Scottish Catholic Observer

A number of submissions to the debate about proposed new ‘anti-sectarian’ football laws reveals various people and groups fearing these might be constructed in such a way as to assail and harass some minority cultural, national and religious identities, creating a strait-jacket comprising ‘One Scotland, One Culture’, instead of ‘One Scotland, Many Cultures.’ In particular, a question is raised regarding expressions of national and ethnic identities that do not align with, or even conform to, governing notions of Scottishness. Many with ‘differing’ or non-mainstream identities in Scotland often esteem people, ideologies, moral and political perspectives and events in their own histories that do not correlate with dominant notions in Scotland and Britain. Indeed, they might even be perceived or maliciously or popularly represented in the media as oppositional.

The ongoing controversies over wearing or not wearing or displaying a remembrance poppy is a classic example whereby there is significant social, cultural and political conformity, and even pressure asserted on the part of various sections of society, to wear one, regardless of people’s national and ethnic backgrounds, its many meanings and notwithstanding how some people might disagree with aspects of the symbolism surrounding it.

It is only when we consider that hostility in Scotland against minority identities can be fuelled by historical and political ignorance, cultural prejudice, loyalties to past military deeds, recent conflicts and political aspirations and dominant ideologies, we can begin to understand the more fearful submissions to the present debate. It is such considerations that have led many people from across society, including politicians, academics and numerous football fan groups, to accuse the Scottish Government of proposing to suppress free speech and minority identities which are represented as not aligning with or conforming to an disputable perception of a ‘civilised and modern Scotland.’

The current government has made ‘anti-sectarianism’ one of its key policy aims. Nonetheless, like many other sections of society, it has provided little evidence to indicate that it understands, recognises, or admits to what constitutes the origins and consequences of ethnic and religious prejudice and bigotry in society—if that indeed is what is being discussed? To many the government appears to have consumed and reproduced an ignorant, simplistic and prejudiced version and representation inspired largely by the media—the police seem now to be retreating from aspects of the debate—while simultaneously promoting a notion of ‘the problem’ that distorts its reality. ­It is alarming how many people have bought this popular version and how their consent and narrow-minded views have been constructed via ignorance and a vacuous and prejudiced social consensus that pretends to be against ethnic and religious prejudice.

It is clear from research as well as from a number of the submissions that there are ‘Catholic narratives’ with regards ethnic and religious prejudice and discrimination, and then there are ‘other’ narratives, consisting of largely undefined concepts such as ‘sectarianism’ which is consciously and unconsciously utilised to cover up the real nature of the ethno-religious problems and issues of the past and present. In other words, this catch-all phrase has become functional to numerous people and groups in how it provides a mechanism to ignore, disguise, hide and lie about the reality of ethnic and religious prejudice and bigotry in Scotland.

Its popularity as a term seems to suggest many people are embarrassed about the negative attention certain events around football have brought upon Scotland during the past 20 years or so; for example, the furore surrounding the erection of the Carfin Irish Famine Memorial, Artur Boruc blessing himself, booing in football stadia when Pope John Paul II died, ‘The Famine Song,’ and so on. The fact that such attention or embarrassment, especially on the part of the media, did not occur previously—for example when sports clubs or certain industries did not employ any, or employ many, Catholics, is revealing: especially with regards people who perceive of ethnic and religious prejudice and discrimination in simplistic, even two sides of the same coin, terms.

Another question as to ‘sectarianism’ and the evolution of the current debate might be to ask what football tells us about society at large. Studies have demonstrated how politics, religion, national identities and ethnicity have resonance in the football environment of various countries. In Scotland, a society where football has for over one hundred years existed as the most popular team sport, it has been recognised that these are also varyingly meaningful to numerous football histories and supporters’ traditional or contemporary identities.

However, it is frequently the case that when such things are mentioned it is Glasgow Rangers and Celtic that provide the primary or sole focus for ‘sectarian’ comment and analysis. Nevertheless, the histories, supporter make-up and dominant identities of a host of other football clubs in Scotland tells us more about ethnic and religious cleavage than is often proposed and it is in this light that recent research resulting from a number of focus groups conducted amongst Scotland’s international body of supporters known as the Tartan Army can contribute to our current body of knowledge.

