Celtic FC’s 1967 Lisbon Lions: why the European Cup victory of the first club from Britain was a defining moment for the Irish diaspora in Scotland

ABSTRACT

In 1967, in Lisbon, Celtic Football Club, won the European Cup becoming the first club outside of Portugal, Spain and Italy to win it. The win was and is totemic for the Irish Catholic immigrant community in Scotland that has historically supported Celtic. We suggest the significance of the win reveals intersections of ethnicity, religion, nationalism, and the politics of ‘sectarianism’ in Scotland. During a period of discriminatory practices and attitudes towards Irish descended Catholics in Scotland, this iconic win for a Scottish based club born of Irish Catholics personified for this diaspora that (on one level) their day had arrived. This article explores the socio-cultural significance and legacy of ‘Lisbon 67ʹ for insider and outsider groups in Scotland. We reveal that soccer remains a central component of group memory connecting the past, present and future. We suggest Celtic’s win offered confidence and hope to a marginalized group within Scotland.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. There is an argument for one player (Jim Craig) being described as coming from a lower middle-class family. Either interpretation makes little difference to the general point.

2. McNee, Celtic History, 24.

3. It was a Holy Day of Obligation in the Catholic calendar.

4. McColl, Celtic.

5. Campbell and Woods, Celtic Football Club.

6. Peebles, Celtic Triumphant.

7. Ibid., 1.

8. In much football discourse in Scotland, Scotland’s great rivals England are often represented as being arrogant and over-expectant. Reproducing the imagined humble, non-expectant ‘Scots’ for a Scottish readership gives more power to both inter-connected and compounding national stereotypes.

9. Peebles, Celtic Triumphant, 1.

10. James, Beyond a Boundary, 233.

11. See Auld and Maley, The Lions of Lisbon; Garavelli, Insight.

12. See Anderson, Imagined Communities.

13. ‘The Great Starvation’, ‘The Irish Famine’, ‘The Potato Famine’, ‘The Great Hunger’, ‘An GortaMor’ are all used to describe these events from 1845 to 1852 when millions of Irish starved. Language here is both political and powerful. Famine implies that the death and destruction resulted from lack of food caused by crop failure (potato blight) when it was Colonial (mis)management, the commodification of ample food resources and the significant inequality that resulted from the distribution of colonial power that resulted in death and destruction (see Kinealy, A Death-Dealing Famine).

14. Bradley, Ethnic and Religious Identity in Modern Scotland, 145. In 1755 the government commissioned Webster (previously Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland) to obtain data for the first census of Scotland.

15. McCaffrey, Roman Catholics in Scotland in the 19th and 20th Centuries.

16. Neal, Black 47, Britain and the Famine Irish, 80.

17. Devine, The Great Irish Famine and Scottish History, 27.

18. In 1847, the anti-Catholic journal, The Witness, associated Roman Catholicism with dependence and indigence, and Protestantism with vitality and progress, ‘a widely-held Victorian nostrum’. See Gallagher, Glasgow the Uneasy Peace, 16.

19. The Welfare State, introduced in 1945, sought to offer some protection from the state to citizens who found themselves impoverished.

20. Burrowes, Irish.

21. Handley, A History of the Province of the British Isles, 43.

22. Wilson, Celtic, 1-17.

23. Ibid.

24. Kay and Vamplew, Beyond Altruism: British Football and Charity, 1877–1914.

25. Wilson, Celtic.

26. Stein was voted by the Celtic support to be the greatest ever Celt.

27. Murray, The Old Firm. See also, Gordon Waddell, The Sunday Mail, May 2010, 23. Additionally, when one of us discussed this article with a Scottish born and raised sport-related academic colleague, she expressed surprise to learn that Celtic had ‘more than a handful’ of non-Catholic supporters.

28. Hibernian FC, formed in Edinburgh in 1875, have some overlapping elements with Celtic in terms of origins. In terms of identity, there is no longer any genuine comparison. See Kelly, ‘Hibernian Football Club’ for a full discussion.

