Scottish Catholic Observer

Mr Neil Davidson, a lecturer in sociology at Glasgow University and co-author of new book No Problem Here: Understanding Racism in Scotland has called for Scottish society and the government to start a discussion and address the problems which reveal Scotland to be a historically racist country towards Irish Catholic immigrants.

The book, which has several co-authors, took three long years to be published and has already taken the author’s to the Scottish Government within a couple months of being released.

Neil Davidson, lecturer at Glasgow University, said No Problem Here was written with the hope that politicians and society will face up to the problem of racism.

“We wanted to explain the kind of myth, which exists, that suggests Scotland is a very welcoming place for migrants, and we don’t think we are exaggerating that myth,” he said. “When Irish Catholics came here in the 1790s and especially in the 1840s in large numbers they were treated in way that we would now realise as being racist.

“The whole Irish Catholic experience is not treated as an episode of migration and racism but rather is discussed under the heading of ‘sectarianism,’ and I use that in inverted commas because we think it reduces it to equivalence so that basically the Protestant and Catholic experiences are the same—clearly they’re not.

“They were excluded from certain areas and jobs; they were demonised and denounced by the Church of Scotland.

“Although things have obviously improved considerably in recent decades. In particular, there is far less issues with discrimination and this is partly because the jobs that people used to be excluded from don’t exist anymore in big engineering plants and so on.

“Also partly because we have big international companies here now that don’t discriminate and partly because our laws are much stronger now in terms of discrimination.

“So all these things mean the situation has drastically improved but there is still this historical legacy.
“It is the biggest ever migration into Scotland and even now around 16 per cent of the population identify themselves as being from Irish Catholic origin. So it is a huge area for debate.”

No Problem Here also suggests that the devolution and independence movements in Scotland have helped pedal the myth that Scotland’s tolerance of migrants differs to the rest of the UK.

Mr Davidson said: “As devolution and independence movements have grown in Scotland so has the narrative that we are culturally different from England, in exaggerated forms. Therefore people say we don’t have an issue with racism the way they do down south.

“And this argument has been the one I’ve most heard since the book has came out, which is just ludicrous denial. You can only deal with the problem if you face up to the fact that it exists and that’s really what we’re trying to address.”

Mr Davidson added: “I think a lot of people are embarrassed about it and therefore over the years society has tried to hide it by blaming working class Catholics and Protestants who attend football games and saying they are as bad as each other.

“It’s about people not wanting to confront the past and accept that people were historically treated very badly.”

However, Mr Davidson does believe that the tone of discussion is much better in Scotland than in Westminster and that partly encourages the myth, however he admits the Scottish Government have done great things like take in more refugees.

Mr Davidson said: “I think it’s really interesting to compare the experience of Muslims with the experience of Irish Catholics.

“What we are trying to do is link that historical racism of Irish Catholics into contemporary racist issues rather than just provide people with a historical episode.

“For one thing Muslims are obviously much more visible; if you wear a hijab you are going to stand out. Where as if you are Irish Catholic other than your name it would be impossible to assume where you come from.”

Mr Davidson added: “We want to get away from talking about sectarianism. We have just had a legislation binned because it was to do with football and the debate is much wider than that. We ultimately want to start a discussion, open up a debate on the issue.

We are saying society needs to acknowledge the issue if it wants to address the problem.”