The smoke had barely cleared from the terraced streets of south Belfast when the recriminations began. On Tuesday night, a mob of loyalist youths, emboldened by the fug of anonymity and a lack of police presence, torched a bus and set upon a group of homes in the Donegall Road area. The scale of the violence was shocking, but the deeper wound may be the psychological one: a community that felt protected now knows it is vulnerable.
“I will never get over watching my home burn,” said Margaret O’Neill, a 58-year-old grandmother who fled her house with only her phone and a photo of her late husband. “The flames lit up the whole street. And where were the police? We rang and rang. They came after it was too late.”
Her sentiment was echoed by neighbours, who described scenes of chaos: teenagers masking their faces with bandanas, petrol bombs lobbed at windows, a bus hijacked and set ablaze in the middle of the junction. The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) has since confirmed that a “significant” number of officers were deployed, but locals say they were overwhelmed and slow to respond.
This is not a repeat of the Troubles, they insist. But it is a reminder of how quickly sectarian tensions can fizz into violence, particularly among young people who have no memory of the peace process. The context is complex: ongoing loyalist anger over the Northern Ireland Protocol, the recent sentencing of young republicans, and a simmering resentment that Brexit has left unionists feeling betrayed.
Yet the human cost is not abstract. On the ground, the victims are ordinary people: a Pakistani shopkeeper whose windows were smashed, a Catholic family whose car was torched, a Protestant couple who ran from their home as the mob approached. None of them chose to be symbols of a political stalemate. They are collateral damage in a war of attrition that is as much about boredom and lack of opportunity as it is about flags and parades.
What is most striking is the sense of abandonment. The security gap is not just about numbers: it is about trust. Residents asked why there were no CCTV cameras on that particular street. Why did it take fire engines 40 minutes to arrive? Why does the PSNI insist on calling it an isolated incident when the pattern of attacks is clear? The official line is that resources are stretched. But that is a poor balm for a woman who watched her home burn.
Margaret O’Neill will stay with her daughter for now. She does not know if she will go back. “This is my home,” she said, tears streaming. “But it doesn’t feel safe anymore. What is the point of a peace that leaves you alone with the mob?”
The cultural shift here is subtle but profound. For a generation that has known relative peace, the return of such unrest shatters an unspoken contract: that the state will protect you, that the streets are safe, that the past is buried. When a bus burns on a residential street, that contract burns with it. And the ash settles on everyone.
