Qualla: 2021 Northern Ireland riots

2021 Northern Ireland riots: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Whiteabbey, CC BY-SA 4.0. On the night of 7 April 2021, a hijacked Belfast bus burned at the junction of Lanark Way and Shankill Road. A Belfast Telegraph photographer was assaulted and his cameras smashed. Across the peace line, rioters threw petrol bombs to either side. Many of the young people doing the throwing had been born after the Good Friday Agreement. They were rioting in streets their parents had wanted them never to need to know. The 2021 disturbances are sometimes dismissed as a brief flare; in fact they ran from 30 March in Waterside, Derry to a final flickering on 9 April when respect for the death of Prince Philip caused loyalist organisers to postpone protests for one evening before the violence faded.

Image: Whiteabbey | CC BY-SA 4.0

2021 Northern Ireland riots: A Border Inside the Country

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Whiteabbey, CC BY-SA 4.0. The immediate trigger of the riots was the Northern Ireland Protocol, the part of the Brexit withdrawal agreement that placed a customs border down the Irish Sea between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. To unionists and loyalists, who define themselves by their connection to B...

Image: Whiteabbey | CC BY-SA 4.0

2021 Northern Ireland riots: Waterside

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Whiteabbey, CC BY-SA 4.0. The riots began in the unionist Tullyally estate in Waterside, on the east bank of the Foyle in Derry, on 30 March. By 4 April children as young as twelve were throwing masonry, fireworks, and petrol bombs at PSNI officers; fire crews trying to put out vehicle fires were attacked...

Image: Whiteabbey | CC BY-SA 4.0

2021 Northern Ireland riots: Bombs Across the Peace Line

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Whiteabbey, CC BY-SA 4.0. On 2 April the violence reached the Sandy Row area of south Belfast. PSNI officers were attacked with bricks, bottles, fireworks, and petrol bombs; eight people were arrested, the youngest of them thirteen. By 7 April rioting reached the Lanark Way gate in the peace wall between ...

Image: Whiteabbey | CC BY-SA 4.0

2021 Northern Ireland riots: A Death and a Pause

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Whiteabbey, CC BY-SA 4.0. The riots ended, in part, by accident. Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, died on 9 April. Loyalist organisers urged followers to postpone protests as a mark of respect to the royal family. Most did. There were still attacks that night in Tiger's Bay and New Lodge in north Belfast...

Image: Whiteabbey | CC BY-SA 4.0

2021 Northern Ireland riots: What the Riots Argued

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Whiteabbey, CC BY-SA 4.0. The 2021 disturbances were small by the standards of the Troubles and significant by the standards of the peace that followed. They argued, quietly, that the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 had stopped a war without resolving its underlying disputes; that economic neglect and post-...

Image: Whiteabbey | CC BY-SA 4.0