'Brits out and everyone else in': Heated scenes in Stormont as immigration riots debated
A DUP MLA has insisted that politicians who are critical of immigration were not to blame for the anti-immigrant violence that was unleashed across Northern Ireland in the past week.
Jonathan Buckley, gesturing across the chamber at Sinn Fein and almost shouting, said that “I have never sensed a more out of touch political establishment” than at this present moment, accusing Sinn Fein of having a policy of “Brits out, everybody else in”.
He was speaking during a debate on the rioting of the past week, sparked by a knife attack in north Belfast in which the suspect is a Sudanese refugee.
As the debate got under way, speaker Edwin Poots warned MLAs that on “a number of occasions” last week, MLAs had failed to show “good temper, courtesy, moderation, and respect”, and that he was expecting these to be observed in the debate yesterday.
People Before Profit MLA Gerry Carroll said “at least 200 families have been burnt out of their homes or forced to flee because of this violence”, and hailed the 20,000 people he said were at an anti-racism rally on Saturday (the Press Association news agency had reported that the figure was “an estimated 3,000 people”).
“We don't have an immigration problem, Mr Speaker, but we do have a racism problem in this society,” Mr Carroll said.
Matthew O’Toole of the SDLP spoke about some politicians’ reference to “legitimate concerns” about immigration.
He had been on the scene in the Sandy Row area of south Belfast last week where a family in an apartment block had been victims of arson.
“I have legitimate concerns when I have to drive children in the back of my car to a safe place because someone's tried to burn their house down, that's my legitimate concern,” he said.
UUP leader Jon Burrows told the chamber: “Mr Carroll criticises the police for not intervening [in the disorder], but he also criticises them for firing baton rounds.
“He wouldn't have them have tasers, he wouldn't have them having CS spray.
“There's many people in this chamber who want to disarm the police of every single option they have to deal with criminals, and then criticise them when they don't intervene in the middle of a riot.”
TUV MLA Timothy Gaston told MLAs that “unlike some in this Chamber, I and my party have always been clear about violence – it's wrong, it's counterproductive and it needs to stop”.
He also demanded to know: “Where is the statement from the justice minister telling us about what her department and her agencies are doing to stop illegal immigrants taking the route that the would-be killer took to enter Northern Ireland?”
Kate Nicholl of the Alliance Party went on to respond that blaming the justice minister, “when she has no role in managing migration, is frankly disgusting politicking”.
Sinn Fein’s Cathy Mason accused Communities Minister Gordon Lyons in particular of a “deafening silence” over the people being forced from their homes.
“What we have witnessed over this past week has been abhorrent,” she said.
“Unfortunately so is what we have heard in this chamber this morning.”
DUP North Belfast MLA Phillip Brett told the chamber “I condemn without reservation the violence and disorder that took part in places across Northern Ireland”.
But he went on to say that “equally and without hesitation, I will not allow the thousands of people in north Belfast who engaged in peaceful democratic protests following the grotesque attempted beheading of one of my constituents, who wish to express their concern about an immigration system, to be smeared as far right or as racist”.
And his party colleague Mr Buckley said: “I have listened in this house how some parties have attempted to put the blame of violence in the streets in this past week at our door…
“Let's be clear – let's be very, very clear: no political leader caused the violence on the streets of the last week.”
Instead it was “the attempted beheading of a Belfast citizen” that caused it.
He said he had been contacted by people from south Armagh to Tyrone to Belfast “who have caught on to the sheer folly of Sinn Fein’s position of ‘Brits out, and everybody else in’”.