Call it what it is

 

Call it what it is

The General Manager of the club had had enough and decided to address the fans before a game from middle of the pitch.  His words were scathing and for once he pulled no punches with the people letting the club down…

“The greatness of the club has been smeared all over the world by an unruly mob, who spread destruction and venom wherever they go. It is to these tykes, hooligans, louts and drunkards that I now pinpoint my message. Rangers Football Club want no part of you, who spread viciousness with party songs and foul, obscene language. You are warned – do not use obscene language. Do not sing provocative songs.”

Those words were spoken by Willie Waddell almost half a century ago after disgraceful scenes in Barcelona where Rangers had played the cup winners cup final. They could have been spoken today in the light of the despicable behaviour of a hard core of people in the centre of Glasgow this weekend. There exists what Journalist Graham Spiers called ‘a white under-class’ which clings to Rangers like barnacles to the bottom of a ship. They seem to wallow in their prejudice and not give a damn the damage it does to the club they purport to love nor the reputation of Scotland as a decent country.

Everything is now a photo-op for their social media channels and they mindlessly post evidence of their own stupidity for the world to see. Amid the drunken brawls, the sectarian chanting, the assaults on Police officers, racist language, the drinking and pissing in the street and the total ignoring of a pandemic which has killed over 10,000 Scots, the decent supporters look on and wonder how the hell they can rid their club of this element. It is a forlorn hope.

Much has changed at Ibrox since 1972 when Waddell was in danger of being called out for hypocrisy for castigating the ‘venom’ and ‘provocative Party songs’ of supporters whilst the club itself was still discriminating against Catholic players. Their unwritten policy still had years to run and despite Waddell again speaking to the fans 4 years later after another riot, this time in a match with Aston Villa, it was 1989 before Rangers’ sectarian signing policy ended. With it ended the tacit approval by the club of the songs and actions of the bigots in their support.

Much has changed in Scottish society too since 1972; there exists now a confident and articulate Catholic population no longer prepared to put up with abuse their grandparents and parents suffered. Their days at the back of the bus are over. There is also, at long last, some sign that some of the political class, are now prepared to call this bigotry out for what it is. The First Minister of the country stated…

“I’m angry on behalf of every law-abiding citizen. In normal times, the violence & vandalism, and the vile anti Catholic prejudice that was on display, would have been utterly unacceptable. But mid-pandemic, in a city with cases on the rise, it was also selfish beyond belief.”

Alas, Frist Minister, ‘in normal times’ we see this behaviour enacted on our streets regularly. Not only in a sporting context but also in the triumphal parades we endure each summer which attract similar people to those we saw in George Square.

Let’s call it what it is; anti-Catholic and anti-Irish racism has existed in Scotland for far longer than association football. It found a vehicle to express itself in the sporting arena when clubs with a perceived Irish or Catholic identity were brought into being.

Scottish society needed a mirror shoved in its face to see the ugly wart of hatred which disfigured it. It is ironic that the mirror was supplied by those engaging in moronic, medieval behaviour, as they videoed their own debasement and posted it online for all to see. There seemed to be a societal blindness about this behaviour which was passed off as just some quirky historical feature of ‘the old Firm’ or a form of ‘sectarianism’ which both sides joined in equally. The truth is that if the sort of bigotry and aggression the Catholic population in certain areas of Scotland has long endured was targeted at Jews or Muslims, there would be a huge outcry.

We need a government prepared to act. We need a media prepared to report the facts honestly without falling back on the bullshit idea that when it come to this issue ‘both sides are as bad as each other.’ We need a Police force prepared to enforce the law. We need the decent Rangers supporters, yes, they do exist, to raise their voices and say enough! If you love your club and want to see it prosper as a modern, inclusive institution then you’re going to have to fight for it. The soul of Rangers has been dragged through the mud too often by the ‘People’ and their misplaced sense of superiority.

Scottish society is slowly waking up to this poison in its midst. It is to be hoped that those with the power and influence take the necessary action and don’t allow this moment to pass in a welter of mealy-mouthed statements and talk of ‘inappropriate behaviour.’

This abscess is in need of lancing, I hope we have politicians and sporting leaders with the balls to do it.

 

 

Correcting History

 

Correcting History

 

This week I watched Raoul Peck’s excellent and troubling documentary series, ‘Exterminate All the Brutes.’ It is a beautifully made yet brutal exposition of colonialism, racism and genocide. The documentary traces the development of the idea that European culture was somehow superior to other cultures and that it was their manifest destiny to replace, exploit or even exterminate the ‘lesser’ cultures of the world. This idea, supported by appalling pseudo-science, led to the horrors of slavery, imperialist conquest and in many cases the genocide of native peoples and cultures.