This research demonstrates an understanding of the symbolic boundaries and markers of Scottishness which these supporters bring to the sports environment. As part of this study explores some of these boundaries and markers specifically in relation to religion and Irish ethnicity in Scotland, it might also tell us something about how these are viewed by a popular body of opinion in Scotland.

These particular bounderies and markers are historically and contemporaneously important to the construction of Scottishness. Religious identities for example form some of the dominant discourses within Scottish football.  This is not surprising given that for almost 400 years religion had a pervading and profound influence in the country: so much so that one author states that since the 16th century Reformation until very recently, Presbyterianism largely defined the Scots to one another and to the rest of the world. In addition, the influx of Irish Catholic immigrants to Scotland from the mid 19th century, and notwithstanding being a minority Faith, Catholicism as well as Irish ethnicity have additionally contributed much to Scotland’s contemporary multi-cultural religious history and social and political composition.

Religion and the Tartan Army

Despite Scotland becoming increasingly secular, religious self-identification and individual and community labelling remain important and relevant. Nonetheless, or indeed, in the face of religion’s significance in Scotland, it is indicative that it is largely seen as private and a matter only for home or Church by many within the Tartan Army: in essence, religion and religious identities are consciously marginalised by many Scotland supporters. Indicative of Tartan Army thinking, a Tartan Army member viewed the Scottish international support as a potentially positive metaphor for an ideal country not hampered by religion or religious distinctions.

Another concurred with the idea that supporting Scotland in football is a concept that brings people together, ignoring, or at least not being handicapped by, the religious—as well as cultural and national—distinctions and differences that otherwise exist in Scotland. He believed supporting the Scotland team united ‘Catholics and Protestants [and] it’s a really good club [where] nobody’s bothered about religion or anything.’

An east of Scotland based supporter said that ‘we are all there as Scots, the bigotry and clubs and all that is left behind, you are there as a Scot and that is foremost.’

Nevertheless, despite this religious marginalisation or hostility a fan from West Lothian was more revealing and cautious in expressing the concept of Tartan Army unity regarding religion. “There is still a great divide but in the Tartan Army it is swept under the carpet quite well,” he said.

Yet another fan from Perthshire also mentioned the conditional nature of the togetherness of the Tartan Army. “If you just wore your own club colours—which sometimes indicate religious identification—and went somewhere [with Scotland], folk would think twice about speaking to you,” he said.

A Tartan Army member from the east of the country developed this argument saying that many fans do not divulge which club team they support to fellow Scotland associates, lest it offer an indication of other aspects of identity, including ethnic and religious background and political and cultural affinities. These latter comments indicate how the Tartan Army manages some of Scotland’s diverse identities.

For a number of interviewees, the unity experienced amongst Tartan Army fans is frequently expressed and framed in terms that invoke religion as oppositional and an unwelcome divisive element. As far as supporting Scotland is concerned it is a significant standpoint amongst the Tartan Army membership that religious identity, heritage or ‘talk’ is irrelevant, but importantly and indicatively, should not be introduced into conversations or Tartan Army relationships. The overwhelmingly dominant perspective is that, like society itself, supporting Scotland should be built upon secular foundations. Further, this secular, even anti-religious Scottish identity is constructed as oppositional to the relevance of religion to historical, cultural and contemporary club and supporter narratives.

Ironically, alluding to many of these supporters’ notions regarding religion, recently a former SNP member recently called on Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon to resign over what he considers to be the SNP’s moves towards a ‘politically correct secular society.’ Nevertheless, such comment with regards the SNP cannot disguise that there is in fact little evidence available to make a credible case that any of the main political parties in Scotland might be considered ‘Christian’ in terms of perspectives or moral compasses.

Irish ethnicity and the Tartan Army

Distinct from antagonisms towards religion, as well as Englishness and ideas about Britishness—subjects covered elsewhere in the study—a different focus for otherness is also important to the make-up of the Scotland support. As evidenced within the Tartan Army focus groups, Irishness in Scotland is antagonistically considered, a hostility which is largely homogeneous amongst fans.

Almost all public displays of Irishness in Scottish football —indeed, in much of popular Scottish life—are associated with Celtic Football Club and its support as an historical and contemporary reflection and representation of the Irish diaspora in Scotland. In this vein, numerous Tartan Army members problematised Irishness and Irish ethnicity.

