The Cafe 2
I write as, in Walter Humes’s term, a religious leader, now thankfully retired as a Church of Scotland minister, though still very much involved, perhaps even more so than when I was a supposed religious leader. I never felt like a religious leader throughout my ministry then and have the gravest doubts about religious leaders now, infallible or otherwise. As a minister, I always recognised my calling to be, not to lead, but to serve, after all, the root meaning of ‘minister’.
Having said all that, I would submit that service can be the most powerful vehicle of leadership, giving, by its very definition, the exhila-rating freedom of expression to say exactly what I want, without fear of any contradiction. Without any favour, after all, the powers that be cannot take anything away from me, for what more demotion can a servant enjoy, when his or her most dominant fear is promotion. I sense being in the most excellent company of him, who said: ‘The last shall be first’. Mind you, I wouldn’t imagine Jesus was ever an Aberdeen FC supporter.
I never fail to find Walter Humes’s articles both very challenging and, therefore, most enjoyable, not least when he wrote on the subject of a glaring lack of any belief structure in our society: ‘The way is (then) left open for the meretricious to exploit the weak and the scene is set for serious social fracture.’ So well said, reminding me of Stephen Fry, either originally or in quotation, coming out with: ‘Those who claim to believe in nothing will turn out to believe in anything’.
Ian Petrie
Since we cannot afford the large-scale marketing of the mainstream press, SR’s remarkable growth as an independent magazine is based largely on word of mouth.
Today’s banner
The editorial offices of the Scottish Review? Surprisingly not. Actually, the Quiet Corner is to be found in the abbey on Iona
Photograph by
Islay McLeod
Rangers Football Club
must apologise for its
shameful practices
John Kelly
I’d like to congratulate Alasdair McKillop (17 August) for his writing ability and suggest that, on this basis at least, he need not fear his next meeting with his PhD supervisor. I would advise him not to admit to his supervisor that he seizes opportunities for procrastination with both hands, however, or he may have good reason to fear this meeting.
Alasdair’s article contributes to the ongoing debate in the Scottish Review on the topic of football and ethno-religious bigotry (‘sectarianism’). I agree with him that sections within the Celtic support that continue celebrating Irish-Republicanism by chanting support for the Provisional IRA can do better. More importantly, I also agree with what I suggest is his most important argument, namely that support for armed groups cannot be divorced from the ideologies, actions or outcomes associated with the groups’ acts. In doing so I discuss its wider implications for ethnic and religious bigotry at football and also for debates around sport and politics more generally.
I have sympathy for Alasdair who, as a Rangers fan, feels like a minority on the ‘other’ side. However, he need not be ‘a Rangers fan who wanted to see what it was like to be on the same side as "most people"’ due to it not happening ‘very often’. If Rangers FC finally acknowledges once and for all the shameful anti-Catholic practices its club previously employed and apologises for it, this would go a long way to ensuring that Rangers and its fans would join the civilised world of sport and at last be on the same side as most other people in Scotland. It would be a major step forward in foreclosing the doubts of those who suspect Rangers of simply acting to appease the increasingly powerful voices of multi-national sponsors, media organisations and governing bodies for fear of penalties rather than truly believing its practices to be unacceptable.
Moreover, rather than being some masochistic desire to see Rangers FC hang its head in shame for a previous regime, or as Alasdair implies, be an act of point-scoring ‘whataboutery’, this declaration would go a long way – I believe it would be nothing short of revolutionary for that club – to convincing ‘most people’ that the 21st-century Rangers FC is genuinely no longer a sanctuary for anti-Catholic and anti-Irish elements within Scottish society. This call is not the pedantry of ‘tedious’ mudslingers. It would, I believe, open the floodgates for Rangers finally to become the same as every other club in the land and have thousands of Catholics support them in ways that remain unlikely due to the lingering fears Catholics (Scots-Irish and others) still have of a club whose fans continue en-masse singing of anti-Catholic and anti-Irish songs.
Whilst there have been welcome statements in the past from Rangers on this, they continue prevaricating and giving the impression that they are more concerned for the impact it may have on the club than for the fact that it is bigoted per se. This requires them to be unequivocal in their chastisement of anti-Catholic behaviour for its inherent bigotry rather than the potential damage it may cause for the club’s image or ability to compete in competitions. Additionally, they would do well to stop deflecting attention to ‘others’ for their alleged ‘guilt’ or claiming an agenda is being pursued against them.
Of course, contrary to some mistaken onlookers, Celtic FC has never been anti-Protestant and has historically enjoyed support from large numbers of Protestants. If Rangers FC fails in its duty to Scotland to acknowledge and apologise for its previous anti-Catholicism, thus leaving them on the fringes of 21st-century Scottish society and stranding Alasdair adrift from the majority, Alasdair’s Celtic-supporting friends can offer solace on how to deal with feeling like a minority ‘other’ given their long history of feeling ostracised in much of Scotland.
Rangers continue to parade uniformed British forces on their pitch to the sound of British nationalistic songs sang by thousands of vociferous and grateful fans.
I do take issue with Alasdair when he admits to using value judgements based on ‘basic moral and legal standards’ as this, it appears, furnishes his argument with an implied logic and trustworthiness. He then hopes ‘the majority would mirror my stance’ and adds the pessimistic assertion that ‘otherwise we have bigger problems than those being discussed here’.
