It is trophy day at Celtic Park today.
It is fitting that Paul McStay, a genuine one club guy, will bring the trophy into Paradise.
He was an iconic Number Eight in the middle of the park.
I can still see that pass that released Chris Morris down the right.
Of course, the Maestro doesn’t have to pretend that he was “born into Celtic”.
As a player, Paul saw good times and bad times in the Hoops.
It never occurred to him to bail out in the early 1990s when he was surrounded by mediocre players and facing a Rangers side that was funded by the bank’s money.
So, Celtic are champions again, as they have been in the last eight seasons.
Moreover, this has been achieved without financial doping, tax dodging or “imperfectly registered” players.
When I tell the Celtic story to people from out with these islands they are captivated by the origins of the club.
Of how a project to feed the hungry became a global sporting success.
I’m not surprised that Basques, Catalans and Palestinians take my club into their hearts.
Indeed, they get it in a way that many Scots do not.
The failed colonisers of Darien signed up to a Hanoverian Anschluss and became the middle management of the British Empire.
Indeed, they even ethnically cleansed those Scots who weren’t fully on board with the British project.
Of course, it was THAT Scotland that the famine Irish arrived in and the Irish were an uncomfortable reminder of the old Alba.
History forgotten is a betrayal.
Therefore, it is fitting today that the origins of Celtic are acknowledged in a very public way on National Famine Memorial Day.
That is why the Celtic players will have the emblem of the National Famine Memorial on their shirts for the final league match of the season.
It is an incontestable truth that An Gorta Mór created the community that gave birth to Celtic.
When the Famine refugees arrived on the Broomielaw they were treated as Untermenschen by the Victorian Brits.
It was not the Scotland of Bruce, but of North Britons and the Irish were dangerously foreign.
However, our labour was needed for their industrial revolution so we were tolerated but despised.
In the agricultural sector at harvest time were needed as rural Gastarbeiters.
However, it was important that we left after the potatoes had been howked.
For these immigrant workers to loiter, to tarry after their work was done was undesired by polite Scottish society.
Consequently, the tarrier was seen as a social problem.
Today much is changed for the Irish in Scotland.
However, the attitudinal discrimination that the “Famine Irish” experienced can still be seen in contemporary Scotland.
Yesterday the SNP led council authorised an anti-Catholic march to pass by a Catholic Church.
These marches have been going on for generations, but the days at the back of the bus are over and there was a silent protest by Call It Out.
Perhaps this new fluffy tolerant Scotland isn’t so different from one I was born in over 60 years ago…
When Celtic won the European Cup in 1967 the Inter Milan manager Helenio Herrera said on the day that it was “a victory for sport”.
It was also a triumph for a socially excluded community.
Today, there are many people in positions of power in Scotland who do not want to look back at that shameful history.
If it is brought up they will say that all is changed now.
I doubt this feel-good narrative would survive the scrutiny of the good folk standing outside St Alphonsus yesterday as the Herrenvolk walked past with their police escort.
Glasgow is unique in the developed world in that it is a major city with a multi-generational Irish community yet does not have a St Patrick’s Day Parade.
It was pointed out some years ago that the city was also atypical in that it had been a Famine refugee destination yet it did not have any public memorial to that historical event.
Here is your humble correspondent in the Celtic View connecting the dots in 2011.
When the SNP led City Council finally came up with a Famine Memorial it wasn’t really a Famine Memorial for the Irish.
The response of the Irish Community in Glasgow was to go ahead and raise funds to build their own!
That project, like Celtic, is a ground-up development.
The champions of the new Scotland had it in their power to finally show the Irish of Glasgow some respect in the public space.
For whatever reason, they couldn’t bring themselves to do that.
Perhaps we should not be surprised at this, as the SNP in Westminster still has in their group an MP who sneers at the “plastic Irish”.
Perhaps Ms Mhairi Black has the same worldview as the genocide choir at Ibrox and that the folks at Celtic Park today should just “go home”.
Of course, I can’t be sure of that as Ms Black will not answer the questions put to her by this journalist.
However, I would wager that if my father was from Madras and not Mayo then she would have been rather more respectful of this NUJ member.
Imagine an SNP MP, in an on the record interview to the Holyrood magazine, casually denigrating Scottish born people of South Asian heritage.
Then think that two years on from that interview the same MP has suffered zero consequences for this racist sneer.
Can you?
Can you really?
Well, I can’t.
The clear lesson of the last century and a half in Scotland is that the back of the bus stance by the Irish community only serves to encourage nativist hostility.
There comes a time when you have to step forward or accept the space that your racist detractors have put you in.
