RACIST ATTACKS - TIME TO CALL THEM OUT - NO EXCUSES
Today our union is helping displaced families and terrified workers through yet another racist trauma. This is even more widespread than the attacks in 2024 and 2025.
It is time to call out the dangerous people, many outside our society, who are manipulating some sections of our society for their own political ends and putting an entire section of this society at risk.
It is also time for a unified approach by ALL our political leaders to stand up to this manipulation and growing racism. There can be no excuses for what happened yesterday. From the outset it was clear that it was a rallying call to violence.
On Monday, at a dignified UNISON rally, the valuable contribution of black and migrant workers to our health and social services system was publicly acknowledged by the Health Minister and some political parties at Stormont.
Yesterday, following a vicious attack in North Belfast, hate speech against the entire black and migrant community resulted in violence against some of the same workers and their families.
Our union concentrated our efforts on reassuring workers and meeting with employers to secure protections in work and coming to and from work. Today we have a terrified section of the workforce.
We have reports of:
• workers being followed to and from work,
• viable threats to health facilities with overseas workers
• workers being stopped by vigilantes to check their ethnicity
• workers facing racism in work
• workers being intimidated from their homes
• workers and their families afraid to leave home.
They are care workers, nurses, classroom assistants and a host of other occupations delivering key public services.
They are here because our government and public services invited them to fill the critical shortages in these vital services.
The hypocrisy of those behind the hate campaign is stunning.
Sadly, North Belfast is no stranger to hundreds of brutal murders and attacks during and post conflict. The exploitation of this incident because of the ethnicity of the assailant is obscene and must be called out for what it is. This is not legitimate protest.