Summers in Britain now follow a predictable pattern.
Southport, England, 2024—racist riots spread after far-right activists falsely blame a stabbing attack on an “illegal Muslim immigrant”.
Trafalgar Square, London, 2025—anti-Islam hatemonger Tommy Robinson leads the country’s largest ever anti-immigration march after months of rolling protests target refugees and demand mass deportations.
Belfast, Northern Ireland, 2026—arson attacks, mob violence and protests extend to Scotland and England following a murder committed by a man with Indian heritage.
For three years in a row, Britain has been seized by summertime racist rioting. Islamophobes and nationalists seem to have laid claim to UK streets for the months of June through September. But this is not without precedent: summer has always been high time for bigots and diehard patriots.
It’s the period when Protestant communities in Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland and the western part of England habitually mobilise in displays of hatred against Catholics and to show their loyalty to the British state. Colloquially, it has always been “marching season”.
Protestant “loyalism” is a particularly virulent, pro-empire strain of chauvinism that originated with Britain’s historic occupation of Ireland. Beginning in the sixteenth century, English rulers conducted savage campaigns of land confiscation, slaughter and settlement over the whole island.
British authorities sought to displace local Gaelic-speaking populations, who were largely Catholic. In their place, English and Scottish landlords and aspirational farmers were encouraged to occupy stolen land in resource-rich areas. Catholics were subjected to an oppressive legal regime that denied them the right to vote or hold public office, to own land, to purchase weapons or to freely publish literature.
From 1690 to 1860, famines and mass evictions of poor peasants from the Scottish highlands compelled large numbers to migrate to the northern part of Ireland. Settlers in the north were explicitly required to adhere to the Protestant faith, speak only English and repudiate any Gaelic heritage they might share with the native Irish population. This was the beginning of the exclusive ethno-religious state that would later become “Northern Ireland”.
Most of Ireland won formal independence from British rule in the 1920s after a particularly fierce decade of revolt against the English crown. But reactionary pro-British capitalists and landowners refused to surrender control of the prosperous industrialised north. They armed and mobilised the Protestant population against the Irish independence movement, deliberately painting a struggle over national liberation in religious colours. In 1921, the British state partitioned the island, granting partial autonomy to a “Free State” in the south (later the Republic of Ireland) but establishing a separate administration in the north-eastern region of Ulster that would remain under British protection.
The modern state of Northern Ireland was officially founded on a two-thirds Protestant demographic majority. This was imposed through tremendous violence. Hundreds of pro-independence Catholics were murdered in Belfast from 1920 to 1922, and 23,000 were hounded from their homes. At least 11,000 Catholic (and many sympathetic Protestant) trade unionists were ejected from workplaces in the north. British troops oversaw mass evictions of Catholic civilians from previously mixed neighbourhoods, and paramilitary brigades of reactionary Protestant settlers were created under British supervision.
Soon after partition, the northern ruling class eagerly agreed to remain under the English crown, joining the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Indeed, many northern “loyalists” hoped (and still hope) for a total restoration of British dominance and for the whole island to be ethnically cleansed. It’s this despicable legacy that modern-day loyalism celebrates: loyalty to the British empire, to counter-revolution and to racial supremacy.
This tradition remains one of the key foundations of modern British nationalism. It is not uncommon in Northern Ireland today to see a Protestant child leave the face-painting booth at a summer carnival with the letters “KAT” daubed across their little forehead. “Kill All Taigs” (“Taig” is an ethnic slur for people of native Irish descent) is still a common catch cry alongside “KAC” (“Kill All Catholics”) and “KAI” (“Kill All Irish”).
Summer brings a high tide of prejudice because a number of Protestant historical anniversaries fall in early July. On 11 July each year, huge celebratory bonfires are lit across Northern Ireland and in some parts of the south. Anti-Catholic slogans are painted and Irish tricolour flags are attached to the bonfires to be burned.
For months beforehand, Protestant communities across the whole of mainland Britain (especially in Scotland, Liverpool and Southport) gather in militaristic garb for parades and demonstrations, often marching directly through Catholic neighbourhoods. These manifestations of dominance and intimidation end in street violence more often than not.
Is it any surprise that the UK can explode into periodic race rioting given these national traditions? Is it any wonder that recent anti-migrant thuggery in Northern Ireland has been concentrated mainly in anti-Catholic areas like the Shankill Road and parts of East Belfast?
