If you remove the history from a situation, it often becomes devoid of any explanatory context.
“We go to war under the flag of Ireland”.
Really?
Some will say that this is a poor choice of words as Ukrainian cities are being pounded by Russian artillery.
Placenames I first came across when reading about World War Two are once more part of a conflict in Europe.
I never thought in my lifetime that armoured formations would be again assembling on the Kharkov salient.
The land that Operations Barbarossa and Bagration destroyed is suffering again.
Thankfully the young men of military age who will attend Hampden to cheer on the Hoops on Sunday will not be anywhere near a war.
They’re lucky.
However, they DO have a point.
The Scottish Football Association has a somewhat awkward history when it comes to Ireland’s national flag and the ethnicity of Celtic.
This piece from CQN in 2015 lays out the basic facts for the dispute between the Parkhead club and the SFA in 1952.
I’m not aware if the chaps who run the national game ever apologised to Celtic for this unseemly affair.
A few years after this spat which saw the SFA back down, your humble correspondent first saw the light of day in Fair Caledonia.
It was just my luck to be born into a country that saw any expressions of Irishness as verboten.
Thankfully my trio of Donegalies, all confident global Gaeilgeoirí, had a very different childhood.
You always want better for your kids.
Even in the 21st century, Scotland still abnormalises itself apropos Irishness.
This tweet puts it rather well.
Last year the genocide choir from Ibrox got a police escort through the city singing the illegal “Famine Song”.
Not a good look…
Yet Glasgow is the only major city in the Anglosphere that doesn’t have a Saint Patrick’s Day Parade.
Normal?
Hardly.
My son spent one 17th of March in Seoul, South Korea. The place had a massive open-air event with music and dancing.
Meanwhile, Glasgow City Council tied themselves in knots over whether or not to have a memorial to An Gorta Mór.
In the end, they failed, shamefully.
To their enduring credit, stalwarts within the Irish community in Glasgow came together and built their own.
No other ethnic group in Scotland is treated with such officially sanctioned disdain.
For example, sneering at the identity of Scotland’s multi-generational Irish community will not adversely impact your career as a politician.
For the avoidance of doubt, the SFA is a part of that official Scotland.
They will just have to deal with the fact that the biggest member club in their association has Irish roots.
I hope that half of Hampden is a blizzard of Tricolours on Sunday and that is the half that is celebrating.
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I wasn’t aware that Rangers had supported Celtic against the SFA’s attempts to get the flag taken down until reading the article cited above. Voting for the toxic Old Firm brand, I presume.
Let’s focus on the pitch on Sunday. The banning of a display … as happened before in 2019 at the other end of Hampden is not a major issue or anti-Irish issue it’s a safety issue. I also agree with the poster that this stuff blocks my view and I am there to watch the match. It should not be confused with 1952. The Green Brigade statement about flags and war is an embarrassment.
Good post Magdalena but ‘insular, hate filled country ‘ ? You’re better than that.
You’re right, Steve, it should be ‘insular, hate-filled, bigoted country’.
I’m better than the trash that allow this country to be so brazenly bigoted.
I was actually being polite and holding back on my true thoughts.
Once you have stepped outside Scotland and then come back you realise the utter ineptitude of its politicians, the outrageous anti Irish and anti Catholic editorial bias in all forms of mainstream media which is riven in the DNA of the vast majority of the population.
Don’t believe me? Give them a vote tomorrow on closing Catholic schools and just you watch “Scotland” show its true colours.
The education system has been destroyed and these bigoted clowns would close the schools that do best and deprive children the wonders of a Latin qualification!
I admire optimism that things have changed, they’ve not, and they won’t. Roughly 1 million folks who identify as Catholic, 500-600,000 other minorities and the majority of the 3.5 million of the rest either, ahem “don’t care”, but still blame sectarianism on Catholic schools! Until the demographic changes that Catholics and the genuine folks who live and let live and truly don’t care either way are in the vast majority then absolutely nothing will change. That’ll take 200-300 years, so suck it up.
Scotland under its current leadership has more orange walks than Belfast and surrounding hotbeds! Go figure!
I’m in my 50’s and as much as I can now be choosy about any particular role that I want, I still get asked what school I went to, what foot I kick with, do you follow the football? Etc etc. 5 times in the last couple of years and that was both at formal interviews and casual “chats” as I was approached. My answer now to any of that crap is “if you need to ask then I don’t want to work with or for you”.
I stand by my original comment.
How many Catholic schools provide a Latin qualification?
I was being a tad facetious with that particular comment seeing as my learned friends who attended Church of Scotland Reverend attended “non denominational schools” (that’s another facetious comment) didn’t get the pleasure , however back in my day we all studied Latin.
Perhaps the secular cult at Holyrood has removed it from the curriculum these days along with the rest of their dumbing down of the Scottish education system over the last 15 years?
“tam turpe est”
It was actually removed from most schools because it’s impossible to justify certificate classes of four or five pupils. Those were the kind of numbers of pupils who were interested in it. Classics Departments discouraged everyone who was not a high flier from choosing any of their subjects. As a result they ended up with departments that were no longer viable.
Ironically, several multi-lingual friends of mine have told me that it was the easiest language they ever studied.
So, virtually no state Catholic schools in Scotland teach Latin, and this is the work of an SNP government, whose eduction policy has largely been a continuation of the previous Labour administration’s blueprint, which has made literally no moves against state sector Catholic schools whatsoever, and which largely owes its primacy in Scottish politics to having accommodated the Irish-descending Catholic vote?
A simple point but no less valid because of it. It must be crap for the people stationed behind the flag waver and for that reason alone I think they should be banned.
If you ever have recourse to meet the former club secretary of Celtic, and he is in the mood to talk, ask him about his dealings with a former chief executive of The SFA and his involvement in the negotiations when we had to rent Hampden as we rebuilt Celtic Park.
The club that played at Hampden and the SFA chappy informed Celtic that we could not fly the Tricolour of Ireland while we played there. If it was a French Tricolour it was not a problem, but the Irish one was.
We informed them that we fly the flag of all the nationalities of players that represent us in our playing squad, but they were not for budging.
At one point we told them to stuff Hampden and we would play at Celtic Park in front of only the main stand. We were then threatened that they would make sure the capacity was below the required 10,000 seats as was the (stupid) stipulation for playing in the premier league at that time (it may be still to this day even though half the clubs play to mostly empty seats most weekends).
This brinkmanship was still in play right up until the day we played the preseason friendly at Hampden against Cruzerio (from memory).
They eventually caved, but they got their revenge with Cadette affair. We then proved in a court of law that the Football Association that governs Scottish Football, through their chief executive and his minions, deliberately disadvantaged one of their member clubs in order to heavily favour one particular other.
The biggest failure from that scandalous affair was that the minions stayed in office whilst the chief executive fell on his sword. One of those minions got to play another trump card some 15 years later with his “imperfectly registered” flim flam.
This is Scotland, this is the establishment. We will never be welcome, we will never be accepted and we will forever be sneered at as society shuffles their brogues and look down to the floor hoping that no one will notice.
Sadly, the only way to sock it to them is to improve your own standards, and that of your offspring, to rise as high as they can and see the wider world away from this insular hate ridden country.
Celtic are our public outlet to sock it to them as we take the fight to their establishment club/company, especially this bitter new one, as we did against the previous one who cheated itself to death despite the help it got from the governing bodies.