The last acceptable prejudice
I wonder if there is a support in British
football with less self-awareness than some of those who follow Rangers? Not
content with singing songs which drag the tattered reputation of their club through the gutter, they resort to a display
in a UEFA Champions League qualifier which purports to depict a character from
mid-nineteenth century America who was known for his hatred and violence
towards Irish Catholics. Ironically enough, it actually depicts Daniel Day
Lewis in the film Gangs of New York. An actor who loves Ireland so much that he
has lived for years in County Wicklow, but such things don’t compute with the
mindset which thought that such a banner was a good idea. Numbskulls need
things to be black and white, as shades of grey and contradictions confuse
them.
Below this banner the words ‘Surrender or you’ll
die’ were stretched along the front of the Broomloan Stand. Few Scots football
fans need reminding that this is a line from the ‘Billy Boys,’ a song about a
sectarian razor gang from the inter-war years in Glasgow. That working class
Scots sing in praise of a fascist and racist group from a century ago is passed
off as ‘banter’ by some, but the truth is, it’s pernicious and corrodes common
sense. We all know where these public displays of ritualised hatred can lead.
Just pop your head into the A&E department of any Glasgow hospital on a day
when Rangers play Celtic and you’ll see.
Bill ’the butcher’ Poole was a real man who
lived and died in New York in the 19th Century. His nativist
(anti-immigrant) leanings led the 200lb pugilist into many violent confrontations.
For years, his Bowery Boys gang had a deadly feud with the Irish and German
Catholic immigrants in the five points district of New York. He was eventually
shot dead by an Irish immigrant. Poole’s political leanings were towards the ‘Know
Nothing’ Party, so called because members were encouraged to say, ‘I know
nothing’ when questioned by others about the party’s darker side. Abraham Lincoln
said of them in a letter…
“As a nation, we began by declaring that 'all men are created
equal.' We now practically read it 'all men are created equal, except negroes.'
When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read 'all men are created equal,
except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.' When it comes to this, I should
prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty
– to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the
base alloy of hypocrisy.’
The Know-Nothings eventually merged into other political movements
but that strain of anti-Catholic prejudice has deep roots in America and has
only in recent decades begun to fade away.
On this side of the Atlantic, most European countries put
religion into the private sphere where it could do little harm. In the UK, the
monarch is head of the Church of England and the fact that no Catholic can
ascend the throne is a grubby little left-over from England’s own anti-Catholic
past and an insult to the 7 million Catholics living in the UK. Scotland’s own
latent anti-Catholic fringe were reanimated by the arrival of Irish migrants in
large numbers. Bear in mind that under the 1801 Act of Union, Ireland was a
part of the UK. These migrants were not technically moving abroad but to
another part of the same country. Conditions
on their own island had been made intolerable for them as the Irish colony, for
that’s what it was, was run to enrich the landowning classes at the expense of
the disenfranchised majority.
Competition for work and houses, rumours of wages being
lowered because the Irish would work for less, all contributed to ill feeling. It
seemed easier to blame the newcomers than to unite the workers and demand a
fair deal for all. It was also convenient for the bosses to keep the workers
divided as they were easier to control that way. The fact that Celtic Football
Club was formed to help feed the children of this migrant community
demonstrates the need must have been great indeed. Rangers initially were among
the Celtic club’s warmest friends but things were soon to change.
The arrival of Harland and Wolff’s shipyard on the Clyde
brought more strident types to Glasgow from Belfast. Celtic’s domination of
Scottish football in the years before World War One was hard for some to
swallow. With Rangers fast becoming the main competition for the ‘Irishmen’ Rangers
took a more exclusive turn under the guidance of Chairman John Ure Primrose. He
led the club until 1923 and saw them become a bastion of ‘Protestants only.’ As
absurd as this sounds a century later, it was reflective of the society of the
time.
It's equally absurd that the SFA, Scottish League and media
said nothing as Rangers practiced this petty apartheid for a lifetime. It was
boasted in those days that the three pillars of Scottish society were the
church, the law and Glasgow Rangers. Such exceptionalism breeds arrogance and
much as Rangers were Scotland’s most successful team until the mid-sixties, the
arrival of Jock Stein at Celtic changed it in a manner they have never fully
recovered from. For the self-proclaimed ‘people’ to play second fiddle as
Celtic swept all before them in the Stein era, was hard to swallow. The sectarian
policy Rangers operated then gave tacit approval to the bigots among their
support and set the club back decades. As they desperately strove to emulate Celtic’s
European cup win, they accrued a mountain of debt which crushed them in the
end.
The new century saw them collapse into liquidation and the
formation of a ‘phoenix club’ was a golden opportunity to break with the poison
of the past but as Charles Green pandered to the baser elements by saying ‘no
surrender’ in a TV interview, we knew it was going to be business as usual.
They climbed through the lower leagues like a men’s team in a school league and
reached the SPFL in 2016 with the slogan ‘going for 55’ to the fore. Celtic
duly won four successive trebles to further dent their superiority complex.
All through this period, graffiti, banners and a variety of
unsavoury incidents reminded us that they still had a serious problem with
bigotry among their support. It was telling that week in-week out we hear the
tired old dirges of the ‘bygone days of yore’ as the SFA, Police and media did
nothing. UEFA closing part of a stand for ‘discriminatory chanting’ reminded us
that footballing authorities can act. So why don’t they?
It's almost as if anti-Catholic bigotry is the last
acceptable prejudice. We saw Church of
Scotland minister Stuart McQuarrie, at one time leader of the inter-faith
chaplaincy at Glasgow University, stated that Catholics should stop ‘wallowing
in their victim status.’ He also described ‘The Fields of Athenry’ as ‘vile,
vicious and racist’, absolutely comparable to the unashamedly hate-filled
sectarian ‘Famine Song’ Mr McQuarrie is not representative of anyone but
himself, but that an educated man can verbalise such absurd views is telling.
The media in Scotland tend to follow the ‘unwritten
rule’ when writing about this subject and portray both sides as bad as each
other. They and many politicians demonstrate a moral cowardice in the face of
bigotry and refuse to call it out in clear language. Their obfuscation and
false equivalences cloud the issue and we get nowhere.
As for the ‘Know nothings’ and their stupid
banner, they may snigger about a ‘Timplosion’ or ‘meltdown’ or other such
juvenile nonsense, but the truth is, they damage their own club with these
idiotic displays. I really wish they’d join the rest of us in the 21st
century.
