**This Picture is AI generated due to the inability to fund a photo for commercial use and the article looking into the future of the United Kingdom**

Ballymena is situated within Northern Ireland about 40 minutes from Belfast and has been the forefront of the latest riots within the United Kingdom.

Masked rioters have hurled petrol bombs, fireworks, bricks and heavy objects towards not just police but towards homes and cars of migrants living within the area. Local households have been noticeably raising British flags to signal residency in the fear of being targeted.

Immigrants in Ballymena have started displaying notes like “Locals live here” and “I work in a care home” to escape the ongoing Pogrom in Ballymena, a loyalist area in Northern Ireland.

History repeats itself. pic.twitter.com/axx94D00sy

— DOZA🧐 (@lil_doza) June 12, 2025

The catalyst for the rioting was the arrest of two 14 year-old boys identified as Romanian speakers accused of sexually assaulting a local teenage girl, this sparked the anti-immigrant outrage.

Senior police officers have described the event as “racist thuggery” and further went on to say “Some of those perpetrating this violence claim to be protecting women and girls. This is simply not true, they are criminal acts. Destroying and vandalising local communities do not make our towns safer for women and girls and to claim otherwise is nonsense. Tackling violence against women and girls is a key priority for the Police Service of Northern Ireland and we will work hard for justice for any reporting female.

The Ballymena riots isn’t an isolated incident this has happened many times within the last few years. Factors like economic uncertainty, political scapegoating, segregated living, and online radicalisation create a volatile environment where such outbreaks can recur, so this violence is bound to happen again. The issue hasn’t been confined to Northern Ireland and we can see it from the clashes in Liverpool, Southport and other towns around the UK.

Whether this comes to be the “new norm” is completely dependant on the policies created surrounding these moments and the protection which gets put in place for the ‘targets’.

But no such thing has happened in history due to the active player of social media creating this public discourse so such comparisons to the prior riots in 2011 and early 2000’s shouldn’t be used as there is now a strong anti-immigration echo chamber amongst all social medias.

What needs to be done to alter the possibility of it becoming the norm:

• Active Inclusion of Migrants

• Stronger and more public ways of countering misinformation

• Stronger policing with early intervention