy Row now and compare it to maybe 15, 20 years ago, it's totally and utterly unrecognisable,” she said.

"People are looking around them and seeing plots of land that are lying empty, they're land-banked because of the new transport hub.

"You only have to look around the place to see how many shops have closed down, how many plots of land are lying derelict – it's just waste ground.

"You've got Hope Street, Giplins, the bottom of Rowland Way, the bottom of Blythe Street. There's chunks they've taken out of the street where five, six, seven shops have been knocked down and there's nothing there any more.

"People are just sort of looking and saying: we're being forgotten about and not listened to."

Official government figures show that about 23% of people living in the Botanic region are born overseas (though some will be students at the nearby Queen's University rather than long-term arrivals).

"A lot of people who come in as refugees or immigrants or whatever, for whatever reason they're coming to the UK, they're put into working-class areas," said councillor Kelly.

"That's where social housing is... these areas take the brunt of extra people coming in.

"Then you are going to have an issue with schools and doctors and everything else that goes along with that."

The scenes of violence on Monday and Saturday nights left a shisha cafe and a halal supermarket burnt out in Sandy Row.

"It's not those people's fault,” she said of the businessmen who fell victim to the riots.

"They're coming in here to work and open a shop and they're not doing anything wrong.

"But I think when you have a community that's under so much pressure... when you have chunks of the community disappearing and you've private apartments getting built where houses used to be and shops used to be, and it's not thriving the way it used to be, it's dragging people down.

"People who've lived here all their life feel like they're losing their identity and their community."

As for the rioting itself, she said: "I condemn it wholeheartedly. It's wrong. And I think anyone who has legitimate concerns about immigration or about anything like I've just mentioned to you, about the community et cetera, and you're going out to protest about that – it's forgotten about once you start rioting.”

She added that “every country needs migration” but “people asking for their borders to be kept safe… is not a bad thing”.

“There were an awful lot of good people out on Saturday who protested peacefully and went home again," she said.

"They went out and made their point, they stayed on the Boucher Road and different parts of Belfast and went straight home.

"And those people are normal, concerned people. Not everybody who goes out to a protest is a fascist, a Nazi, a racist. I mean, what on Earth – you can't do that".

The same thing applies to blanket criticism of Muslims she said: “It goes both ways... every single person is not a rioter or a racist either, and this community is getting trailed through the gutter".