Men will chase
anything in a skirt.
Even me
Brian Fitzpatrick
I am unsure whether SR’s correspondent, Frazer Lethardy (2 June), deliberately misunderstood the thrust of my personal musings on sectarianism. Should it assist, I have no difficulty in condemning republican, loyalist or, indeed, any terrorism that thinks our fellow man is a disposable asset when securing political ends. But Frazer Lethardy seems to adopt an unusual definition of ‘both sides’: Catholics versus bigots. That comes perilously close to the English Defence League: ‘racism cuts both ways’. I more readily would accede to the proposition that ignorant bigots can be found in most confessional groups (with a more recent strand being found midst fundamentalist atheists). If we are to confront sectarianism in Scotland, not just (as I put it) fret about ‘rude songs’, we need to start with some uncomfortable facts. Scottish sectarianism is not even-handed in its outcomes. The primary victims are Scotland’s Catholics so a consideration of our experience needs to be part of the solution.
I was dismayed by Frazer Lethardy’s concern to take me to task for my use of ‘Irish ancestry’. It is a wilful blindness not to recognise that the largest constituent group of Scots Catholics hail from Ireland. I equally am proud of my Highland ancestry and I know my Highland forebears suffered sectarianism too (but differently).
In an opinion piece one presumably is permitted a measure of freedom as to which strand of thought might prove more interesting to a reader. My apologies also to my Polish, Italian, Filipino, Pakistani, African, Indian and other fellow parishioners. Their insights on this topic should be revealing. Yet Frazer Lethardy’s dirigisme helps identify an important strand of the ‘Scottish experience’ of sectarianism.
My parent’s generation rarely mentioned the Irish connection. They collaborated, for good reason, in what James MacMillan correctly identified as a culture of ‘whispering in public’ when this unwanted topic came up. I view it as a positive step that Scots Catholics of Irish ancestry (should that make my point clearer) are now speaking up not whispering.
We might also ask ourselves how usefully we can learn from the North American and Australian experiences. Pretending most Scots Catholics are not also a bit Irish is, well, a bit Irish (with my surname, that’s permitted). The prize surely is to look forward to a society where we acknowledge, respect and celebrate our multi-layered identities.
Perhaps it’s small matter, but, last time I checked, Celtic Park was still located in the east end not south east of Glasgow. Glasgow’s east end was identified by the UN as the most deprived in Britain and one where the WHO found men have a life expectancy of 54. The reasons for that are multi-factoral but it is intellectual laziness to equate, as Frazer Lethardy appears to do, top-line spending on health services per se with seriously tackling health inequalities.
Incidentally, yes I am a lawyer and I plead guilty also to being a member of the Labour Party. Presently, it appears at least the former are ready targets in Mr Salmond’s new dispensation. I’d venture that Frazer Lethardy might just be a nationalist. So what? We’ll both live.
Frazer Lethardy might come sit with me one day and meet the ‘real people’ I act for and perhaps learn some more about ‘real life’. But,if we are interested in dealing seriously with ‘Scotland’s shame’, we might start with a firm resolve to leave name-calling to one side and allow others to define their own identity.
Should we mobilise
the law to police
sectarian attitudes?
Tom Gallagher
Student initiatives about the state of Scotland are rarely a huge draw for the Scottish public. But Edinburgh University’s Scottish-Irish history group debate on ‘Sectarianism in Scotland: myth or reality?’ sold out within a week of the initiative being announced.
Joyce McMillan, an assured chair of the event, talked about the grip that group antagonisms loosely linked to religion had on many Scots. Professor Tom Devine pointed out that the bomb plots and intra-football disputes had become major stories that ‘went around the globe and tarnished the reputation of our great nation’.
A panel of academics were asked to address five questions that tried to define sectarianism, why it had proven so durable in Scotland, was it really now essentially about football rivalry, or instead did anti-Catholicism still provide the momentum for it and what of the perennial hot potato of denominational schools?
Tom Devine reckoned that sectarianism no longer sprang from structural factors, in other words economic discrimination. But he marvelled at the fact that citizens of Catholic Irish descent could only achieve parity with the rest of the population in the 1990s, nearly a century after this had been achieved in the USA. The problem, he believed, was now attitudinal discrimination, one that was far less easy to erase, but hardly one that should remain part of the Scottish public domain. Indeed, the forces of law and order should be employed to challenge it, he argued.
But enlisting the law to crack down on ideas is fraught with risk, particularly in the internet age. If antagonism towards a civilisation, a nation or a faith is prescribed even when it is not expressed in violent terms, it could open a Pandora’s Box. The evidence of the last turbulent football season suggests that Scots who are unabashedly sectarian often possess considerable drive and self-belief. Their passion does not compare with that of the late 17th-century covenanters but it might be naive to assume that the state will be obeyed far more readily in 2011 than were those Episcopalian Scots who advised King Charles II to take a merciless line against thrawn religious radicals.
Dr Owen Dudley Edwards, whose knowledge of tangled religious history on both sides of the Irish Sea proved invaluable on this occasion, pointed out the difficulty by referring to the champion of ‘No Popery’ in the 1970s and 1980s, the late Pastor Jack Glass, as a man who grew to be his friend. He was assiduous in his fervour against Roman Catholicism but apparently his hostility did not transfer to individual Catholics. When Pastor Glass accepted an invitation to speak at Edinburgh University’s Catholic chaplaincy, he told his papist audience that, if they refused to take his advice and quit the church, they should at least rally around the pope because he had impressed him by having no truck with liberalism.
