Sectarianism, anti-sectarianism and Scottish football

Abstract

In 2012, the Scottish Parliament voted through anti-vilification legislation known as the Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications (Scotland) Act. Among those most prominent in opposing this have been supporters of Celtic Football Club. This paper looks at the history of the term ‘sectarianism’ as a means to understand the act and to consider some of the rationale behind Celtic supporters' resistance. It includes reflection on aspects of the social, cultural and religious context within and without football, which have contributed to the act's construction and opposition.

Notes

^1. Accessed February 1, 2014, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-24825094

^2. Accessed February 1, 2014, http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/403331/New-blow-to-bigotry-law

^3. Accessed February 4, 2014, http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/celtic-supporters-to-release-song-opposing-sectarianism-laws.23342765

^4. Danny Boyle, St Patrick's Festival Debate, Coatbridge, March 8, 2014.

^5. Celtic won the European Cup (later the Champions League) in 1967: this is the most significant trophy ever won by a club from Scotland. After a period of administration as a result of financial mismanagement, massive debt and widespread accusations of gaining leverage as a result of financially ‘cheating’ to win on the field of play, Rangers was consigned to liquidation on 14 June 2012. Rangers thus momentarily ended life as a Scottish institution but its rebirth shortly after to enter the bottom tier of Scottish football (and to look likely to re-enter the Scottish Premier League around 2015) with the same symbols, colours, football stadium and most importantly same fans and cultural attributes has meant that, despite statutory regulations and most legal opinion considering Rangers as officially obsolete and extinct since 2012, the club can conceptually be credibly treated and conceived simultaneously as a reconstitution and continuation of an unbroken tradition of what has existed since 1872 (and this is how its fanbase and much of the Scottish media consider the club and sustain a ‘same institution’ narrative).

^6. Murray notes around a dozen largely insignificant and short-term exceptions that impinged this policy.

^7. ‘The Lid Off Ibrox’, September 26, 1965 (3, 10, 17, 24 and 31 October).

^8. October 3, 1965.

^9. May 10, 1967.

^10.Daily Express, June 3, 1969, 8–9, and August 17, 1972.

^11. October 11, 1976, p. 3.

^12. October 11, 1976, 2 and October 13, 1976, 2.

^13. Deliverances of the General Assembly, May 1980, 10.

^14. Accessed November 9, 2011, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v = eTfFcAQP-dw

^15. Accessed February 1, 2014, http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/sport/football/aiden-mcgeady-i-had-to-leave-celtic-for-spartak-1067324

^16. Accessed February 1, 2014, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4399715.stm

^17.The Herald, April 8, 2005, 38.

^18. ‘No Pope of Rome, no chapels to sadden my eyes, no nuns and no priests, fuck your rosary beads, every day is the 12th of July’ (commemorative date of Battle of Boyne celebrated by Orange sympathizing Protestants mainly in Scotland the north of Ireland; The Scotsman, April 9, 2005). Murray (1994, 220) reports how in the early 1960s, Rangers fans also chanted against the dying Pope John XXIII and mocked a minutes silence on the death of the USA's first (Irish descended) Catholic president, John F Kennedy.

^19. April 11, 2005.

^20.The Mirror, April 12, 2005, 52, 56.

^21. April 11, 2005, editorial, 19.

^22. April 11, 2005.

^23.Daily Record, December 12, 1994.

^24. February 5, 1996.

^25.Scottish Catholic Observer, August 25, 2006.

^26.The Sunday Mail, August 27, 2006, 24.

^27.The Sunday Mail, August 13, 2006, 69.

^28.The Scotsman, December 18, 2006.

^29. Reported in Scottish Catholic Observer, January 5, 2007, 3.

^30. In the wake of composer James MacMillan's very public complaints with regards anti-Catholicism in Scotland in 1999, a relative explosion of publicity was generated resulting in hundreds of media and numerous academic articles within and beyond Scotland. See http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/podium-james-macmillan–the-bigotry-that-shames-scotland-1111793.html

^31. Research carried out since 2003 by author among Celtic supporters in Scotland, Ireland, the USA, Canada, Australia, Jersey and England. As yet unpublished.

^32. This term is used liberally in the mainstream media, but is observed most frequently on numerous fan websites, for and against, when discussing Celtic and Rangers. The classic examples of the use and propagation of the term is to be found in Bill Murray's influential – as the first works written on the subjects – books on the ‘Old Firm’.

^33.The Herald, March 5, 2014, 3.

^34. January 28, 2006.

^35. April 13, 2008 and May 31, 2009.

^36. Celtic's Chief Executive did not visit even one Catholic ‘Church Hall’ and would not have been expected to by Celtic supporters or Catholics in general. This was of course a classic case of detrimental Irish Catholic stereotyping and labelling on the part of this sports reporter/journalist. As this work demonstrates, associations with being Catholic, Catholicism and the Catholic Church often have negative resonances for many Scots.

^37. December 21, 2003 and February 27, 2013.

^38. There is much obvious correlation, for example, between many members of the Orange Institution in Scotland and Rangers fandom.

^39.Daily Record, editorial, October 13, 1976, 2.

^40. November 21, 1999, 23.

^41.The Daily Mail, March 1, 1997, 76.

^42. Radio Clyde Superscoreboard, February 1, 2013.

^43.Scottish Sun, July 15, 2009, 54; November 18, 2013, 24; April 29, 2009, 24. For but one example of the same journalist mocking Celtic's Irishness, see Murray (1994).

^44. August 23, 1972, 8.

^45. The Association, which represented all football clubs in Scotland, considered the display of the flag as having nothing to do with Scotland and an incitement to ‘sectarian acts and behaviour’.

^46. St Patrick's Festival Debate, Coatbridge, March 8, 2014.

^47. Accessed February 1, 2014, http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/parliamentarybusiness/28862.aspx?r = 6439&mode = pdf

^48. The presence of antagonism and hostility towards people perceived as anti-Irish and anti-Catholic exists in Scotland. Davies refers to ‘gestures of defiance’ on the part of Irish Catholics in the face of anti-Catholic Orange Walks, Flint and Kelly (2013, 50–64). Also see for discussion linked to language, ideas and abuse, Davis chapter in Flint and Kelly (2013, 115–129).

^49. November 23, 2006, accessed January 2011, http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/Apps2/Business/ORSearch/ReportView.aspx?r = 4688&i = 37710&c = 883683

^50. During consultations prior to the institution of the 2012 Act, Professor Tom Devine stressed how different Scotland had become with regards its ‘sectarianism’ in recent decades, pointing towards the stare of the outside world as one significant reason for this. He said: ‘We now have different expectations, partly because the attention of the world is on us. CNN was in the country two days ago [to note discussions on the Bill], and it might well have interviewed members of this committee. Its report will go out in 200 countries during the next couple of weeks. The bill process is still going on, so the world is still very interested. The international factor has been relevant’. Accessed January 1, 2014, http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/parliamentarybusiness/28862.aspx?r = 6439&mode = pdf