These ideas of cultural and racial superiority are skilfully traced from 1492 when Columbus ‘discovered’ America, and Spain expelled its Jews, through to the Holocaust of the Nazi era and the attitudes of many who follow populist fear mongers like Trump in the USA or Orban in Hungary. It is not without irony that some of Trump’s supporters marched through the streets chanting the white supremacist trope, ‘You will not replace us!’ This slogan grew from the supremacist notion that white races are in danger of extinction due to the rise in numbers of non-whites in their society and that all of this is somehow controlled by the Jews. Such ludicrous thinking links back seamlessly to the ideas in Raoul Peck’s documentary about the superiority of white people.

I also got to thinking about the ideas expounded by Peck as I read about the inquest into the murders of ten Irish men and women by the British Army in August 1971. Ireland was England’s first colony and no doubt the north-east corner of the island will be its last. There is a wealth of evidence about the racist attitudes towards the Irish which stretches back centuries. Victorian pseudo-science declared the Irish to be culturally and racially inferior to their Anglo-Saxon neighbours. Charles Kingsley, author of the popular children’s book ‘The Water Babies’ visited Ireland at the height of the great hunger. He saw the horrors unfolding there and reacted with a chilling lack of sympathy, devoid of any hint of empathy or humanity…

 

"I am haunted by the human chimpanzees I saw along the hundred miles of that horrible country. I don't believe they are our fault, but to see the white chimpanzees is dreadful; if they were black, one would not feel it so much, but their skins, except where tanned by exposure, are as white as ours."

What struck me about the Ballymurphy atrocity and the slaughter in Derry six months later by the same army unit was the manner in which the victims were demonised and a compliant press printed every lie the army asked them too. They were told at the time that the people shot were innocent but they refused to listen to witnesses who saw what happened. We were told to believe that a mother of eight out looking for her son before being shot in the face by a paratrooper was a terrorist. We were asked to believe that a parish priest, shot dead while giving the last rites to a victim, was a gunman. It was absurd at the time and absurd 50 years later when the lies were exposed.

At the time of the Ballymurphy massacre there was a TV show airing called ‘The Comedians.’ It regularly lampooned the Irish as stupid, ignorant and illogical. Those attitudes could have been lifted from Elizabethan or Victorian England such was their lineage. Common thought at the time suggested that there could be no blame attached to the British Military for Ballymurphy or Bloody Sunday as our ‘brave lads’ were decent fellows trying to keep the mad warring tribes of Ireland apart. The reality was that the Army in Ireland was using the same tactics of brutality and propaganda they had deployed in various colonial conflicts from Kenya to Aden. There have been scores of ‘Ballymurphys’ from Amritsar to  Ventersburg, from Kenya to Croke Park, as the Pax Britannica was enforced on the ‘lesser’ peoples.

John Teggart, whose father Daniel was murdered in Ballymurphy said after the coroner found his father and nine other victims were completely innocent of wrongdoing said…

‘We have corrected history today. The inquest confirmed that the soldiers who came to the area, supposedly to protect us, turned their guns on us.’

 

What remains shameful is that the majority of the British people, for the most part, have no idea of the crimes committed in their name. The history curriculum in schools talks of Empire as a great achievement and all too often the certainty of ignorance is manifest in the attitudes of many who swallow the myths and any lies that they are fed.

I was lucky enough to visit Berlin a couple of years back and in that fine city I found a people who, for the most part, had confronted their past. The Germans acknowledge the magnitude of what occurred in the Hitler years and the city is dotted with memorial great and small to the crimes of the Nazis. From the large Holocaust memorial, to small metal plaques embedded into the pavement bearing the names of lost Jews, they remember and more importantly they teach their children about it to ensure such things are not forgotten and are unlikely to occur again.

We humans are a tribal species by nature and are often most at home with our ‘ain folk.’ We seek the reassurance and identity which comes from belonging to the group. We see it mirrored on social media where likeminded people form bubbles containing the same opinions or supporting the same sports team. This can shut out other opinions and lead to a group think which shouts down or abuses any who stray from the party line.

Raoul Peck’s masterpiece eviscerates the idea that any human being is superior to any other. It challenges us all to learn from the mistakes of the past and to see where some of our current prejudices stem from.  As Voltaire is reputed to have said, ‘history is a bag of tricks we play on the dead.’ In learning the truth, we are better able to order our societies today and better able to relate to the ‘other’ in our midst who have their own stories to tell.

There is only one race; the human race, despite what the charlatans have told us.