I suspect that the contemporary struggles of the community that created Celtic would not be so unrecognisable to those who first alighted in Fair Caledonia in those awful years.
As a club Celtic has always been open to all.
However, our roots are what they are and that is why today at Celtic Park is a celebration of more than winning the league.
Moreover, I think the guy in the home dugout will get that better than most.
Just like the Maestro, he doesn’t have to fake it
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See some immediately running to the defence of the SNP. How badly mistaken are those of our kind who support this rag-bag. Flag-eaters that would see the most vulnerable in Scotland suffer to achieve their stupid aim.
Who would fill the political vacuum in an Independent Scotland when the SNP run away singing “job done”? None other than the enemies of our 17% – the ‘Wee Frees’, the Church of Scotland, the Orange Order and the Masonic Lodge.
The SNP, and their quest for an independent Scotland, is no friend to our kind – a section of our community thinks by voting and supporting them somehow ‘puts the boot into’ Rangers – they are wrong, knee-jerking, short-sighted and ignorant of what a post-independent Scotland would look like and aspire to…..please grow up!
As Tom Devine said re the OO:
“In Scotland, Irish Catholics now have occupational parity with their fellow Scots. They have become full Scottish citizens and are quite happy in their own skins. The target has gone, and all that’s left is media interest in an irrelevant organisation.
If you look at social media over the last few days there has been almost 100 per cent contempt towards the OO, they are poor souls really.”
Probably best just to ignore these “poor souls”, they thrive on the attention.
After all, OO processions happen in Donegal. There is no confrontation and there isn’t any trouble.
Scotland needs a New Party.
A Democrat Socialist Party who will defend the rights of the many and not a select few.
Whether the OO like it or not they are a among the few.
Whether or not this happens within an Independent Nation is irrelevant because with the SNP,Labour and Tory Party you really aren’t getting much of a choice.
All of them have subscribed to Neoliberal Politics.
Socialist Scots left Labour they didn’t leave Socialism.
Phil, for the record, I know many Irish Catholic supporting Celtic supporters who refer to certain groups of Celtic supporters as weekend republicans or as the weekend Irish. Please don`t get so uptight at Mhari Black, there are far bigger fish to fry when it comes to degrading the Irish. Easy to find they are in the Labour and Tory parties.
Nice to see all that pyro on display today. No thoughts for the asthmatics today?
Hyperbolic article. It is a bit insulting to the civil rights movement of the 60’s to invoke Rosa Parks with the experiences our community in 21st century Scotland. Yes the orange bigots still exist but they are increasingly on the margins and to be pitied rather than given a bigger platform in your consciousness than they deserve. But I see SNP bashing forms a large part of the agenda of the article. Yes Mhari Black was stupid to use the term ‘plastic Irishmen’ in an interview when she was describing the people who were abusing her on social media, but to imply she shares the same worldview as the Ibrox bigots is more hyperbole. She is from a catholic background and a family of Celtic fans. I dont even you think she wants her own family to use your words ‘go home’
Like you I would like to see these orange marches a thing of the past but I agree with Tom Devine’s analysis that they are in terminal decline. To give them too much attention gives them a cause. Its a tricky one. Call It Out is doing good work and long may it continue but over egging your argument with too much hyperbole doesn’t help it.
Well said, excellent summary.
I usually agree with just about everything you say Phil but I do think you are going over the top with your SNP bashing. Compared to the British Unionest Labour or Torys they are bastions of equality and hope in Scotland . I would be the first to agree that there is a lot more that they need to do but in comparison to the others they are streets ahead. The real disappointment in Scotland is the Labour Party who carried the hopes of the “new Scots”for generations only to turn into old fashioned Tories. Labour ran Glasgow for decades and did nothing to reign in sectarian parades. You are being unrealistic and unfair to expect the SNP to clean up the mess it was left after such a short period of being in the administration .
Keep up the good work Phil .
“Bastions of equality and hope in Scotland”
Priceless!
Reign the marches in? They endorse more marches now than any previous council.
Very well put sir. Things are FAR from perfect but things ARE better than they were 50 years ago. This will take generations to change, but change has started. The Neanderthals who take part in marches, on BOTH sides of the fence incidentally, ARE heading for extinction. Their wee Toy Soldiers uniforms will eventually be a thing of the past, but not in my lifetime. Probably not in the lifetimes of my children either!
Phil, does excellent work but I still cant grasp his hatred of or the record of the SNP, Labour in Glasgow did absolutely zero to prevent, reroute or abolish marches in over fifty years. SNP have made significant progress in doing all in two.
However as you say, Keep up the good work Phil when exposing the Sevco bigots.