Two cases of culpable homicide (1)
Kenneth Roy
Two cases of culpable homicide (2)
Bob Cant
Peter Kearney
Kenneth Roy and John DC Gow are looking almost prophetic in the harsh light of January 2013. Writing in this magazine prior to the turn of the year, they discussed the vexed problem of sectarianism in Scottish society.
Hogmanay appears to have been some secret signal for the stakeholders in this debate to strive for a new intensity. For a number of reasons, sectarianism seems bound to be a significant undercurrent in public debate this year, distracting attention from the major theme of constitutional change and possibly feeding into this debate in unpredictable ways.
First, Dr Duncan Morrow, a lecturer at the University of Ulster’s school of criminology, politics and social policy, is leading a team of academics put together by the Scottish Government and tasked with devising strategies to tackle the problem. Speaking to the Herald’s Gerry Braiden, Dr Morrow argued that sectarianism is now about more than just religion, with political, social and cultural factors all needing to be factored in – a view endorsed by Dave Scott of Nil By Mouth.
Second, progress on Glasgow City Council’s plans for an Irish famine memorial seem destined to be attended by debates about Irish influences on Scottish society, both historical and contemporary. Furthermore, there is a major new collection on bigotry and Scottish football forthcoming from Edinburgh University Press and Professor Tom Gallagher is hard at work on his new book ‘Divided Scotland’. Dr Morrow said: ‘One very obvious element to this which is quintessentially Scottish is the habit of not talking about this’. It is debatable whether this has indeed been the case since the advent of devolution, but 2013 seems destined to be the year when this notion is conclusively dispelled.
It should be pointed out that merely talking about a problem is not the same as coming up with a solution. Dr Morrow and his team are certainly not burdened with the envy of many who have taken an interest in this issue. Many decent people have worked with varying degrees of public recognition to try and extract this particular poison from the body politic. At the very best, we might see robust strategies put in place to effect a long-term cultural change but, at the worst, removing sectarianism might be like trying to catch the northern lights using a fishing net.
There are also troubling indications that talking about the problem might actually inflame the situation if it isn’t done with a degree of sensitivity, maturity and a sense of perspective. This was most obviously demonstrated by the arguments of Peter Kearney, director of the Catholic Media Office, in a letter to the Herald. Mr Kearney argued: ‘In much the same way as America’s black citizens in an earlier era were urged to straighten their hair and whiten their complexions to minimise differences with the white majority, many will surely urge Scottish Catholics to stop everyone sending their children to Catholic schools or making public or overt declarations of faith’.
This was a statement clearly designed to grab the attention of the media and in that sense it worked to great effect. Kearney is so adept when it comes to this sort of exercise that his Protestant counterparts must be seriously considering asking him for a tutorial. But it must be asked, what was Kearney hoping to achieve by making this comparison? It was the catalyst for a day of discussion and newspaper headlines but what will it achieve once those same headlines are keeping the fish and chips warm?
Professor Tom Devine, speaking to Scotland Tonight, described the comment as ‘really unacceptable’ and ‘pretty close to being nonsensical’ and it was clearly a seriously intemperate analogy to draw when discussing an issue that doesn’t want for hyperbole. The panel discussion that followed the report featuring Professor Devine contained yet more remarkable statements. An illustrative list is provided below:
Graham Spiers, journalist and broadcaster: ‘a celebration of the Irish Scots is somehow frowned upon in Scotland…for some reason the west of Scotland man says we’re not celebrating it here’.
John Deighan, parliamentary officer for the Catholic Church: ‘There is now a philosophical opposition to Catholicism, we’re finding that with equality laws, we’re finding that with Catholics wanting to speak out on issues, moral issues in particular, sexual ethics issues, family issues. These are the issues now that Catholics are being targeted on and we’re going to see laws introduced that stop us expressing ourselves’.
Deighan again: ‘I think Catholic schools allow Catholics to be identified and I think that then leads to them being targeted’.
Dalton is, among other things, the man who has been responsible for piloting the famine memorial proposal. The problem with the comments of Deighan and Dalton is their sweeping nature. While they might be legitimately applied to the traditional, bread and butter variety anti-Catholic bigot, they also misrepresent the motivations of those with good intentions and those who favour a secular society.
The Catholic Church in Scotland has possibly become a magnet for an amorphous anti-religion sentiment but only because it has consciously sought and achieved a significant media presence at a time when its Protestant counterparts lack the same institutional self-confidence. This type of opposition is qualitatively different from the anti-Catholicism of previous eras because it is not underpinned by the same myths and prejudices, many of which related to Catholics as people.
It remains to be seen whether talking about sectarianism will be part of the solution or a means or perpetuating the problem but 2013 should provide plenty of indications.
Alasdair McKillop is a writer based in Edinburgh
