A chair is thrown at police officers as trouble flares during an anti-immigration protest outside the Holiday Inn Express in Rotherham, England.
The conversation was tense, and always came back to the same point.
– I don't want them here. I don't like them. It's their fault.
This could easily be a soundbite from the recent riots in the UK (in fact, the riots were almost exclusively confined to England. There were no riots in Scotland or Wales, and just one in Northern Ireland).
However, this was a conversation I had with a neighbour for a school project about the UK's economic problems in the early 1980s.
It wasn't an unusual opinion then. Most of my friends then referred to Asians as "Pakis". In English, it's a horrendous, dehumanising word. These appalling attitudes still persist today as evidenced by the riots.
The riots were sparked by the horrific murder of three young children in the northern seaside town of Southport. They were further provoked by the disinformation quickly spread by far-right figures, such as Nigel Farage, Andrew Tate, and Tommy Robinson, who all jumped into the information vacuum of the immediate aftermath of the murders.
One particularly harmful piece of disinformation emerged, identifying the attacker as "Ali Al-Shakati," an alleged Muslim illegal immigrant who arrived in the UK by boat last year.
It was all nonsense. It later turned out the killer was born in Wales and was from a Christian family who had moved to the UK in the early 2000s.
But that didn't stop the rioters from setting fire to refugee accommodation and attacking police, as well as targeting anyone they could find with brown skin.
Where does this hatred come from?
It's a complex question, but there are bad actors at play here, the main ones being UK newspapers.
It's not just the Mail that has poisoned the public discourse about immigration - The Daily Express and other newspapers are also culpable.
The Daily Mail, one of the UK's biggest newspapers, is notorious for spreading lies about immigration and stirring up hate against immigrants. It panders to deeply conservative English people who don't only hate immigrants but also distrust anyone who doesn't live in their neighbourhood.
Mail readers' hatred of "the other" is legend. (Note: I worked for the Daily Mail and its hugely successful online arm, Daily Mail Online, for several years). Readers' comments on most MailOnline stories are pretty horrifying, and they're the ones allowed through by a team of moderators.
It's not just the Mail that has poisoned the public discourse about immigration - The Sun, Daily Express and Daily Star are also culpable.
But, aside from the influence of toxic right-wing newspapers, there's also another underlying cause - poverty.
Most of the worst riots occurred in the north of England, an area of the UK that was devastated by the collapse of traditional industries, such as mining and steel, in the 1980s and 90s.
These were industries that were not only let crumble by the ruling Conservative party but encouraged to fail by a government determined to wreck the trade union movement.
I've spent time in Rotherham (where rioters set fire to a hotel housing refugees) and other affected areas. It's like a different country to England's south, deprived and abandoned.
Some of these towns, many of which suffered riots, may never recover from the destruction of their manufacturing base.
And some who live in these blighted towns need an easy target for their despair and anger, but they don't have the brainpower for reasoned thought. So immigrants get the blame. Again.
This is a column and the views are the author's own.