FIVE years ago this week, England football fans clashed with police as violence returned for a second night in the French port town of Marseille.

Tear gas was deployed by officers trying to disperse the troublemakers but the ugly skirmishes continued as darkness fell.

In scenes reminiscent of the dark days of hooliganism, bare-chested England fans threw beer bottles at police dressed in full riot gear.

Fist fights broke out between English and French speaking men, and one man was thrown into the harbour after he was beaten to the ground.

Police with helmets, batons and shields stood shoulder to shoulder along the cobbled street facing a line of England fans, some of whom threw bottles.

A fan wearing a red England shirt was handcuffed and arrested.

The violence first broke out outside the Queen Victoria pub in the Old Port district where England fans had been drinking for most of the day.

Fans sang songs about the IRA, German bombers being shot down and the national anthem.

Supporters were in Marseille ahead of England’s Euro 2016 game with Russia.

Also that week, thousands of North-East jobs would be in serious jeopardy if Britain’s “umbilical cord” with the EU was severed, Prime Minister David Cameron had warned.

Mr Cameron said a Brexit could see at least 100,000 people facing employment misery as companies reined back investment to cover trade losses.

However, the Vote Leave campaign had decried the Conservative leader, saying businesses were to still be able to successfully export to the Continent without EU interference.

It also claimed the Prime Minister’s rhetoric harked back to unfounded worries over the UK’s reluctance to join the Euro.

Mr Cameron voiced his concerns during a visit Hitachi Rail Europe’s £82m trainbuilding factory, in Newton Aycliffe, County Durham.

The Japanese multinational, which was to soon employ more than 700 people and is making rolling stock for the East Coast and Great Western lines under the Government’s Intercity Express Programme, had long said it may be forced to re-think UK investment in a Brexit.

Meanwhile, electronic tags fitted to the world’s smallest seabirds had revealed record-breaking flight distances from their North-East homes.

Scientists at Newcastle University, working with BBC’s Springwatch, had mapped for the first time the annual migration of Arctic terns from the Farne Islands on the Northumberland coast.

Weighing just 100g, the Arctic tern has the longest migration of any bird, travelling all the way to Antarctica for the winter and back to the Farnes, which were owned and managed by the National Trust, to breed in the spring.

The researchers, Dr Richard Bevan and Dr Chris Redfern, was to speak about the ground-breaking study on the television nature programme.

29 birds were fitted with geolocators by the university team.