A Tartan Army fan from Armadale commented on the Scotland versus Ireland game at Hampden in 2003 when several thousand members of Scotland’s ethnic Irish community turned out to support Ireland. “What got me was the amount of Scottish supporters that were walking right by the Scotland end and going in to the Irish and supporting Ireland,” he said. Another added a similar sentiment that ‘people were really getting miffed, the fact that the Irish support was all speaking with Scottish accents.’

Hostility towards Irishness in Scotland also pervades Scottish football culture generally and as a cross section of club support the Tartan Army simply reflects this. At club level such references are recurrent showing how widespread these attitudes and identities are within football as well as how they intertwine with and crosscut attitudes, identities and other cultural features beyond Scottish football.

Referring to the ethnic Irishness of many Celtic supporters, Dundee United fans sing ‘can you sing a Scottish song,’ while Aberdeen fans frequently taunt them by singing, ‘you’re in the wrong country.’ In 2006 Rangers fans held a banner up to Celtic supporters with the slogan, ‘this is our city, where in Ireland is Glasgow?’  In 2010 a relevant comment on a magazine website said: “The problem with a large section of the Celtic support is that they do not think of themselves as Scots. They will tell you that they are Irish or Scots-Irish, whatever that’s supposed to be.” A dominant figure in the Scottish sports media added to this narrative talking about what he termed ‘this fixation with Ireland which so many Scots have makes my blood boil.’

In recent years, although few in the media paid any attention, two Members of the Scottish Parliament as well as one British MP tabled questions or motions challenging this hostility. In the Scottish Parliament in 2006 MSP Denis Canavan said: “It is a national scandal that the Scottish football authorities turned a blind eye to anti-Irish racism in Scottish football for many years.”

‘One Scotland, Many Cultures’

Labour, Lib Dems, Conservatives and the SNP are all to a greater or lesser extent ‘nationalist,’ although there are numerous fundamental differences in the kinds of nationalisms that exist or dominate amongst the parties. Correspondingly, there are various kinds and types of Scottishness and Britishness—the two most common and dominant strands of ‘nationalism’ and national identity in Scotland— that also exist. As with other societies these are frequently determined and partly shaped by geography, class, gender, politics, family and community history, ethnicity and of course, by religious identity. In addition, Scotland is a country like many others where such identities are reflected in and partly shaped by the influence of football.

Football can be an important indicator of a society’s political, cultural and social life. The sport does not exist in a vacuum and it is in such a context that the Scottish international football environment can be seen as a location and space for the collection of shared social, cultural, national, religious and sometimes political ideas, emotions, allegiances and identities. As a place for concomitant collective antagonisms, hostilities, resentments, rivalries and prejudices, this environment is also an arena for the contestation of identities that help constitute modern Scottish society.

The Tartan Army focus groups, alongside several other observations, reflect an intertwining of ethnicity, religion as well as national identity within football in Scotland. Like all imagined communities, and as with the wider society, there are dominant narratives involving personal, community, ideological and symbolic Scottishness. As a popular mass institution, the Scottish international football followers significantly ‘participate in the idea of the [Scottish] nation… and symbolic community.’

Reflecting how the Tartan Army constructs and imagines itself, its purpose is not surprisingly to be Scottish and to support the Scottish international football team. As with all such identities, this entails processes of assimilation, inclusion, exclusion, production and performance: cross-cutting a number of these is the process of ‘othering.’ This research demonstrates that although Scottishness is a consciousness and identity that is shared by many—almost certainly the vast majority—of Scotland’s inhabitants, particularly those who ‘like’ football, it also shows that this Scottishness has been, and is continually being, constructed partly in relation and opposition to several other important ethnic, national and cultural identities and communities.

In this way, the dominant notion of Scottishness in the football environment reveals and obscures historical discords, social strains and relations based on notions of ethnic, religious, political, social and cultural power and powerlessness in the rest of society. It is evident too that these strains and discords amongst other things are being played out in the current ‘sectarianism’ debate in Scotland amongst politicians and a range of other parties.

— Joe Bradley is senior lecturer at the school of sport at Stirling University. His research interests lie in sport’s relationship with ethnicity, identity, race, religion and politics. He is widely published in these fields including the Celtic Minded series of books. In 2001-2002 he was also a member of a research group appointed by the Economic and Social Research Council to carry out research on those who comprise the second and third generation Irish in Britain. He also contributed to a similar report commissioned by the Irish Government into the Irish in Britain in 2002