Flutes and drums echoed along Sandy Row, a Protestant enclave in west Belfast, and Union Jack bunting flapped overhead in the uncommonly hot summer air.
The annual Twelfth of July celebrations, which commemorate a centuries-old Protestant victory over a Catholic king at the Battle of the Boyne, brought scores of marching bands and Orangemen, members of a fraternal religious order, parading through the city.
For the Protestant loyalist community that is deeply committed to Northern Ireland remaining in the United Kingdom, the marches are a cherished tradition, as are the bonfires and street parties that accompany them.
But, like many things in Northern Ireland, it’s not so simple.
Others see the marches and bonfires as deliberately provocative symbols that reinforce division. Historically, the loyalists’ enmity was aimed at Catholics, but some in the community have found a new antagonist: immigrants.
In the Hideout pub in Donegall Pass, a loyalist neighborhood in Belfast, Gordon Plunkett, 78, who has spent more than six decades as an Orangeman, chatted with his sons and grandchildren, all of whom were taking part in the parade. He opposes the arrival of immigrants and asylum seekers, which he said risked displacing loyalists who had long lived here.
“It’s the future of my community that is at stake,” Mr. Plunkett said. “And everybody would want to protect their own community and their own culture.”
Belfast remains predominantly white, and Northern Ireland is the least ethnically diverse part of the United Kingdom, with just 3.4 percent of residents from minority ethnic backgrounds. But immigration has grown in recent decades, reaching a peak in 2023, and the urban heart of Belfast in particular is steadily becoming more diverse.
“Our community is getting smaller, and we are stretched,” said Trevor Henderson, 43, who was also celebrating the Twelfth with family and friends in the Hideout. The ashes from a bonfire the night before still smoldered nearby as bandsmen and Orangemen gathered to prepare for the march. “And we get labeled sectarian and racist for having concerns.” He added that he thought that blame for recent violent riots in Belfast had unfairly fallen on working-class loyalists in general, rather than on a small minority who set the fires.
During the march in Sandy Row, parading bands passed by the shuttered remains of a halal supermarket that had been burned in two separate anti-immigrant riots, most recently in June. Small groups of revelers posed for photographs in front of “Stop the Boats” graffiti scrawled on nearby shutters, the damage from black smoke still visible on the side of the apartment blocks above.
The violence erupted in June after graphic footage spread online of a knife attack that left a man in his 40s seriously injured. An asylum seeker was later charged with attempted murder. Within hours of the attack, far-right influencers called for demonstrations, and masked rioters set fire to vehicles and houses. Emergency responders had to evacuate immigrant families, including a parent with a 2-month old baby, from their homes.
This is the third consecutive summer that violence has rocked Northern Ireland, part of a bigger pattern in the United Kingdom and across Europe, where unrest has been fanned online by right-wing, anti-immigrant voices. In Northern Ireland, which is still grappling with the legacy of Catholic and Protestant sectarian conflict, civic disorder can feel all too familiar, particularly in areas where paramilitary groups still hold influence.
The decades-long conflict known as the Troubles was between mostly-Protestant unionists or loyalists who wanted the region to remain part of the United Kingdom, and the mostly-Catholic Irish nationalists, or republicans, who had long sought unification with the Republic of Ireland.
The Good Friday Agreement signed in 1998 led to almost two decades of peace. But memories of the conflict cast a long shadow.
The anti-immigrant riots last month took place mostly in loyalist areas, and the Police Service of Northern Ireland said that members of loyalist paramilitaries were present, and in some cases, directed the violence. There is no official body that speaks for these paramilitaries, which since the Troubles have mostly transitioned into organized crime networks.
Far fewer people identify as unionist or loyalist than two decades ago, according to the Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey. As a result of this and other demographic shifts, those left in the community can feel their identity is under siege, said Katy Hayward, a professor of political sociology at Queen’s University in Belfast.
“That sense of insecurity is heightened,” said Professor Hayward, who has long studied public attitudes in Northern Ireland. That in turn has allowed far-right ideas that frame all immigrants as a threat to gain traction, she said.
There have also been well-documented links between loyalism and far-right actors based elsewhere. And while discussions about immigration have played out in many communities across the United Kingdom, fanned by an increasingly vocal far-right movement, it has become a focal point for some leading unionist politicians, who have found that it resonates with their base.
A sense of grievance was evident at some Twelfth celebrations. Anti-immigrant symbols were placed atop bonfires, alongside other political messaging. This year, a replica of a mosque was burned in County Tyrone (an incident being treated as a hate crime) following last year’s burning of an effigy of a refugee boat.
Claire Hanna, the leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party, who represents South Belfast in Parliament, condemned the burning of effigies and said in a statement: “This isn’t tradition. It isn’t an expression of identity. It demeans this place.”
The unrest has renewed scrutiny on these celebrations, but amid the tensions, many loyalists maintain that the Twelfth of July festivities are an important social and cultural marker.
Not everyone taking part in the festivities was steadfastly opposed to immigration. Kimberley Wilson, 57, who was watching the parade with friends, said she simply enjoyed the pageantry and was deeply proud of being born in a loyalist area. She was shocked by last month’s violence.
“People are coming here, and they are working hard, and they shouldn’t be burnt out of their houses,” Ms. Wilson said of immigrants, adding, “Those poor people were terrified, and there was no justification for that.”
Ms. Wilson had to evacuate her elderly mother from her home last month because it was near where rioters had burned people’s homes.
She said there was a lack of leadership to stop those responsible for violence and property damage.
“There was nobody on the streets, there was nobody coming out to say, ‘This is wrong,” she said.
“That younger generation, they don’t know what they are fighting for. If they want to go protest, go ahead and protest, disrupt traffic,” she said. “But don’t start destroying your own community.”
