Farewell to a club steeped in bigotry

[ian1964 10,505]

On Thursday next, North of Ireland loyalists will celebrate the Twelfth. They party and parade because in 1690, the power-hungry King Billy beat up King Jimmy, another foreign despot.

 

It's a big day out for the Protestant community in the North and it used to be in Glasgow too, but this Twelfth will be a wake for the departed. Rangers are no more. Rangers are broke. Good riddance to a club marinated in blood and steeped in bigotry.

 

Senator Martin McAleese has worked tirelessly to bridge the divide between the Protestant paramilitaries and the rest of us. He spoke of his terror as a young boy when the giant Lambeg Drums beat fear into Catholic hearts on every Twelfth. But Martin moved on and so have the extreme loyalists, for the most part. Only a fool would suggest there are no bigots left, but peace in the North is a miracle of our times.

 

And if a bookie offered you 1,000/1 that someday Martin McGuinness would shake hands with the Queen, you would accuse him of being the worst type of con-man and instead take the odds on snow at Dublin Airport on the Twelfth of July.

 

Yet over the water in Glasgow the peace process has never rightly taken root.

 

Hullo, Hullo

 

We are the Billy Boys

 

Hullo, Hullo

 

You'll know us by our noise

 

We're up to our knees in ****** blood

 

Surrender or you'll die

 

For we are

 

The Brigton Derry Boys.

 

Jason Campbell, a 'Brigton Billy Boy', was jailed for life for cutting the throat of 16-year-old Celtic supporter Mark Scott. That was in 1996; the original murderous Billy Boys of the 1920s were the inspiration for the sadistic Shankill Butchers who ritually dismembered Northern Catholics.

 

Thousands of Rangers fans still sing that song. They know, for sure, that a Brigton Billy Boy slaughtered an innocent kid whose only crime was to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. This alone is cause enough to bury the club in quicklime.

 

Campbell claimed he was a political prisoner and a member of the UVF. As late as 1999 the vice-chairman of Rangers was forced to resign for singing anti-Catholic songs.

 

Now I have been a Celtic fan since as far back as I can remember, and Celtic fans do sing Republican songs but their greatest hits are 'The Fields of Athenry' and 'You'll Never Walk Alone'.

 

Some Celtic fans are far from perfect. I witnessed the demolition of Rangers-blue bus shelters in Royston Road, a Catholic working-class area of Glasgow. It was back in 2000 and it was the day Celtic finally regained the Scottish Premiership. Ticketless, we watched the game in the Huddle Club in Royston. The hospitality was spectacular and you couldn't but be taken by the allegiance of the locals to all things Irish, even though most in there were second or third generation.

 

There were famine murals, the surnames were all Donegal and while we were treated very well, there was a sense that sport should have nothing to do with Republicanism. Most of us in this country are sick of the bigotry and the fighting over wars long forgotten, but in Scotland the battle still goes on.

 

Rangers did try to stop the singing of 'The Billy Boys' but only really got serious when UEFA threatened the club with harsh sanctions.

 

Celtic were never near as extreme. Jock Stein, who managed the club to European Cup success in 1967, was a Protestant at a time when Catholics were excluded by Rangers.

 

Newco Rangers, the reincarnation of the beast that was Rangers, might well end up in Division 3. That will not bother the hard-core in the slightest. For them football is only a side show.

 

It's all about hate.

 

The Billy Boys will terrorise the natives of Division 3's Annan and Elgin. And as the locals board up their windows, they will wonder whatever did they do, to have such a calamity inflicted upon them.

 

And what if Annan or Elgin are unlucky enough to get promoted and are forced to play Rangers home and away, two years in a row?

 

In small towns, Rangers fans will sing the Billy Boys song with gusto but without any thought or care for Mark Scott and his family. And, who knows, maybe Campbell the murderer will join in the chorus. He was released last year.

 

This year Glasgow police produced evidence that domestic abuse rates doubled after Old Firm games. There were over 200 crimes of violence and mayhem in the area of the stadium following a recent Celtic-Rangers clash.

 

But now that Rangers have gone bust, there's no one left to hate anymore. The Old Firm derbies are the only meaningful Scottish games worth watching on TV. Revenues will tumble -- and in soccer money talks.

 

But there will be a peace dividend on match days. And some mothers and some mothers' kids might sleep easy.

 

Celtic and Rangers have not kept pace with the transition to peace in the North. The pity is, a great many Celtic fans completely missed the first peaceful revolution in Irish Republicanism. Celtic have thousands of enlightened supporters, but there are many who are trapped in a time that is already history here in Ireland.

 

Back in 1996 Mark Scott's mother warned him to be careful. Her son laughed and said, 'Mummy that sort of thing doesn't happen anymore'.

 

It does and it will until both sets of Old Firm extremists finally realise the war is over.

 

- Billy Keane

 

http://www.independent.ie/sport/soccer/league-of-ireland/farewell-to-a-club-steeped-in-bigotry-3161118.html

[UCF2008 0]

Deluded bigoted scum.

[Blue Moon 1,150]

You had me worried there that this was an article from the Independent but to put it in perspective it is a reply on the sports pages of the Irish Independent. It could have been written in Scotland today, however, because it is typical of the biased message that has been peddled in this country about the bigoted club and its supporters and no-one but the blindest idiot or bigot could believe that only Rangers have supporters like this.

 

To put it in perspective, I follow a football team, not a bigotted ideology. I am quite capable of thinking for myself and my thoughts are that we have enough bigoted media here without adding more from Dublin.

 

I have to ask, why did you post this?

[theboyharley 5]

It's quite amusing reading that! Angry angry wee man ha ha

[TheWeeBlueDevil 0]

What a load of shit

[plgsarmy 111]

As soon as someone says the North of Ireland you know what's coming.

[Bluedell 5,373]

Yeah sorry Ian, but I don't think that crap like that should be given a wider read than it has. It's lies and fen'ian propoganda.

[der Berliner 3,357]

Slight case of suffering from the symptoms of verbal diarrhea.

 

I think I will leave it up to an Irish journalist Ian O'Doherty ,who wrote in the Irish Independent in Dublin to describe Celtic fans:

 

"Second only to Scousers, Celtic fans carry more chips on their shoulders than a branch of McDonald's. Quick to express to any sense of offence,they exhibit a sense of entitlement that would make a Cork man blush with shame. An still they wonder why we hate them."

[Juancornetto 1]

The most sickening thing about that is using the terrible tragedy of Mark Scott's death to stir up more sectarian hatred. It has become so "normal" to outwardly hate Rangers fans and loyalist culture and group those idealogies together that we are now subject to a kind of inverted bigotry. By accusing us of the very thing that they themselves are in fact the very epitomy of they have managed to pull off a very blunt but effective PR exercise.

 

The witch-hunt that we are in the midst of right now is partly fuelled by it...anti-British pseudo Catholics do not just support Celtic.

[Guest Dutchy]

I surprised and disapointed Ian that you seen fit to post that on the Rangers chat section.

 

Surely it's not even relavent to any footballing story.