The fact is we do have bigger problems than those discussed thus far and I’ll outline these in a moment. But first, I must highlight that irrespective of the issue being judged, relying on value judgements based on basic moral and legal standards is not sufficient if the actual issue being debated is, for one side at least, based on questioning the morality and legality of these assumptions from which the moral judgement comes. In other words, a flawed morality and law system could result in flawed moral values and judgements, deeming them useless even if accepted by ‘most people’. The question should not be to what extent is my judgement popular, but should be whether or not the relevant moral judgement is truly moral and just and it is to this I now turn and, in doing so, I reveal the bigger issue at hand.
Alasdair is absolutely correct to assert that the sections of the Celtic support that sing in support of the IRA express support not only ‘for an ideology and objectives but also the tactics used to achieve these’. He equally correctly adds, ‘the two can’t just be neatly separated’. It is simply disingenuous for anyone to separate any of these factors when making moral judgements of the type being discussed here. Alasdair could not be more forceful in his judgment – you cannot, he correctly tells us, support the killers without supporting their cause, their methods and acts, and the death and destruction caused by them.
The (Provisional) IRA has fought what they believe to be an occupying force and killed (or, if you prefer, murdered) approximately 650 civilians and 1,100 British service men and women. Now let’s put this in context whilst widening the debate beyond football and bigotry to consider sport and politics more generally. The British military has been an invading and occupying force in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001 and 2003 respectively, and, in our name and in conjunction with its major allies, killed (or, if you prefer, murdered) approximately 100,000-190,000 civilians and 109,000-130,000 alleged combatants. I, therefore, look forward to Alasdair’s robust critique of his own club and numerous other sporting/cultural organisations that continue to support the killers of over 100,000 innocent civilians, feting them as ‘heroes’. As he so accurately observes, these realities are ‘brutal and uncomplicated’. Rangers continue to parade uniformed British forces on their pitch to the sound of British nationalistic songs sang by thousands of vociferous and grateful fans. By Alasdair’s logic, which I fully endorse, supporting the British forces in this way is tantamount to supporting their ideological cause, their methods and outcomes of their actions. We cannot, therefore, support the British troops without also supporting their inextricably linked killings of between 100,000-190,000 civilians. ‘Supporting the troops’ is political. Without the political context (that many object to and others deny exists), British soldiers simply become murderers in uniform.
Just as support for the IRA cannot be separated from the murder of innocent civilians, support for other armed groups cannot be separated from the murder of innocent civilians. When does murder transform into killing and when do murdered civilians become collateral damage? These questions are wrapped in political ideological assumptions and value judgements. A man who shoots dead or blows up another is a killer. Give that killer an ideological cause and he becomes a freedom fighter. Give the freedom fighter a uniform accompanied by political and ideological acceptance and he becomes a soldier (or legitimate freedom fighter).
This all begs the question of whose killers do we or should we support? Whose killers are allowed to be celebrated and feted as ‘heroes’ by a minority of boorish football fans or by the actual clubs themselves?
History is littered with those branded terrorists who later become accepted as soldiers (or legitimate freedom fighters), and soldiers who later become labelled terrorists. Nelson Mandela is in the former group whilst the British forces’ concentration camp commanders in 1950s Kenya are in the latter. Moreover, when do historical acts cease being connected to the contemporary group and when does the contemporary group become divorced from the historical acts of its predecessors? Or to put it another way, can we criticise supporters of the ‘old’ IRA (from 1916-21) because of the post-1969 troubles? Can we justify supporting the British forces in 2011 despite their actions in Kenya in the 1950s and Bloody Sunday in 1972, not to mention Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001? Can we ignore the mega-massacre of between 150,000-250,000 innocent civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 to support its killers, the USA then and now?
This all begs the question of whose killers do we or should we support? Whose killers are allowed to be celebrated and feted as ‘heroes’ by a minority of boorish football fans or by the actual clubs themselves? Whose killers are we morally duty-bound (rather than merely justified) to support and glorify? If Alasdair is correct in asserting we cannot support the killers without supporting their actions and causes, and I think he is, this exposes the bigger problem in our society; the problem of being blinded by the moral belief in one’s own cause and the automatic rejection of the other’s cause. These issues are nuanced and require nuanced debates and this requires reflexivity on all our parts.
We all need to be reflexive and question our own assumption, values and behaviours. Since 2003 alone, the British forces and its allies have killed between 150-290 times the innocent men, women and children the killers of the IRA have killed. Celtic FC does not parade on its pitch to the tunes of Irish nationalistic songs those who have killed 1,800 individuals. Rangers and others parade the killers of up to 200,000; thus, as Alasdair must surely concede, this equates to voicing support for an organisation (or collective forces) that has carried out terrible atrocities.
Coming back to football and ethno-religious bigotry, Rangers and Celtic and the other clubs (clubs and fans) must acknowledge the effect of their actions on the other and be reflexive enough to offer an olive branch of sorts to their bitter rivals or we’ll still be up to our knees in Fenian blood or reminiscing of the father who one bright Easter morn’ joined the IRA. Both cultures can do better as can wider society when using sport for political purposes.
John Kelly teaches sociology of sport courses at Edinburgh University and is currently co-writing a book on sport and social theory which will be published next year by Routledge
