Yesterday Canon Tom White received justice and his assailant, Bradley Wallace was sent to prison for 10 months.
Sheriff Cubie stated that Wallace had indulged in a “Grotesque spectacle in a 21st century, multi-cultural inclusive Scotland”.
Except modern Scotland it is not such a society, although it pretends to be exactly that.
Glasgow has over 2000 streets and there are Catholic churches in about 60 of them.
Consequently, it should not be a major operation to have Orange Parades re-routed so that they do not pass by these paces of worship.
However, I suspect if that did happen then these marches would largely lose their attraction for people like Mr Wallace.
The casual denigration of the multi-generational Irish community is one of the organising principles of the Scotland that I was born in over 60 years ago.
My last non-fiction book “Minority Reporter” dealt with the entire subject.
The strapline was designed to be a wakeup call for the better folk in Fair Caledonia:
“Modern Scotland’s bad attitude towards her own Irish”.
Sadly, there is nothing aberrant or atypical about Mr Wallace
My book editor Angela Haggerty was threatened by Mr David Limond of the “Rangers chat podcast”.
He received six months in prison for this offence.
His threats were deemed by the court to have been aggravated by sectarian and racial prejudice.
Ms Haggerty is proud of her Irish heritage and, for some in modern Scotland, that is a cultural crime.
Of course, hatred of Catholics and anti-Irish racism are intertwined within the modern Scottish context.
The discriminatory terms for in Catholics in Scotland have a distinctly Irish flavour.
Kilmarnock manager Steve Clarke, a Catholic from Ayrshire, wanted to know why the Ibrox crowd were referring to him as “a Fenian”.
This ugly subculture has deep roots in Fair Caledonia and in the northeast of this country.
Bradley Wallace is a product of that belief system.
Sheriff Cubie stated to him that:
“You could have acted with restraint but rather, no doubt emboldened by, and thinking that you were under the cover of this aggressive and threatening crowd, you took the decision to spit on the priest, an act which is disgusting, cowardly and provocative, which demonstrates contempt and hostility and is designed to humiliate and demean.”
Those are the keywords:
“Designed to humiliate and demean…”
Quite so, Sheriff Cubie.
Quite so.
Until the belief system that instructed Bradley Wallace is taken on and broken Fair Caledonia cannot claim to be “…a 21st century, multi-cultural inclusive Scotland”.
Today Bradley Wallace is where he should be, in prison.
However, there are many like him who have been socialised into the same atavistic hatred.
Regular readers will know that immediately after his crime last July I spoke to an eye witness who had, quite literally, been standing shoulder to shoulder with Canon White on the steps of the church that day.
She was quite clear that Mr Wallace was not alone and that an entire mob had lunged forward.
Yesterday Canon White stated exactly that:
“I think however the conviction of one man, for one spittle does not reflect or begin to address what happened last July.
“My parishioners and I were spat at and shouted at by a mob, the memory of some of my frailest and most vulnerable parishioners fleeing their church in a state of fear and alarm is one that will abide with me for a long time.”
It really is time to @Call_It_Out_
Whilst they enjoy their “superiority” over anything and anybody that is not one of their kind, they remain either blind, stupid, or just indifferent to the fact that Glasgow was once referred to as the Second City of The Empire (I believe that title is now bestowed upon Birmingham), and although there is a sense of pride in Clyde-built ships, and heavy engineering (such as the locomotives built in Springburn), these ships were used, amongst other things, in the “robbery” of natural resources from the colonies. Sure – Tate and Lyle had a big sugar refinery in Greenock, but where did the raw sugar cane come from? Laterally, the Caribbean islands, where the black man was enslaved by white colonialist owners. Wills’ tobacco factory on Alexandra Parade in Glasgow?.. Same as the sugar cane – harvested by slaves. While they enjoy the resplendent architecture around George Square, they seem to neither know, nor care, where the money came from to finance it. Why should the Irish descendants expect any different, when they don’t even give a damn about people of colour? They may well hold an affection for non-white and non-protestant players wearing their team colours, but I don’t have to second-guess the type of abuse that they would mete out to a black Catholic player or manager that (to be topical) walked out on their club in the manner of Brandon Walters (or whatever the ex-Celtic manager’s name is).
While I’m about it – do we really need to bring ourselves down to their level by singing our own songs of hate? As far as I can tell, King Billy, Her Maj, Bobby Sands, UVF, IRA, His Holiness, etc have never played for either of Glasgow’s Big Two, so why do we feel the need to sing about them? We have plenty of songs about Celtic and past players – in time, perhaps we will hear similar songs emanating from that fine tax haven that is Ibrox. However, or won’t hold my breath on that one!
No problem Phil, Sportscene took time last night to highlight the IRA chants from the away support. Trial by Sportscene has not gone away, unless you play in a blue strip.
There is no place in football for this and it has to stop.
Strict liability is the only answer. I think the broader Celtic support could handle that by self policing the element amongst the fan base that think they are above the law.
We have plenty to sing about without the political ditties.
I expect the same light will be shone by Sportscene on the Ibrox song book, or has it being going on so long that it’s accepted as the norm?
Strict liability will be much harder for the Ibrox crowd to handle as in addition to the sectarian issue they also have the racist problem as per your article.
There is nothing wrong with singing songs about Irish history, ie The Boys of the Old Brigade, after all Celtic was founded by an Irishman Brother Walfrid. The bigotry and sectarian behaviour will never stop until the orange walk is banned, and we all know that will never happen, and why.
It’s a message at least that this guy has been put away as there is a mentality and belief amongst ‘them’ (and the fans of a certain football club they associate themselves with) that they are above the law in this respect.
The latent superiority over others of a different faith or ethnic origin is their ‘raison d’etre’…
Most of them have no faith of their own beyond their bigotry towards others.
Hopefully the message just might be received.
It would be far better had the whole mob been rounded up and dealt with in the same way when it was clear that it was not just one ‘rogue’ individual.
As for the route planning of these marching bigot-athons….,
Instead of letting them deliberately walk past churches…, council authorities and police should be insisting that all routes with churches must be avoided…
I’ve heard of ‘walks’ …. ‘pausing’ outside churches (just out of coincidence mind) and using it as an opportunity to stretch the vocal chords.
Better still .. perhaps somebody could convince them that the world has moved on 300+ years and that there are better things to do with your summer Sunday mornings.
It’s hard to believe it actually is the 21st century in the West of Scotland .
Phil that’s Justice.At least it wasn’t treated lightly,
for this is of great importance;Equality.
But still a very,very long way to go as you rightly stated.However,it must been seen as a step in the right direction.
HH🍀