The French Connection ­– Belfast and Lurgan

AN ARSON ATTACK this week on an east Belfast nail salon owned by a Lithuanian woman is one of a number against immigrants trying to build a life in the Six Counties.

Reports say that a gang of men forced up the shutters of Asta's Glam Factory in Castlereagh Street shortly before midnight on Monday 13 April and torched the premises.

In north Belfast's Mountcollyer Avenue, two homes owned by Eastern European residents, one housing a family with two children aged 10 months and three years, were attacked on Monday 6 April by a gang of up to eight men. At least one of the attackers was said to have been wielding a pickaxe. The other property, belonging to Maya Bukowska, was targeted a second time on Tuesday 7 April.

A further attack was carried out on Friday 10 April when two men smashed the window in the home of a Polish man, bringing the number of attacks in Mountcollyer Street to four.

The DUP's Nigel Dodds, the unionist MP for the area, condemned the intimidation but his words are uttered against the backdrop of a DUP Party Election Broadcast on TV echoing the anti-immigrant UKIP with calls for a “tougher immigration policy” and protection in law for “our” British identity.

The flip side of the latent racism running through some sections of unionism was exposed when prominent Upper Bann DUP election worker Roberta McNally took to Facebook to describe nationalists disparagingly as “taigs” and Sinn Féin candidate Deputy Mayor Catherine Seeley as a “tramp”.

The DUP campaigner (also Chair of the Royal British Legion armed forces charity in Lurgan) signed outgoing DUP MP David Simpson's election nomination papers. The DUP have said she is not a member of their party.

She has refused to apologise although she has deleted offensive comments.

In February, former RUC and PSNI police officer Richard Barklie was identified by the media as being with Chelsea soccer supporters involved in the racist abuse of an African man blocked from getting on the Paris Metro. Barklie claimed the train was too full and the incident had “nothing to do with the colour of his skin” even though fellow Chelsea fans were recorded chanting: “We're racist, we're racist, and that's the way we like it.”

When the DUP wring their hands and say Roberta McNally is “not a member of the party” it sounds like “there was no room on the train”.

Racism, sectarianism, loyalism and British jingoism are different aspects on the same oppressive ideology.