The next time the militaristic and arguably anti-English ‘Soldier’s Song’, Ireland’s national anthem, is sung in front of a senior Irish dignitary in Edinburgh, it might well occasion arrests.
Tom Devine further illustrated the dilemma in mobilising the law to police attitudes by pointing out how, in a judicial case where he had acted as an adviser, the judge ruled that no charges could be sustained against fans singing pro-IRA songs because it was a republican military organisation. If these songs will be made illegal by a new law, then the next time the militaristic and arguably anti-English ‘Soldier’s Song’, Ireland’s national anthem, is sung in front of a senior Irish dignitary in Edinburgh, it might well occasion arrests.
The first member of the audience who had the chance to speak suspected that too many Scots had a penchant for identifying and challenging ‘the other’ and that if the ‘Billy and Dan’ wars were substituted, it was possible that the benighted English would be chosen as a substitute (as if this was not happening already). Someone else asked whether the panel really believed that the country could undergo ‘a cultural revolution’ via legislation, but no answer was forthcoming.
Insufficient time was devoted to another point from the floor that what gave ‘Scotland’s shame’ long-term momentum was the territorial imperative. There is plenty of evidence that groups of Scottish young men are disposed to use lethal violence against those whom they see as trespassers in their neighbourhoods – and religion appears to play little part in this homicidal belief system. He was quickly followed by a ruddy-faced speaker who calmly articulated what I suspect is a widely-held sentiment: that institutions linked to the Catholic community have simply over-reached themselves over the past year: significantly he didn’t mention the pope’s visit, but Celtic was more ‘pugnacious’ then before, having instructed a top lawyer to pursue its differences with the Scottish Football Association. He mentioned the club’s manager, Neil Lennon, and chairman, Lord (John) Reid, and complained of their militancy and that of Cardinal O’Brien.
But it was over educational issues that an already high octane discussion really crackled. There was a striking range of views. Dr Michael Rosie, panellist and Edinburgh sociologist, said he had become far more positive about the effective educational role performed by denominational state schools, ones attended mainly by Catholics. Owen Dudley Edwards remarked that sending his daughter to the local non-denominational school in Liberton is not something that he might repeat if he had the chance and it was not because she later opted to become a nun. Several audience members insisted that Catholic schools contributed to renewing sectarianism by placing children apart at crucial times in their lives. But one non-Catholic teacher, who had taught for many years in both systems, said that in his experience Catholic schools inculcated a sense of idealism and justice and were opposed to intolerance.
But are Orange marches and processions any more unacceptable than the manifestations of radical folk, usually middle-class, who congregate quite regularly in Edinburgh to express their abhorrence for the state of Israel?
Tom Devine argued that the proof of their integrative role was the high number of mixed marriages among those who graduated from Catholic schools. He was convinced that if these schools were phased out, many Scottish Catholics would view this as a blatantly anti-Catholic act. But a Catholic member of the audience claimed that in the Glasgow suburb of Bearsden, the parents of 56 out of 60 pupils had rejected the Catholic schools nearby and chosen instead the non-denominational ones. Of course there may well have been a class factor at play since the Catholic schools were located in poorer neighbourhoods. Others argued that new Scots eager to give their children a good start in life tried to place their children in denominational schools because good behaviour and a strong ethical formation were more visible there.
Politicians like Jack McConnell were accused of ‘pumping up’ the sectarian issue. But the role of journalism was surprisingly overlooked in this regard. There has been no shortage of incidents on and off the soccer field where sports journalist have played to their respective audiences, ones which devour their analyses of the Old Firm drama. Arguably politicians have been bolder in confronting sectarianism than those who own and write for the press; it is a declining industry confronted by plunging circulation that therefore prefers tried and tested formulas to retain readers.
Some of the loudest voices on the platform argued for the law to impose a policy of zero tolerance towards sectarianism. There was a surprisingly overt call for public funds to be channelled towards specific institutions in order for sectarian Scotland to be mapped and X-rayed, presumably so that the cancerous growth could be extracted from Scottish life by radical surgery. There was even a claim that because freemasonry had the greatest number of adherents in Europe per head of population, it needed to be checked out by academics but, having being invited twice to a large masonic club in the centre of one of Scotland’s main cities, I find it hard to believe from glancing around me that it still counts for much .
There needs to be empathy and understanding with ‘the other’, especially on the part of those investigating a troubling and persistent phenomenon. When the Orange Order was being referred to, one panellist (full of good sense at other times), declared that ‘there needs to be a serious clampdown on their sectarian behaviour’. Joyce McMillan complained about ‘people who cling to any wretched form of identity to stay afloat’. But are Orange marches and processions any more unacceptable than the manifestations of radical folk, usually middle-class, who congregate quite regularly in Edinburgh to express their abhorrence for the state of Israel?
Owen Dudley Edwards wisely urged the audience to ‘love each other’s cultures and make the best of friends we can among them’. Britain has learned the value of that approach in Ireland but only after the futility of quick fixes and the smack of firm government were demonstrated in the 1970s. Sectarianism precedes the era of Alex Salmond and will unfortunately probably outlast him. Containing it could be one of his big achievements if instead of using the law to signal that ‘it’s over’, he adopts an approach that got people to talk and listen to one another, not least the respective supporters of Glasgow’s soccer giants.
Tom Gallagher is the author of ‘Glasgow The Uneasy Peace: Religious Tension in Modern Scotland’ and ‘Edinburgh Divided’, both published in 1987
