Race riots in my multi-cultured home city of Belfast are a terrible echo of how the Troubles began

I have written here before of the enormous benefits that peace has brought to Northern Ireland, one of which is the transition of a small place the size of Yorkshire from grim monotone to glorious Technicolor.

It is the people now living there but born elsewhere who have brought their culture and cuisine and turned the province into a must-visit for millions who once would rather have stuck pins in the eyes than go anywhere near a place synonymous with bombs and bullets.

Now, thanks to a unholy alliance of a Sudanese would-be murderer and far-right agitators like Tommy Robinson tweeting from the great civilisation (his words) of Moscow, Rupert Lowe and Elon Musk, we see innocent people burned out of their homes simply because their skin is a different colour. No longer is it Orange v Green but White v Non-White.

It is a terrible echo of how the Troubles began; in 1969 British troops were sent to try to keep the peace when Catholic families had to leave their fire-bombed homes because they weren’t Protestant. And we all know how long that awful period lasted. Almost three decades.

I know Belfast well. I lived there, went to school there, entered journalism there, and am familiar with much of the North Belfast area where Hadi Alodid attempted to murder poor Stephen Ogilvie, a man who had previously been seriously attacked when living in Glasgow and is now fighting for his life. In a hospital kept going by the number of doctors and nurses born outside Europe. And in case you are wondering who fast-tracked Alodid’s asylum claim, it was the then Home Secretary and her trusty Immigration Minister. Namely Suella Braverman and Robert Jenrick, now with Reform.

Stephen was attacked in Kinnaird Avenue, not far from the Antrim Road and its fine detached houses overlooking Belfast Lough. My father was born in North Belfast and I spent almost all my childhood summer holidays there with the three aunts and uncle who raised him after his mother died in childbirth. As a small kid I sailed my little yacht on the nearby Waterworks lake, climbed Cave Hill and went to the zoo there. We had the occasional Sunday ‘high tea’ (that’s how old I am!) at the grand Belfast Castle and when I was indentured to the News Letter I attended shorthand and law classes off Antrim Road.

This is not some poor run-down area but it is one of the most integrated, both by religion and origin. There is plenty of greenery and another mile out and you are well into the countryside. I would guess that the likes of Lowe, Farage and Robinson would find it hard to locate Belfast on the map but that would never stop them milking a terrible, tragic event like the stabbing of Stephen Ogilvie or, earlier, of young Henry Nowak.

In the case of Elon Musk, I have watched all four hours of the Elon Musk Show (BBC iPlayer) and the final episode is the most disturbing. This otherwise brilliant man is clearly now both insane and a wicked racist and is about to become the world’s first trillionaire.

Belfast is a great place which I still call home, full of warm and funny people. It has four outstanding HMC independent schools and like the rest of the province, it still has grammar schools, some of them among the best in the UK. It has many superb restaurants, the best pubs and a vibrant uplifting culture, the reward of peace. Drive for 15 minutes north or south and you are in magical coastal scenery dotted with small fishing villages.

But, given its recent past, there is still an undercurrent of the usual headbangers, mostly from the old so-called Loyalist side who run the drugs trade in the province. The violence which followed the stabbing has originated in those areas, not just in Belfast but in Derry, Coleraine, Portadown and Carrickfergus, where my sister lives, and just a few miles from where we lived in the Sixties.

On Wednesday evening one band of black-clad scrotes began their attacks on homes identified online as housing immigrants after they first gathered together to recite the Lord’s Prayer led by a woman with a loudspeaker. 

Some of them ended their evening of dangerous carnage by eating a takeaway curry made and served by the very people they want rid of. They are far too thick to see the irony of that. I promise I’m not making this up.

So here’s my prayer: We must not let one horrific incident like the stabbing of Stephen Ogilvie push my wee Belfast back into the dark times.

*****

The latest hoo-hah involving Ben Stokes is depressing and all too predictable. He and Gus Atkinson broke the team curfew and have been left out of next week’s second Test at the Oval.

But hang on; England had won at Lord’s early on Sunday afternoon so surely there might have been some flexibility about the bed-by-midnight rule as there was a clear 10 days to get over any hangover. Stokes has been an outstanding player, as an all-rounder, brilliant fielder and astute captain and dropping him for next week risked him stepping down for good at the age of 35.

Joe Root has been named captain but if the board wanted someone who would go easy on the booze maybe they should have asked that great England batsman from the Sixties, the Rev David Sheppard, later Bishop of Liverpool, to make a return. Except that he is no longer available. Through death.

Alternatively they could have gone for ‘C’; the former head of MI6 Sir Richard Moore revealed on Test Match Special that the spooks had their own team though they never revealed to opponents their real day jobs.

A case of E Goldfinger c Bond, bowled C.

*****

I have written the occasional obit for The Times but never in my wildest dreams has there been a subject like Jeremy Scott, a former adman who somehow made it to 91 despite a life enhanced with a cocktail of every known drug. He had oxygen cylinders installed in his office to treat hangovers.

On one occasion he was enlisted by Ted Heath’s team to work on their election campaign. At the launch party he spiked the foie gras canapés with speed which turned the terminally boring Heath into a jolly human being.

If only I had known when the former prime minister subjected me to a 15-minute dissertation on his role as advisor to the South Korean shoe federation.

And no, I’m not making this up either.

*****

AND FINALLY

As his most trusted colleague I have been asked to represent our beloved proprietor Lord Drone in the matter of serious and scurrilous allegations by several women, including Ms Helena Handcart, Ms Hermione Orliff and Ms Heidi Highgate.

Lord Drone, speaking from Drone Towers, his art deco mansion on the banks of the Thames, declared: “I have stepped down from day-to-day stewardship of this mighty organ in order to devote my time and fortune to fighting for my good name.

“I emphatically deny these charges of sexual impropriety and harassment, and of extreme ugliness and bad taste. I have instigated proceedings against the BBC and The Times. More than that I cannot say.

“Meanwhile please be patient. I have had to leave the Daily Drone in the hands of my editor Mr Bingo McIntyre so there will be an inevitable decline in standards until I am victorious and can resume my activities on behalf of you all.”

ALAN FRAME

12 June 2026