Against backdrop of societal unease, it’s crucial our politicians show leadership to help calm tensions
Posted by Jim on November 12, 2025
Viewpoint
Wed 11 Jun 2025 at 05:00
The PSNI has been warning for months that it takes just one major incident to expose the deficit in resources to safely police Northern Ireland.
Events in Ballymena demonstrate that some policing demands simply cannot be planned for in advance.
Northern Ireland has a serious problem with violence against women and girls. That is not opinion but fact, borne out in statistics that show we have some of the worst rates of domestic abuse and femicide in Europe.
People are right to be angry when it comes to the protection of women and girls.
The issue is a societal one, a hangover from our troubled past, a symptom of a violently armed patriarchy.
Protecting women requires a shift in societal attitudes, from early years education to proper policing and justice.
It requires the promotion of positive male role models, not the Andrew Tate-style online agitators.
The investigation into the alleged attack on a teenage girl in Ballymena is the latest report of violence in the town.
Two 14-year-olds have been charged, while a third is still being sought.
That the suspects are the children of migrants was revealed by court reports that confirmed that they required a Romanian interpreter.
The media is greatly restricted in what it can report in live cases, particularly those involving juveniles.
But there is no getting away from the fact that many of those who landed in Ballymena on Monday, determined to engage in violence, would not have been there only for the nationality of the suspects.
The family members who organised a protest following the weekend attack did so in good faith. But the reality is, when people are called onto the streets, the results can be unpredictable.
Within hours of the call for a peaceful protest, social media pages linked to far-right organisations were urging people to travel to the town.
The result was violence on a scale not seen there for years, with injuries to police officers and homes destroyed by fire and vandalism.
In 2018, when Britain First leader Paul Golding arrived in Ballymena making false allegations about the allocation of housing, he was sent packing by the good people of that town.
The false narrative about an ‘invasion’ of foreign migrants was, at the time, challenged by the DUP’s Paul Frew, who used facts to debunk myths.
Mr Frew produced figures from the Northern Ireland Housing Executive showing that of all the properties allocated in the preceding 12 months, 2.5% were allocated to ‘Persons from Abroad’.
Following Monday’s violence, it is for politicians to follow that lead and show leadership, to help calm rather than inflame tensions.