Sport and the Contestation of Ethnic Identity: Football and Irishness in Scotland

Abstract

The greatest single immigrant group in Scotland derives from the island of Ireland. During the years of the Great Irish Famine in the mid-nineteenth century until the First Word War, several hundred thousand Irish migrated to Scotland. Traditionally, this migrant community has been largely ignored in academic, popular and public literature and representations. It is primarily through the sport of soccer that this group's distinctiveness and identities are manifest in Scotland. However, the existence and the successes of Celtic, a football club founded and supported by the Irish Catholic immigrant community, highlights not only this marginalisation but the prejudice perceived and experienced by the Irish diaspora in Scotland. This paper highlights the role and significance of the Scottish print media in reflecting, creating, sustaining and disseminating this prejudice.

Keywords:

• Irishness
• Celtic
• Scotland
• Media Discourses
• Ethnic Identity

Notes

1. Scotland has recorded some of the biggest football crowds ever witnessed, including 136,505 for the Celtic versus Leeds United European Champions Cup semi-final of 1970 and 147,365 at the Aberdeen versus Celtic Scottish Cup Final of 1937, both held at Hampden Park, Glasgow. On one evening in 1972, ten kilometres apart in the same city, 155,000 attended two games: Celtic versus Inter Milan in the European Champions Cup semi-final and Glasgow Rangers versus Bayern Munich in the European Cup Winners Cup semi-final.

2. Such discourses characterise much Scottish press reporting regarding matters connected to the Irish in Scotland.

3. Project financed by the Economic and Social Research Council in 2001/02. The research looked at questions and issues of identity focusing on people born in Britain of at least one Irish-born parent or grandparent. Interviewees have been given pseudonyms for the purpose of reporting findings. The work was carried out by Dr J. Bradley, Dr S. Morgan, Prof. M. Hickman and Prof. B. Walter.

4. Out of the Ghetto? The Catholic Community in Modern Scotland', University of Stirling, 24 January 1997.

5. See Mark Tierney on Andrew O'Hagan in ‘Leaving Caledonia’, The Herald Magazine, 9 October 1999.

6. Interview Mark Burke, secretary, Naomh Padraig Celtic Supporters Club, Dublin, 3 December 1999.

7. At least half of the respondents in Scotland said they were Irish while other interviewees claimed a variety of hybrid Irish and Scottish identities.

8. See Richard Purdon, ‘The Rogue from the Pogues’, Scotland on Sunday, 5 October 2003.

9. The Alternative View’, Alternative Fanzone, December 2003.

10. Rangers is the club of the local Protestant population of Glasgow: hence games between the two clubs crystallise the Scottish–Irish, Protestant–Catholic rivalry in the city.

11. This is also confirmed in a series of interviews with Celtic supporters in Scotland, Ireland, England, the USA, Canada, Australia and South-East Asia. Projects financed by the Carnegie Trust for Scotland, The British Academy and the Faculty of Management, University of Stirling. See Bradley (1995).

12. James Traynor, The Daily Record, 19 May 2003.

13. The Daily Star, letters, 26 May 2003.

14. The Herald, letters, 23 May 2003.

15. Scotland on Sunday, Sport, letters, 24 March 2002.

16. Alan Massie, Scotland on Sunday, Week in Review, 29 July 2001.

17. Ewing Grahame, The Herald, Sport, 8 April 2002.

18. Bill Leckie, The Sun, 8 April 2002.

19. Gerry McNee, The News of the World, 6 May and 7 October 2001.

20. BBC Radio Scotland, Sports Commentary, 25 April 2004.

21. Airdrie and Coatbridge Advertiser, letters, 12 March 2003.

22. The Sunday Mail, letters, 27 April 2003.

23. For examples of the furore surrounding these events, for Findlay see Daily Record, 3 June 1999, for MacMillan see Sunday Herald, 15 August 1999, for the Irish Famine Memorial see Daily Record, 9 February 2001.

24. John MacLeod, The Herald, 18 February 2002.

25. Raymond Travers, Scotland on Sunday, Sport, 9 November 1997.

26. Hugh McIlvaney, The Sunday Times, Sport, 25 May 2003.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Joseph M. Bradley

Joseph M. Bradley is Lecturer in Sports Studies at the University of Stirling, Scotland