29. Colley, Britons.

30. Hirsch, British, 227.

31. Perhaps the most up-to-date account of this is McBride, Rethinking Sectarianism.

32. This is also the case, of course, for many of those in Britain who self-identify as British.

33. Kirking originates from Kirk, the word used in Scotland to describe a (Protestant) Church of Scotland Church.

34. See Bradley, Celtic Minded series.

35. Mackay, The Hibees; Docherty and Thomson, 100 Years of Hibs 1875/1975.

36. See Kelly, ‘“Sectarianism” and Scottish Football’.

37. Ibid.

38. Wilson, Celtic, 94.

39. Former Celtic chief executive Fergus McCann disclosed that when Celtic hired Scotland’s national stadium Hampden Park (in 1994 when Celtic Park was re-developed) that its owners Queen’s Park Football Club ‘inserted a clause in the lease – a ‘deal breaker’ as their attorney made clear – that forbade ‘the display of any foreign flag’ (author’s emphasis). See McCann, ‘Hampden Park’. For other examples, see Daily Star, letters, May 26, 2003; Scotland on Sunday, Sports, letters, March 24, 2002.

40. Kelly, ‘“Sectarianism” and Scottish Football’.

41. In extreme cases, this has been a purposeful and politically motivated decision. For example, even the mere opinion that Ireland belongs to the Irish was so problematic to the British establishment in those days that Paul McCartney’s song ‘Give Ireland back to the Irish’ was banned by the BBC (among other broadcasters). Revealingly, the British establishment insinuated that expressions of support for Irish independence from Britain equated to supporting the (Provisional) IRA.

42. See Bruce, Glendinning and Rosie, Sectarianism in Scotland; Bruce and Glendinning, ‘Sectarianism in the Scottish Labour Market’.

43. Hirsch, British.

44. Ibid., 4.

45. Ibid., 32.

46. Ibid., 35.

47. James, Beyond a Boundary, 233.

48. Cited in Hirsch, British, numberless page preceding the introductory chapter.

49. Both authors were schooled in different regions of Scotland and neither received any school lesson that mentioned or discussed James Connolly or the Irish Rebellion.  This despite Connolly being born and raised in Edinburgh as 2nd generation Irish and the rebellion involving the British state as a key protagonist. Like most interviewed for the Irish 2 Project, neither author received any formal schooling in relation to their own  Irish ethnic/immigrant backgrounds or that of the vast majority of those they were schooled alongside. Knowledge of Connolly (and the Easter Uprising) amongst the Irish diaspora in Scotland has often been prompted by references to him (and the Easter Uprising) in song within the Celtic support/Irish diasporic home/family settings.

50. Of course this is not to deny that some Celtic supporters have no interest in James Connolly or that some do not have an interest in any of these typically imagined British signifiers.

51. This focus group involved five men ranging from 68 to 78 years of age who attended the match in Lisbon in 1967. This exploration produced rich oral testimonies, re-iterating the views of those who articulated the larger socio-cultural significance of Celtic’s victory.

52. This project was financed by the Government-sponsored Economic and Social Research Council in 2001-02 and essentially 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 J. Bradley, S. Morgan, P. M. Hickman and B. Walter. For further references see http://www.anglia.ac.uk/geography/progress/irish2/.

53. Also see McBride, Rethinking Sectarianism.

54. Bradley, Celtic Minded, 6.

55. Irish 2 Project Scottish based Irish 2nd and 3nd generation respondents.

56. In parts of Scotland asking what school someone attended is often interpreted as a coded method of asking what religion (as well as ethnic background) one is.

57. https://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/insight-the-pilgrimage-to-lisbon-to-watch-the-lions-play-1-4420814.

58. The Celtic Way is the modern pedestrianized walkway that leads up to the front entrance at Celtic Park.

59. The New European, May 26 – June 1, 2017; Paddy Hoey, ‘Why The Lions Still Roar’.

60. Hirsch, British, 119.

61. An example from one of the authors’ own childhood was when he noticed his mother – usually in the company of non-Catholics – begin replacing the word ‘chapel’ with ‘Church’ in keeping with the majority Protestant term for a Christian place of worship.

62. See Bradley, Celtic Minded, 51.

63. Hirsch, British, 156-57, our emphasis.

64. See Flint and Kelly, Football, Bigotry and Scotland, introduction and conclusion chapters especially.

65. Hirsch, British, 50.

66. James, Beyond a Boundary.

67. This is not to overlook the significance this event had and continues to have for others within and beyond Scotland, who are not from an Irish Catholic immigrant background.