Not just teargas from the French riot police that brought tears to my eyes

The CRS — the French riot police — love their tear gas, writes Suzanne Harrington.

It’s their go-to weapon of choice, their trigger-happy response to pretty much anything to which they take exception. Like most people who have been to the Calais Jungle, I’ve been tear-gassed on multiple occasions; the CRS stand on a flyover and fire down into the camp, so that everyone — children, teenagers, women, people going about their business — are suddenly gasping, choking, streaming and burning.

Tear gas being fired sounds like gun shots, which adds to the fear and panic. You can make masks out of plastic water bottles and rags soaked in vinegar, but really you need a proper gas mask. And it’s not just physical — for ages afterwards you feel disorientated, dizzy, angry, emotional. It’s quite horrible.

Not as horrible as the sight of English football fans chucking coins at small refugee children — dance, monkey, dance — during the Euros. In Lille, a Financial Times journalist witnessed English fans pressurising a seven-year-old refugee boy to drink a bottle of beer in return for a handful of coins. The kid did it — although he rejected the offer of smoking a cigarette. A desperate little Muslim boy gulping an alien substance — lager —in return for a few cents.

England fans in Lille just got begging 7 year old to down a whole beer in exchange for some coins. #EURO2016 pic.twitter.com/XeaeaSzb3G

— Michael Stothard (@MStothard) June 15, 2016

I am not violent, or given to thoughts of violence. My motto is do no harm. I actually live by it, by not owning guns, eating anything that ever had a face, being a venture capitalist, a religious fanatic, a violent drunk, a banker, a vivisectionist, an arms dealer, an extremist, or any other kind of social blight (unless you count —ahem — journalism). However, the footage of those English fans taunting the little refugee children made me think violent thoughts that would have had Vlad the Impaler wincing a bit.

As a football fan who has no plans to leave the sofa between now and July 10, and as someone with quite a fondness for the whole French thing of sitting outside cafes sipping a nice drink, the brawling imbeciles from England and Russia have caused even more thoughts of terrible violence to bubble up inside my gut.

Like, bonjour CRS, pourquoi stop at tear gas when you could napalm their vicious, drunken, ignorant arses? Put down the grenade guns, get out the flame throwers. How dare they tarnish football, insult their hosts, and leave a filthy smear of thick violent idiocy along the old waterfront of Marseille. How dare they do that to football.

And then you hear how Buzzfeed France says that the Irish fans have already won the Euros. How Irish fans, apart from all the cheery heartfelt singing during the matches, have been tidying up after themselves in Bordeaux. Picking up litter and singing ‘clean up for the boys in green’, like football fans drawn by Walt Disney. And the violence in your heart dissipates a bit, replaced by a warm fuzzy feeling of quiet pride. COYBIG, and your brilliant, joyous supporters showing the world how it’s done.