Traditional anti-Catholic bigotry can merge seamlessly with today’s right-wing hostility to immigration. Tactics like arson attacks on civilian residences, usually reserved for Catholic targets, are now launched against migrant homes. Bonfires and walls that once bore the letters “KAT” are now also sprayed with “KAF”—“Kill All Foreigners”.
One bonfire constructed by a loyalist community in Moygashel last year featured an effigy of a boat, including figures of refugees in life jackets, a banner that read “Stop the boats” and an Irish tricolour flag. All went up in flames when the fire was lit.
A social media page linked to the Corcrain estate bonfire (where anti-immigration banners had also appeared) posted in a statement: “This is a coordinated approach because there are legitimate concerns that deserve to be heard ... We’ve enough junkies, criminals and scumbags to deal with as it is ... Legitimate concerns over illegal migration are real”.
Summer bonfires also provide regular occasion to glorify past atrocities. In Ballyduff this June, a bonfire site was decorated with emblems of the paramilitary “Ulster Volunteer Force”, a group that murdered hundreds of Catholic civilians between 1966 and 1999. The flag of the British Army's Parachute Regiment also appeared.
The Parachute Regiment was the section of the British Army deployed continuously in Northern Ireland for 38 years between 1969 and 2007. Their presence was framed as a “peacekeeping” operation, but their purpose was to repress a Catholic civil rights movement that gained ground from the early 1960s. Catholics demanded an end to discrimination in housing and employment, and to electoral laws that maintained Protestant political control over mixed or Catholic-majority areas.
In 1971, British troops launched a campaign of mass arrests and dawn raids, purportedly against armed Irish Republican insurgents. Hundreds were imprisoned without trial and tortured. The following year, activists in Derry organised a peaceful unarmed demonstration against the arrests. The Parachute Regiment’s 1st Battalion opened fire, killing fourteen people, most of whom were fleeing or trying to help the wounded.
The British army later claimed soldiers had fired in self-defence. No soldier or commanding officer has ever been convicted over the Bloody Sunday massacre. The British state has repeatedly intervened to maintain the oppression of Irish Catholics, long after the official retreat of imperial rule.
The display of military and paramilitary symbols at annual celebrations is a way for loyalist communities to constantly revive this history and transmit their chauvinism to new generations. According to Dr Amanda Hall at the University of Reading, bonfires took on more significance in the 1990s after Britain brokered a peace process that curbed open paramilitary activity. As illegal activities like weapon trafficking were increasingly forced underground, paramilitaries turned to “community” initiatives to embed loyalist political sensibilities. Dr Hall notes an increase over the past 30 years both in the size of 11 July bonfires (now often towering above 40 metres) and in the aggressiveness of the political messaging associated with them. The practice of burning tricolour flags, for instance, seems to have begun only in the mid-1990s.
The advance of far-right politics in general is fanning the flames in Northern Ireland. Earlier this year, a replica mosque was placed on top of a Moygashel bonfire, along with the words “Secure our borders. End the threat of radical Islam”. A statement from the Moygashel Bonfire Association said it was a response to “uncontrolled illegal mass immigration”.
“An absolute work of art” is how Richard Inman described the display. Inman is a close associate of English far-right figurehead Tommy Robinson and travelled to Northern Ireland to address a demonstration held at the site of the bonfire in June. “Northern Ireland is the most patriotic part of the UK”, Inman told the crowd. “My fellow Englishmen could learn so much from the people of Ulster. No surrender.”
Loyalism, of course, has always shared an affinity with the broader far right. Eyewitness accounts such as Matthew Collins’ 2011 book Hate suggest that neo-Nazi organisations like Combat 18 and the British National Socialist Movement have helped smuggle weapons to northern paramilitaries. Loyalist gangs operating on Britain’s mainland have historically intermingled with organised fascists—Scotland’s most prominent member of the 1930s British Union of Fascists, Billy Fullerton, is still memorialised in loyalist songs and football chants: “We are the Billy Boys; Up tae our knees in Fenian [Irish] blood; Surrender or you’ll die”.
Pogromist traditions lie just under the surface in modern-day Britain. Racial supremacy enacted through street-level violence is relatively familiar political practice. The legacy of Irish oppression and British nationalism are the rotten foundations on which new far-right forces will continue to grow.
