COMMENT: Time to shop the rioters

Many of those at Manvers were undoubtedly just idiots out for a Sunday afternoon scrap.

After all, what kind of meathead attempts to injure a horse? What type of crackpot makes throat slashing signs at someone he doesn’t know? What sort of prat shouts ‘Nazis’ at police while behaving exactly like a Nazi? What irresponsible parent would bring their child to this sort of “gathering”?

The type who supports football teams containing players whose families would once have sought asylum. The type who buys takeaways from people whose families would once have sought asylum. The type who never considers that.

How many involved on Sunday woke up the next day with a sense of real shame? It’s impossible to say. Some will have, others won’t.

But there’s way more to this than lawlessness and disorder and, while the vast majority of us condemn the attempted murder – is that not what trying to burn down a hotel with residents inside amounts to? – served up with a great big dollop of racism, we need to learn from history. We need to listen.

Poverty breeds desperation and desperate people take to desperate means to give themselves a chance. They get it wrong and there's always someone else waiting to take advantage.

When Rotherham is trending on social media it’s rarely good news and Monday morning served as a stark reminder of those dark days a decade ago when the town seemed to be in the national news on a daily basis for all the wrong reasons.

We were 24 hours on from the Manvers Holiday Inn riot and there had previously, just maybe, been a growing feeling we had moved on from all of this. It’s seven years or more since the EDL last got off the train at Rotherham Central for one of its monthly tours, costing £4m to police and carried out with the hope of winning some local support.

If they ever did, it was mostly behind closed doors and, after managing to instigate one violent clash in Wellgate due to a bungled police operation, they scuttled off back to wherever they had slithered out out from.

Tommy Robinson made brief inroads and threatened to make a documentary here. He’s on holiday at the moment, but spent part of Sunday tweeting about the ‘Rochdale’ hotel riot. That’s how much he cares – it’s not like he hasn’t been here before. It's not like he doesn't know.

Recently though, the political landscape has shifted and unrest has grown alongside an indifference - I won't call it apathy - to the mainstream political parties.

And so here we are... hundreds of people, some with children, babies even, attempting to destroy a Holiday Inn and all those inside it and in their way.

Those who put people’s lives at risk at Manvers, and not just those in the hotel, claim patriotism. They wrapped stones, bricks, planks, fireworks and excrement in their St George flags, upon which they, yet again, brought more shame. Did it need this level of violence? Any violence? Really?

We can't say the warning signs haven't been there though. Yes, it’s thuggery, it’s ignorance, it’s a lack of education, but it’s also a lack of opportunity, a feeling of being ignored by successive governments who have promised much but given little to the area since the mines and the steelworks began to close four decades ago.

The answers to questions, provided by the national media and political parties clamouring to protect their votes from the Reform threat, are not necessarily the ones people want or need. Usually they are answering completely different questions to the ones posed.

If you are struggling – and plenty are and have been for way too long – you look for someone to blame other than yourself and, offered an easy target, you take aim...

So, four decades on from the miners’ strike, we have more clashes with police, this time a force under attack from a community that would expect protection were the brick in the other hand.

It was left to police, council workers, volunteers, law-abiding members of the public to clear up the physical mess on Monday, but the political one, the mental one, the societal one that has been years in the making, that will take some time – and who will do it?

On the Sunday night I watched a programme about 1970s Britain. It focussed on the National Front marches in cities across the country and the anti-fascist responses.

We haven’t learned a lot in half a century. Slogans, chants, platitudes, marches, the formation of ‘right-on’ organisations and correcting people's language should it cause offence is all well and good, but we have to take notice of what is going on, of people’s feelings. Everyone’s. Mouthing platitudes such as “people in South Yorkshire are good people, they look after each other” won’t cut it as a response to morons shouting “Pakis out” at people from Africa and East Asia.

It happened in 1936, it happened in 1977 and it's happening again. Also, let’s remember, not everyone was out at Manvers for a thug’s picnic, many would have attended to peacefully make their point – and there are points that desperately need to be discussed.

We urgently need representation by politicians who genuinely want positive change and, once the debris of Sunday is gone, it's time they stopped posturing, scrapping for votes and power and started to look for real answers.

First up though, let's listen to the questions. What is it that these people want? Do they even know?

Actually no, first up, if you know any of the people involved – if you’re not sure there are many pictures available on social media – report them. You owe it to your community and to those whose lives were under threat. To the footballers you support, the people in the shop you bought your provisions from and the chap who served your takeaway on Saturday night. It’s your duty.

It was quiet in Rotherham this week. More so than usual. There was an air of despondency, worry in people's eyes.

Young Faith Kiera was belting out a song of hope just outside where Boots used to be (you couldn’t buy anything from there that would heal the scars of Sunday anyway). Her audience was two little Asian girls and a boy.

Nearby, a couple of stalls were touting for business, but there wasn’t much coming their way.

Quiet. But for how long? If we don’t act now, this will just be the start.