Gemma McSherry

The reason that I'm kind of trying to situate this within understanding loyalism is because we are seeing almost the loyalisation of the rest of the UK and of Ireland as well.

And by that, I mean the way that people are groomed into violence.

They are groomed into going out into the street and they are sort of now given permission to be openly racist, to be openly violent in the street in the same way that we have seen in the north for a very long time.

I think they have a lot of influence, especially when it comes to the policing response.

So if you look at some of the videos, you will see that, you know, cars are being set on fire in the street.

You'll see men patrolling the streets.

There's not a great deal of police presence there.

Also, it's important to note that this was happening exactly this week last year in the north.

So...

There were gangs going around in East Belfast in particular, stopping people, stopping men of colour in particular, asking them for their ID documents.

And that was happening exactly this week last year.

This is riot season.

It's the start of riot season.

It's the start of marching season.

And the paramilitaries,

know that they sort of have almost a mandate, in a sense, from the police to get away with a certain level of violence, as we've seen, you know, every single year that this comes around.

Yes, absolutely.

I mean, the way that social media is sort of bringing people together.

And like you say, this is coming now from different sides.

You know, in the north, historically, this type of racist violence has generally just been lower list.