I went to talk to people in Ballymena, and was told to make myself 'scarce' or there'd be trouble

The Journal

11-06-2025

Diarmuid Pepper
in Ballymena
ON THE STREETS of Ballymena, there's a reluctance among some people to talk to the media after two consecutive nights of rioting which has seen multiple homes set on fire and over 30 police officers injured.
On Queen Street, I spoke to two women who were a few doors down from a man who was cleaning the shards from his house after most of his windows had been smashed the night before.
'We've never heard of you, we only speak to GB News,' said one of the women when I informed her I worked with
The Journal
.
When I tried to speak to her friend, she told me again that 'we only speak to GB News' and she warned me to make myself 'scarce' or else there would be trouble.
I left to speak to the man who was cleaning his house after last night's riots.
The man, a Bulgarian national, didn't wish to be named, but told me he had received help from neighbours from his native country as well as Poland and Romania.
No offers of help had been forthcoming from his Northern Irish neighbours, he said.
He doesn't feel welcome any longer in the area, he said.
It was at this point that he nodded over my shoulder.
The woman who would only speak to GB News was now filming me and again announced that I was not welcome.
'The local residents understand'
I left and spoke to a man further down the street who said he was part of a 'local regeneration group' but did not wish to be named.
While the Bulgarian man within his eyeline had received no offers of help from his Northern Irish neighbours, the man from the local regeneration group nevertheless described his street as a 'good street with a good sense of neighbourhood'.
I asked him, given the supposed good sense of neighbourhood, if he was disappointed to see his neighbour a few doors down cleaning shards of glass from his home, or to see a child's bedroom with a smashed window at another house nearby.
A pram and wheelchair outside the smashed window of a child's bedroom in Ballymena
Diarmuid Pepper / The Journal
Diarmuid Pepper / The Journal / The Journal
'I condemn violence and the way it has been perpetrated but the general feeling is that somebody is going to have to listen to the feeling on the streets,' the man said.
He said these 'feelings' have been around for years, but that an alleged sexual assault over the weekend was like a 'volcano erupting'.
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On Monday, two teenage boys appeared in court charged with the sexual assault of a young teenage girl.
The two teenagers spoke through a Romanian translator and their solicitor said they deny the charges.
The man said 'these current problems will pass, there is a bigger problem and it cannot go back to the way it was'.
He said the local area cannot facilitate current levels of immigration, before adding: 'That's not being racist'.
He claimed there isn't enough housing or local amenities.
Migration figures
About 3.5% of the population in Northern Ireland are from an ethnic minority, compared to more than 18% in England and Wales and about 13% in Scotland.
In the Mid and East Antrim council area, which includes Ballymena, the 2021 census said the area's population was just under 139,000 people. The net number of international migrants who have moved into the area between 2001 and 2022 was just 4,900.
However, the man from the local regeneration group expressed hope that the area can 'once again be what it was in the 1970s'.
He said businesses had been told to lock their gates for their own safety last night and that locals had been told to stand in their own front yard and that they would be safe.
However, he said that on Monday night he was 'verbally abused' when he boarded up a neighbour's window.
'Maybe they thought that it was a foreign national's house and they surrounded me,' he said.
When asked who it was that told businesses and locals what to do, he did not give a specific answer but said it was 'clear' last night that there was a 'sense of protecting locals' and that this wasn't there on Monday night.
He said there were 'definitely elements of the protest on Monday night that weren't local'.
In a press conference on Tuesday in Ballymena police station, the PSNI's Assistant Chief Constable Ryan Henderson said there was a 'degree of pre-planning' to the riots.
'This is just racism'
Over on Clonavon Terrace, where four homes were burnt out on Monday night, a Romanian teenager told
The Journal
that the while the rioters claim to be fighting for the victim of the alleged sexual assault, they're 'just destroying their own town'.
'Where is the justice for this poor girl? This isn't justice for her, this is just racism destroying where we live. They don't care about the girl.'
A Polish woman who lives in Clonavon Terrace was of the same opinion.
'Nobody cares about the girl, it's just vandalism,' she told
The Journal
.
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'I'm okay with protesting after what happened here, but not like that. I've been here for 18 years and I deserve peace.'
She said she felt there was support for the riots locally and that friends who lived nearby have moved as a result.
Brett speaking to The Journal close to his home
Diarmuid Pepper / The Journal
Diarmuid Pepper / The Journal / The Journal
Meanwhile, Brett (he asked us not to publish his surname) who owns a B&B just around the corner from where the worst of the rioting has taken place on Clonavon Terrace said that while his house was spared, his boat was not.
'They rammed the boat into a house, they used it as a ramming weapon to smash the door,' he said.
Brett, who is originally from the US city of Detroit, told
The Journal
that he was perplexed by the level of misinformation surrounding the rioting online.
'This is my boat being used, and I saw people saying, 'go back to where you came from on the boat you sailed here on'.'
How does a Romanian migrant family on welfare in Ballymena afford a speedboat with a 50 HP Mercury outboard engine?
pic.twitter.com/NPPitIhT8M
— NI SKIES (@ni_skies)
June 10, 2025
He said he knows a lot of the foreign nationals in the area, including some from the Romanian community who he described as 'good people'.
'There's always bad apples in every religion or group, but now the Romanian community is tarnished with the one brush.'
Another local man who didn't wish to be named described the rioting as 'madness'.
'People argue there's crime within the Romanian community, but the ones that I see are decent people who just want to get on with their life like everyone else.'
However another local resident told me that while there are 'good Filipinos', he wanted all those from the Romanian community to be 'kicked out'.
When asked about a Filipino home on the street which had been vandalised, he claimed it was 'the heat of the moment' and there had been 'confusion'.
Numerous 'Filipino lives here' stickers were posted on front doors and windows
Diarmuid Pepper / The Journal
Diarmuid Pepper / The Journal / The Journal
He said the local community had apologised to them and that this apology was accepted.
However, it was not possible to put this claim to the Filipinos in question. The man told us they had to move out because of the extensive damage caused to their home.
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