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A leading Belfast academic has published a blistering attack on Celtic Football Club apologists for "wrongly" portraying sectarianism as a mainly Protestant problem.
Queen's University Professor of Political History Graham Walker – who co-edited the new book It's Rangers For Me? – asks why it is that the numerous attacks by Celtc fans on Rangers players in public over the last few years have been deemed less newsworthy than attacks on Celtic players?
There is a clear double standard in operation for Rangers fans, he argues: "Celtic fans mouthing abuse such as 'Orange b******s' is regarded as acceptably political or 'a bit of craic' while Rangers fans supposedly deal in a repertoire of straightforward bigotry and racism."
The book has chapters written by some 20 contributors including academics, intellectuals, journalists, politicians, players and fans.
Internationally acclaimed Belfast playwright Gary Mitchell also writes a chapter, as does Ulsterman Gordon Smith.
A Scotsman and lifelong Rangers supporter, Professor Walker's book, co-edited with Ronnie Esplin, is understood to be the first serious analysis of Rangers Football Club and its place in society.
And it will undoubtedly be seen as a response to the similarly provocative Celtic Minded, two pro-Celtic FC volumes from numerous contributors, edited by Joe Bradley.
Professor Walker writes extensively about the contributors to these pro-Celtic FC volumes in the new book, arguing that they have wrongly made out that sectarianism in Scotland is a mainly Protestant problem.
STEREOTYPE
And he also challenges the authors on their stereotyping of Irish Protestants in Scotland as racist, violent and homophobic, citing examples of such behaviour as clearly existing within Irish Catholic culture.
"For many Rangers fans it is their club and the popular associations it has historically held which are increasingly marginalised and traduced in contemporary Scotland," he writes. "A sense of Scottishness which draws on Protestant religious identity is now decidedly at a discount, and anyone attempting to advertise such an identity is likely to be dismissed as a bigot."
Celtic FC apologists are still caricaturing almost extinct Protestant culture of the "Wee Frees" on television and "are quite simply not interested in the realities of Protestantism as a faith", he says. "They wish to collapse these varieties and the whole range of Protestant opinion from fundamentalist to liberal into a usable stereotype."
The Celtic Minded line of argument about Celtic fans having "to keep their heads down" on account of their "unacceptable" identity is "bewildering" he holds. "When has a support as raucous and 'in yer face' as Celtic's ever kept its head down?"
VICTIMS
Many Celtic Minded authors display both ignorance and sectarianism in their insistence that it is only Celtic fans have been the victims of Old Firm-related violence, he holds, and many of them seem unperturbed about songs and chants which celebrate IRA atrocities at Enniskillen, Teebane, Kingsmills, the Shankill Road, La Mon, and Darkley.
Writer Patricia Ferns in particular, he says, defends the IRA slogan 'Tiocfaidh ar la' ( 'Our Day Will Come' ) on the grounds that it refers to footballing success.
"So, if Rangers fans argue that the use of 'No Surrender' is simply an injunction to the team not to give up, we should expect to be taken at face value by the media and our opponents? Aye right!" he responds. Such authors make it clear the Irishness which they are most concerned to celebrate "is in fact that of the Republican armed struggle."
Any segregation between Protestants and Catholics that does exist in Scotland, he says, has largely been at the behest of the Catholic Church with its rigid stance on schooling; Celtic FC apologists are either unaware or choose to ignore the fact that half the marriages involving under 35 Catholics in Scotland are mixed.
Professor Graham Walker of Queen's University Belfast feels there are double standards operating for Old Firm fans and challenges Celtic apologists to re-examine their stereotypes of Rangers and Celtc Fans.
In a new book, Its Rangers for me, he argues a number of facts and incidents relating to Celtic Fans and Irish culture are not adequately taken on board when presenting violence, sectarianism, racism and homophobia as mainly Protestant traits;-
* Upset Celtc fans have previously attacked the homes of referees, opposition players and even chairmen such as Hugh Dallas, Jorg Albertz, Nacho Novo, John Yorkston.
* Voluntary Scottish immigration to Ireland began long before the Plantation and many Scots suffered just as much under English Penal Laws as the Irish did. Celtic Minded author Des Dillon wrongly oversimplifies the matter by stating "Protestants were sent from Scotland over to Ireland causing segregation and bigotry".
* He reminds pro-Celtic authors that Celtic fans in 1988 "staged Scottish football's worst display of racist bigotry" when they threw bananas at black Rangers player Mark Walters.
* One Celtic FC writer accused Scottish Protestants of being homophobic but Walker points out the Protestant Church of Scotland takes a quite liberal view of the matter while Roman Catholic Cardinal Winning labelled homosexuals as "perverted".
* Pro-Celtic author Patricia Ferns expressed anger at being asked not to sing pro-IRA songs such as 'The Boys of the Old Brigade by Celtic officials.
* Irish nationalism has strong ties with Nazism, racism and anti-Semitism; The IRA collaborated with the Nazis in the Second World War; Sinn Fein founder Arthur Griffith wrote in 1913 that "no Irish Nationalist should regard a negro as his equal" and pro-Celtic authors should also read up on the history of anti-Semitism in Ireland.
* The Irish media "widely reported" how the crowds who attacked a parade of IRA victims in Dublin in February 2006 frequently sported Celtic shirts, prompting Irish popular music magazine, Hot Press, to refer to the Celtic fans as "deeply prejudiced and sectarian" and "as close as we have to... the British National Party".
* He accuses Celtic FC apolgist-writers of ignoring research of academics like Steve Bruce who finds extensive Protestant-Catholic integration, with almost half the marriages involving Catholics under 35 which take place in Scotland being mixed.
*He asks why pro-Celtic FC authors do not mention that a high profile Celtc player was reported for spitting on a Rangers supporters' scarf during an Old Firm game which ended with a "gratuitous and inflammatory display of defiance" on the part of the player and his manager?
* Celtic fans reserve their worst abuse for Catholic players who go to play for Rangers, namely Mo Johnston, Neil McCann and Chris Burke. "The Celtic fans condemnation of the so-called 'treachery' of these players betrays their own profound sectarianism."
* In contrast, he notes that Scottish Catholic have players been readily accepted by Rangers fans, and asks if this really supports the stereotype of Rangers as bigoted and racist?
