The featured image is a Tweet from Tadhg Hickey.
As ever, he doesn’t miss.
The Corkman is an incorrigible iconoclast who produces biting satire about an array of social issues.
You’re in for a treat if you haven’t discovered his work.
Looking in on the carnival of reaction at Ibrox last weekend, Tadhg brought his súil eile to the proceedings.
He saw what many in modern Scotland seem incapable of processing accurately.
That in 2023 many thousands of people at a football match fondly remember in song a street gang led by a self-identifying fascist who was a member of the Ku Klux Klan.
Now that SHOULD be a story.
The sad reality is that Anti-Irish racism is so embedded into the Ibrox matchday experience that it hides in plain sight.
Consequently, it takes an outsider to carry out a common sense inventory.
A couple of lines from the pen of Scotland’s national bard are also apposite at this juncture:
O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
Next week there is an event at Glasgow University that marks the centenary of a shameful episode in Scotland’s story.
Tickets are still available here.
The subject is also covered in a chapter of a new book, which is covered in this excellent piece by Magnus Linklater in the Times (paywall).
It is worth reproducing some extracts from the article.
For those who still cling to the sectarian paradigm, there is a wealth of evidence that what boiled the piss of the Church and Nation committee a century ago was the perceived racial threat of the Irish in Scotland.
“Racially inferior”?
Yet somehow, many in official Scotland will still resist using the term “anti-Irish racism” to describe this hatred.
It is instructive that the staunch chaps on the committee were in touch with their fellow Aryans in Germany.
When the Kirk published that report for the General Assembly in 1923, those eugenicist attitudes were mainstream, indeed, respectable in Fair Caledonia.
Billy Fullerton and the men on the Church and Nation Committee were on the same page about the Irish in Scotland.
They only differed in the methods they deployed.
The Times article correctly references Ibrox stadium as a place where “anti-Irish bigotry” is still extant.
I cannot think of any other public space where it is safe to espouse such spleen except the stadium that John Brown played for.
Of course, the chaps on the sports desk should be calling out this racism constantly.
However, that would take courage and integrity.
Dear reader, I think you can see the problem with that one.
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92 points, var bonus (0 penalties against you, highest penalties for you, celtic mid table on both counts is 10-spot disadvantage ), would in many years be winning total…
but ange ‘lucky’ to squeek over the line – as no penalties changed result,
but sending off did lead to 4-2 drubbing by hibs.
Furthermore celtic did tired in last 5 games….. so Sevco can score 92+ next year, ange maybe less lucky and penalties/sending-off tip the balance, fine margins indeed
Sevco highest goal scorer for the year – own penalty taker, say no more!
Yes, an utterly shameful Scottish episode with a baffling legacy. The Times article was a good one and it will be interesting to see whether the topic is given much space in the Scottish press in light of the anniversary. I’d suspect it will, but wouldn’t be terribly surprised either way.
I’m not convinced on the arguments of continuing anti-Catholic bias in the distribution of jobs. That’s a massively vague statement and it’s interesting that the ‘Irish’ adjective is dropped there. Certainly as a Glaswegian with an obviously Irish name (and therefore roots), I’ve never really witnessed it. I’m also sometimes suspect on using census data to track the relative prosperity of the Irish diaspora in Scotland given that the option to declare as Irish on census forms was only available from 1991 and will only really have been used by first and second generation Irish Scots from that point onwards. None of my grandparents who had Irish parents had the option of declaring that way (though I don’t suspect that they would have chosen to either). It seems difficult to accept that Scots who descend from Catholic Irish migration to Scotland from the middle nineteenth century onwards fare any worse as a group than the population in general.
Scotland’s real shame on this issue (it’s not the only issue on which Scotland ought to feel a little shame) is its lack of understanding of the genuine history of the issue: a history which (too, to borrow your phrase) is hiding in plain sight. It’s really not that complicated, hard to understand or hard to get beyond. That it comes down to the opportunistic (and ridiculous) racialisation of the Catholic Irish, particularly from the 1920s until around the 1950s in order to stir ethnic tribalisms among the broader working class, strikes me as a simple matter to get one’s head around. Once that backdrop is understood and accepted (as it was, albeit late, by the church itself), discussions about lingering cultural tensions are pretty easy to have (including, by the way, subsequent wrongdoings on all sides). I know this because I’ve had them with a lot of people in a lot of contexts. I’m yet to discuss the matter with a remotely reasonable and intelligent Scottish ‘Protestant’ (so to speak) who doesn’t accept the implications of this curiously hushed-up historical episode.
Having a public debate – in Glasgow – is a welome, positive step.
But, in the West of Scotland anyway, it might not have much of an impact on current,
entrenched attitudes – held across a certain demographic and by certain organisations.
Perhaps in this scenario: the culture will eventually change completely… with funerals.
[i.e. future generations will just not be interested in maintaining outdated and offensive behaviours?]
It’s no gone away you know.
During the game while the klan were up to their knees the commentator on sky said something like “listen to the fans (klan), they are enjoying themselves”
If I sing up to my knees in the king’s blood or royal blood would it be me enjoying the moment or getting lifted.
Phil keep at them
TAL 🇮🇪
P.S It really does send me down to know that because I’m Irish people see me different. When for COVID Jag filled in form stating my ethnic origin as Irish the nurse asked what it said on my passport. I explained both my parents came from Ireland. It just shows you that we are looked at different.
They won’t call out abhorrent behaviour they no doubt are very fond of engaging in (behind closed doors) themselves