In-groups, out-groups and contested identities in Scottish international football

Abstract

Previous quantitative research arising from a study of Scotland's international football team's supporters indicates that politics, ethnicity and religion are relevant to an understanding of the symbolic boundaries and markers of Scottishness that these supporters bring to the sports environment. Utilizing a qualitative study, this article extends the original work by further exploring these boundaries and markers that contribute towards the production and constitution of these supporters' predominant sense of Scottishness. The article focuses upon three aspects that are relevant to the construction of Tartan Army Scottishness; religion, Britishness and Irishness in Scotland.

Notes

¹ Sugden and Tomlinson, Hosts and Champions; Armstrong and Giulianotti, Entering the Field; Brown, Fanatics; Crabbe, ‘Englandfans’.

² For some examples, see Bradley, ‘Ethnic and Religious Identity in Scotland’, Celtic Minded, Celtic Minded 2; Esplin, Down the Copland Road; Walker, ‘There's Not a Team Like the Glasgow Rangers’; MacPherson, Jock Stein the Definitive Biography.

³ Muirhead, ‘Catholic Emancipation’, ‘Catholic Emancipation in Scotland’.

⁴ Irish immigration accounts for at least 80% of the ethnic background of Catholics in Scotland, apart from other ethnic groups from Poland, Italy and Lithuania, for example. Scotland also retains its own tradition of native Catholicism although post-Reformation this was restricted to small areas of the Highlands and Islands and was numerically small.

⁵ See Devine, Scotland's Shame.

⁶ See Bradley, Orangeism in Scotland.

⁷ See Bairner, ‘Football and the Idea of Scotland’; Boyle, “The Grand Old Game”; Jarvie and Reid, ‘Sport’.

⁸ Giulianotti, ‘Football and the Politics of Carnival’.

⁹ Bradley, ‘The Patriot Game’.

¹⁰ Della Porta and Diani, Social Movements.

¹¹ The following geographically representative groups were engaged; Armadale Sons of Wallace (Armadale & West Lothian), BASTA (Badenoch & Strathspey), EASTA (Dundee & East Coast), KTA (Kircaldy & South Fife), LTA (Lanarkshire), NOSTA (North of Scotland), PTA (Perthshire), LOBTA (North Ayrshire), WESTA (Glasgow & Strathclyde), WEBTA (West End Bar, Airdrie Tartan Army) and Sporran Legion (West Lothian).

¹² Devine, Scotland's Shame.

¹³ Bradley, ‘We Shall Not Be Moved!’; Finn, ‘Racism, Religion and Social Prejudice’.

¹⁴ Moorhouse, ‘Scotland Against England’.

¹⁵ Jarvie and Reid, ‘Sport’, 117.

¹⁶ Bradley, Celtic Minded, Celtic Minded 2.

¹⁷ Celtic v Dundee United, 28 January 2006.

¹⁸ Glasgow Rangers v Celtic, Ibrox Stadium, 11 February 2006.

¹⁹ The World Tonight, BBC Radio 4, documentary presented by Graham Spiers reflecting upon Rangers fans' identification with anti-Catholic bigotry.

²⁰ Stuart on the Spectator website, 14 January 2010.

²¹ Jim Traynor, The Daily Record, Sports Section, 22 September 2008, 24.

²² Gerry McNee, News of the World, 6 May 2001 and 7 October 2001.

²³ Denis Canavan, Scottish Parliament question, 23 November 2006.

²⁴ Airdrie and Coatbridge Advertiser, letters, 12 March 2003, 19 March 2003.

²⁵ Crabbe, ‘Englandfans’, 71.

²⁶ At a conference held at the University of Stirling in January 1997, consideration was given to a number of pertinent social and political questions that partly focused on Catholics in Scotland who largely originate from Ireland. During the discussion, two academic speakers expressed the view that the Irish in Scotland could be referred to historically but not contemporaneously. Only after a number of exchanges did one concede that discussants could talk about ‘the ex-Irish’ in Scotland. The Chair of the conference, as well as his supporting professorial colleague, offered a view that talk of the Irish in contemporary Scotland was illusory and that the greatest single immigrant grouping in society had, ‘ceased being Irish’. See also McCrone, ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’, for exclusion of references to the Irish/Irishness in Scotland.

²⁷ See Jones and Harwood, ‘Representation of Autism’.

²⁸ Stone, ‘The Role of Football in Everyday Life’.

²⁹ Sugden and Tomlinson, ‘Sport, Politics and Identities’, 171.

³⁰ Hall, ‘The Question of Cultural Identity’, 612.

³¹ In Clary-Lemon, ‘We're Not Ethnic, We're Irish’, 18.

³² See forthcoming article by author on Britishness and the Tartan Army.

³³ In her book Britons Forging the Nation, Colley notes how Britishness was partly forged on opposition to Catholicism and also countries such as France, Spain, Portugal and Ireland.

³⁴ Noted in Ricento ‘The Discursive Construction of Americanism’, 625, from Van Dijk, ‘Principles of Critical Discourse Analysis’.