The riots in Glasgow and Edinburgh on Bonfire Night didn't emerge in a vacuum, says Herald writer-at-large Neil Mackay.

The award-winning writer has covered "countless" riots and was nearly murdered after being caught between rioters and police in Belfast.

Mr Mackay wrote of the clashes between youths and police on Guy Fakwes night, which have been condemned in the strongest possible terms by Police Scotland.

Writing in the Herald, he said: "Riots don’t happen in a vacuum. Somewhere there’s a root, a rhyme and a reason. The trouble is, we often don’t want to go digging for those roots, or listen to that rhyme, or acknowledge the reason, as it’ll all say something rather awful about ourselves and the society we’ve collectively created.

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"Most riots have at their heart a few causes. Poverty and discrimination of one form or another - usually race and religion - tend to be high on the checklist. But so is a sense of abandonment, of youth who feel they’ve got nothing to lose. If you’ve ever wonder why rioters burn down their own neighbourhoods, that’s why: if you’ve nothing in your life, it doesn’t really matter if you torch the local shops. Nothing will come from nothing, as the saying goes.

"Now, the disturbances in Scotland on Bonfire Night didn’t amount to rioting on a grand scale. No lives were lost, there wasn’t mass carnage. But self-evidently, for the folk who live in the neighbourhoods affected, and for the police who had to contain the violence and be subjected to violence, it was bad. 

"Petrol bombs were thrown at police in Edinburgh. That should concern us all, deeply. The petrol bomb symbolises a society gone very badly wrong indeed. Fire crews were attacked across Scotland. When kids turn on their own emergency services, once again that’s a red flag waving frantically. Police were pelted with fireworks, and officers injured. There was disorder in Glasgow and Dundee, but it was Niddrie in Edinburgh which was most troubling. Adults there were seen directing attacks on police.

"Scotland stood out across Britain for the level of disorder on Bonfire Night. There were also disturbances in Manchester, but nobody was lobbing Molotov cocktails at cops."

Read the full column here