Not read the full thread so apologies, but I have lived within 20 miles of Hull for pretty much all of my life.
I became ashamed to be from Hull when Libby Squires was dragged off the street by a convicted sex offender from Poland pretending to be a taxi driver, and raped and murdered. When you can't walk down Beverley Rd without feeling you're in a different country, when I used to be scared for my ex husband working on Spring Bank because the kurdish communities would end up fighting between themselves and quite often used knives and he saw this with his own eyes regularly. When my 15 year old son marched in the first parade to mark the freedom of the city this year, was wearing Army cadet uniform and was followed round town by an Asian man shouting 'uniform, uniform' at him and gesturing angrily, and had to hide in Primark and ring his dad to collect him because he was too scared to get the bus home. When the same boy and his friend were physically assaulted (punched in the stomach) near The Deep at the age of 14 by a grown man screaming at them in an Eastern European language. When I took him to see a performance before Christmas at the City Hall and we walked through the city centre at about 10pm and the same boy and his younger brother, then 13 and 15, had a man screaming at them and he leant across the younger one to scream in the older one's face. My sons just kept walking as did I (who was about 10m behind them) because we were terrified, and the older one later said the random man had screamed the same word as the other man that had hit him. We ran it through Google translate and it's the Polish for bastard.
That's when I became ashamed of Hull and my granny who used to speak about how beautiful the place was before the war will be spinning in her grave in the cemetery on Chants Ave to see what's going on today. Now, while smashing up the city and assaulting police officers is indefensible, I am am well educated and articulate enough to be able to express my views in others ways. I know how to write to my MP, to hold a conversation and express a view properly and most importantly I am in a position where I can buy my boys out of needing to go to the city because I can (just) afford to live in the next door market town, send them to the outstanding state grammar school there and pay for them to do activities rather than hang around town. My partner is in a different league financially and lives in a beautiful village in North Yorkshire in a house worth nearly £700k and I ship out there when I've not got the kids and I've just inherited my mums detached cottage on the coast and will be moving there as soon as I've renovated it so I'm even further away from Hull but still within 20 miles.
But imagine you can't. Imagine you're stuck there and the city is full of aggressive foreign people, you're on the waiting list for a house for what seems like forever and your kids are going to a school like Stepney. I volunteered there earlier this year and they wax lyrical about the 39 languages that are spoken there. All I could see is British kids struggling to make progress because of the high amount of kids who can barely speak English and despaired.
You're limited by the education you had (or didn't have) because the schools in Hull have never been great and the jobs you have access to are all low skill, low pay and have 300 people applying for each. The cost of living is biting and you're tired, pissed off and scared for the future in a city you don't recognise any more and then you see a protest organised on Facebook. Because you can't see the far right influence, you come from a culture of drinking in town every weekend becaue there's been nothing else to do since you were a kid, you would have no clue how to write a formal letter to your MP or the police and crime commissioner or maybe even don't know who those people are, you're tired of living in a city you don't recognise and want better for your kids you go, you have a few beers and you listen to the speakers whipping up a frenzy and the next thing you know you're lobbing bricks and the Royal Hotel and being arrested.
I am in no way condoning what went on this week end but I certainly understand it, and for the prime minister to start spouting about how those involved will live to regret it is a national disgrace. He should be asking what the problems are in places like Hull and promising to address them, not berating those who feel so strongly about the loss of a city's identity that they demonstrate and end up being used by organisations like the EDL.
Sorry that's long but I it's something I feel very strongly about and half the people going on about how appalling it is and how the people involved have got the iq of a steak bake would hate to live somewhere like Hull, or Hartlepool or Boro, ans couldn't possibly empathise with those that do.