POLICE in riot gear moved in as violence flared among celebrating English football fans at the weekend.
English fans, hurling glasses and bottles, chanted at the heavily protected officers: ``Are you Germans in disguise?'' The violence broke out on Saturday in Trafalgar Square afer the match at Wembley where England beat Spain to reach the Euro96 semi-finals.
Scotland Yard said there were 81 arrests. Thirty-seven were charged, 11 bailed, and 33 were either cautioned or faced no further action.
The bulk of the arrests were for ticket-touting, drunken behaviour, and public order offences.
Police also had to break up a large-scale disturbance involving around 150 youths in Hull. Nine people were arrested.
A police spokesman said: ``It started out as a fairly good-natured reaction to England's victory but turned violent and threatening.''
Fighting also broke out between Spanish locals and 50 English football fans on the Costa del Sol early yesterday.
Bottles and stones were thrown between supporters from both sides on the seafront at Fuengirola. English and Spanish bar owners said that English fans had started the trouble. Three English fans were arrested.
There were reports of further fighting in Torremolinos.
q A wave of wife-beating could follow if England are knocked out of Euro96. The warning from Dr Mac Armstrong, secretary to the British Medical Association, follows reports of a sharp rise in domestic assaults on Scottish women after England beat Scotland 2-0 .
Speaking at a briefing before the BMA's annual conference, beginning in Brighton today, Dr Armstrong said the level of marital abuse in Edinburgh last weekend went up between 7% an 10% in the wake of Scotland's defeat.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article