Safety in the workplace.

Today Neil Lennon will patrol the technical area at Tynecastle stadium.

He will be doing his job.

It is every bit his place of work as his office in the Lennox town training centre.

Every employer has a duty of care to the people that they hire. AS part of their employment they are required to go places. Subsequently, their employer must ensure that those locations are safe.

Heart of Midlothian FC, as the home side, will provide match day security through their stewards and Lothian and Borders police.

The last time that the Tynecastle technical area was Lennon’s place of work HMFC and the police failed to protect Neil Lennon.

The images of John Wilson lunging at the Celtic manager went around the planet before the journalists had filed their match reports.

It was a lapse in security, but these things happen and it was all over in an instant.

What is harder to explain is the deliberation of a 15 person jury in the subsequent trial.

When is an admission of guilt in a court room not an admission of guilt in a court room?

That’s easy, when the jury decides to ignore it.

The bastard verdict of “Not Proven” saw Mr Wilson beat the assault charge.

In 2008 I stood in that same technical area in Edinburgh discussing, among other things, anti-Irish racism with the then SPL chief  Lex Gold.

There was charity match on between a “Show Racism the Red Card” select versus the MSPs from Hollyrood and it was all good natured stuff.

It was a worthy event and as the match progressed Mr Gold’s understanding of these issues cognate to the event was instructive.

When I put the issue of Aidan McGeady to him his response was:

“Aidan’s a lot more mature and he can handle it better now.”

It is hard to imagine that statement about a black player in similar circumstances.

Anti-Irish racism so permeates Scottish culture as to be normalised to such an extent that it is not recognised as such.

The term “sectarianism” is used to characterise the abuse Aidan McGeady and Neil Lennon had to endure as Celtic players.

McGeady’s “crime” was, of course, his country of choice.

A Welsh grandparent and a choice of the red of Wales would not have produced any problems for the young Celtic player now safely in Russia.

Similarly Lennon’s Irishness as a causative factor in the decade of abuse and victimisation he has endured in Scotland has been written out of the official narrative.

When it comes to anti-Irish racism large sections of Scottish society, including, many in the political elite, are in denial.

If Neil Lennon was from Lagos rather than Lurgan I suspect the stance of official Scotland would be rather different.

At the time of the verdict in the Wilson case Paul McBride QC noted that:

“…in Scotland we have juries that don’t need to read, don’t need to write, don’t need to count and maybe full of prejudices.”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-14732110

The decisions of juries must, of course, be respected, even if they are sometimes baffling to the ordinary person

A basic tenet of any civilised society is that all are equal before the law and all will receive the protection of the law equally.

I am sure that Neil Lennon will be safe at his place of work today.

The world is watching.