Lancing the boil

Lancing the boil

Some years ago I was in the Broomloan stand at Ibrox for a Rangers v Celtic match. My ticket took me to within a few rows of the home supporters in the Govan stand with only a thin yellow line of police and stewards separating the two supports. Celtic won the match that day with a goal from Maciej Zurawski but any other details of the game have dissipated from, my memory. What remains in my mind though is the relentless storm or visceral hatred directed at the Celtic supporters from grown men just a few yards away. Many of these men will have jobs, children, lives outside football but for a couple of hours they allow themselves to behave in a manner which is little short of disturbing. It was as if all the frustrations, disappointments and petty hatreds of their lives had been save up for just this moment and spat out at the Celtic supporters a few yards away.

You all know the sort of things which would have been shouted and chanted that day and that they had precious little to do with football. It wasn’t a pleasant way to spend an afternoon and you do start to wonder why such behaviour is tolerated in any society. No one wants the competitive and tribal edge taken out of football; it thrives on strong rivalries but some things cross the line and stray into a much darker place. I recall as a boy my old man saying, ‘We don’t like them much but they hate us.’ He wasn’t referring to the decent supporters of Rangers and they do exist but to that lumpen group whose lives are guided not by the things they love but by the things they hate. There is no reasoning with unreasonable people and if they are allowed to continue their medieval behaviour unchecked then it’ll go on forever.

American Psychologist Laurence Kohlberg described moral development in people in his famous ‘Theory of Moral development.’ Put simply he stated that as we grow and learn the moral choices we make in life are guided by the responses and reactions they often provoke. His model (greatly simplified) is akin to this…

·        Stage1: We do the right thing because we fear punishment or act out of self-interest to gain some reward

·        Stage 2: We do the right thing because it’s conventional and we judge that it helps create a better more ordered in society. We conform to the law and other norms.

·        Stage 3: We do the right thing according to deeply ingrained principles and ethics we hold even if it brings us into conflict with others or the law.

Now all of that might seem a bit odd in a football related article but the bigotry we see and hear at some Scottish football stadiums will only stop if the authorities and wider society says that’s enough. We may never get through to the minority in whom hatred is deeply ingrained but there is a continuum to such things ranging from those who despise the poison they hear around them, those who get caught up in the atmosphere and join in and those who revel in it. We need to get through to everyone that it won’t be tolerated and hope that the decent supporters withdraw their tacit support for the more bigoted element.

Now that UEFA has acted and demonstrated the sort of leadership that the gutless SFA has so obviously lacked for a century or more it’s becoming clearer to many supporters that it will hurt their club and fellow fans if the racism and bigotry continues. In Kohlberg’s terms, fear of punishment is driving the decisions of the more lumpen group thus we didn’t hear certain songs at the game with Legia Warsaw. Of course many supporters just want this nonsense to be dispensed with and get on with supporting their team. On Rangers forums there is now a more heated debate about what constitutes an appropriate song at a football match and it’s good to see the often silent voices of many supporters say enough is enough. UEFA don’t mince their words in their judgement of songs heard at Ibrox state starkly that…

‘The Control, Ethics and Disciplinary Body has decided to order a partial closure of the Rangers FC stadium during the next one (1) UEFA competition match in which Rangers FC will play as the host club, for the racist behaviour of its supporters. Rangers FC shall inform UEFA of the sector(s) to be closed, which shall at least comprehend 3,000 seats. The Scottish club is ordered to display a banner with the wording “#EqualGame”, with the UEFA logo on it.’

The inevitability of further sanctions means that even the most hard hearted bigot can be in no doubt of what will occur should such songs be reported to UEFA in the future. The European governing body’s code goes on to say…

‘The following disciplinary measures apply in the event of recidivism: a. a second offence is punished with one match played behind closed doors and a fine of € 50,000; b. any subsequent offence is punished with more than one match behind closed doors, a stadium closure, the forfeiting of a match, the deduction of points and/or disqualification from the competition.’

Any further offences may see stadium closures for more than one game, points deducted or offending teams being ejected from the competition. All of this is clearly spelled out on the UEFA website and leaves little room for saying ‘it’s our tradition’ because at the end of the day some ‘traditions’ are simply not worth keeping.

All big football clubs have their share of fools and knaves among their support and for the most part there is a self-policing aspect among fans which keeps them in check. Rangers problems are the historical hangover of pandering to a bigoted minority between the wars when new Chairman John Primrose Ure dedicated the Ibrox club to the ‘masonic cause’ and began the strict ‘no Catholics’ policy which continued for decades afterwards. In doing so the club attracted the worst elements of society to their support and now in more enlightened times those elements adhere to Rangers like barnacles on a ship.

For Celtic supporters too, the message from UEFA should resonate. There have been debates about the appropriateness of some singing Irish nationalist songs at Celtic matches and how these are perceived. Coming from an Irish background, I’ll never submit to any agenda which seeks to class such songs as sectarian because they simply aren’t but you can of course ask the legitimate question about why they’re sung at a Scottish football match. That debate is an ongoing one among the Celtic support is healthy and far from over.

UEFA’s actions have demonstrated that the SFA’s policy of doing very little to address the open sore of bigotry in Scottish football is untenable. The SFA is a members organisation and the clubs refuse to countenance strict liability for what goes on in their stadiums but perhaps there is a middle way where the SFA follow UEFA’s lead and lay out in plain terms what is and is not acceptable at a football match as well as the sanctions supporters can expect for transgressing the rules.

It remains a sad but true fact that it is hard to root out the bigots without hurting the decent fans too but that perhaps is a price worth paying for lancing the boil of bigotry. Then a new generation can grow up without being immersed in the sort of bile I experience in the Broomloan stand all those years ago.

 It is to be hoped that the fans of the future make the right choices but do so not out of fear of punishment but because it’s the right thing to do