Ibrox: Jurassic Park?

[andy steel 0]

I imagine most of us will have seen the move 'Jurassic Park' at some point, either when it came out or later, when we had kids of our own, maybe for the second time. Sam Neill doing his usual dependable type, Jeff Goldblum in leathers and shades being as cool as he ever got, even Samuel L Jackson in a small role as a computer genius.

 

My own favourite was the great Lord Dickie Attenborough as Scottish scientist John Hammond; I doubt there has been a better actor in the last 50 years at pulling off convincing accents than Attenborough. I picture him, head in hands, softly repeating 'Ah hate tha' man...ah really hate tha' man' as Jeff Goldblum tweaks his tail.

 

Anyway, as you'll recall the plot centred around attempts to bring back dinosaurs from the ancient past. Not wishing to spoil the film for younger readers who might have missed it, I shall only say all does not go according to plan.

 

You'll probably have noticed a certain age bias in this post already, which is deliberate. Formidable Gersnet and elsewhere writer D'Artagnan last week claimed that the latent 'dinosaur' virtues of Rangers - the 'Protestant, Unionist, Loyalist & Monarchist' identity - had risen, Jurassic Park-like, from the past and made itself known in Sheffield, to the all round delight of many.

 

I'd like to offer a criticism of D'Artganan's article, and present an alternative interpretation of those virtues, how they are expressed and the implications they have for Rangers.

 

D'Artagnan speaks in his opening paragraph of 'the new breed' of Rangers supporters. This refers to those who, like me, have no interest in the virtues listed above, at least so far as following The Rangers goes. I get itchy even at that title - are we to infer that of the hundreds of thousands of Rangers fans who have gone into Ibrox since (random date) 1920, none until recently ('the new breed') demurred from the stereotype? Surely not. You see how the defining of the club's heritage by one group is not, evidently, straightforward.

 

'Times change', the article notes, but Rangers must stay the same, 'no matter how society moves on to other things'. This is a bit of a contradiction. Heritage is important, but why are certain bits of heritage more important than others? Why must we hold on to those bits of heritage from a certain period (which we happen to agree with) but ignore all the other points in the clubs heritage in which these credos hardly featured at all?

 

D'Artagnan goes on to describe how the ethos of the 4 virtues evolved at Rangers over time, rather than being instilled from conception. This can scarce be argued with, although one could certainly point to periods of ebb and flow in their popularity or importance. I just think it odd that the periods in which these virtues were strongly held at Ibrox are seen as somehow exclusively belonging to Rangers.

 

it seems logical enough to assume that the staff of Arbroath, Elgin, St Mirren or whoever also have contained staunch Unionists or Presbyterians down the years. No doubt loads will have been BB Captains, activists in the Conservative Party, or flag waving Monarchists. Just because they do it in a context outwith their football club, it doesn't mean they don't do it! And in truth, I'd say that their separating such activities from their football shows a bit more common sense than we have - a place for everything and everything in its place. They want as many people to follow their teams as possible, not just people who agree with a certain set of values.

 

And anyway, are football grounds the best place to express their ideals?

 

There's no point beating around the bush - the expression of Britishness that comes out of Ibrox is not one which many people outwith Bluenoses finds attractive, and I include in that group people who entirely fit the virtues menu. One cannot sing of fucking the SPL, of getting Regan to fuck, of thanking fuck terrorists died some decades ago, nor lapse into expressions of fucking popes (no matter how awful) , nor howling religious slurs at referees who have displeased us, nor, especially, of importing great slabs of Northern Irish culture and expect to be taken seriously as a messenger of traditional, dinsoaur like British or Scottish Presbyterian, Unionist virtue.

 

D'Artganan is at great pains to point out that Rangers is a broad church, but how inclusive can a place be in which some people (and it ought to be noted, not all that many) sing bi-weekly about King Billy on the Wall? This, a recent and most unwelcome import from Ulster, cannot be anything but divisive. I certainly won't make any friends over this, but to bring in aspects of a culture (I mean both sides) which expressed itself so much through aggression doesn't fit in with my idea of Britishness. From verbal abuse to fists to bricks to petrol bombs and beyond, the conflict represented by King Billy on his wall is anathema to traditional British ideas of religion or statehood.

 

The 'Troubles' period in Northern Ireland must have been horrible for anyone to live through but I think it seems as though some kind of settlement seems to have been reached where at least bombs do not go off daily. That's an improvement. Seems as though democracy is in place and as long as the majority want to be British, they will be so. I don't think we do anyone any favours by leeching on to aspects of that often unhappy place, just as our rivals in the East assuredly do not.

 

There are many avenues open to someone wishing to express Loyalist tendencies, both in Ulster and in Scotland, such as print articles or marches; there's nothing I can see to be gained by doing it at a football match. By being linked to us, it will only increase hostility toward the people you are trying to support since we are not (this may surprise you) not universally loved.

 

What about songs like 'Rule Brittainia'? Apart from being historically at least 100 years out of date in terms of accuracy, it requires a degree of willful ignorance to keep us singing this hymn to Imperialism. Yes, we gave India the trains and yes, others were worse but as recently as 6th June of this year, our government admitted to hideous amounts of torture during our rule in Kenya ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22801457 ) featuring 'rapes, beatings & castrations'. It's too easy to find similar examples: the bottom line is one nation doesn't have any right to wander into another nation and start ordering about the people it finds there.

 

Belting out the Hymn of Empire is getting more and more indefensible with every revelation: it just makes us look silly, not loyal. The Empire may have had good aspects but a 21st century perspective can only conclude our Empire, like anyone else's, was about improving our own lot at the expense of others: it's really only amongst right wing denialistas like Niall Ferguson that you can find support, intellectually weak at that, for the concept.

 

More broadly, Scotland as a society has increasingly frowned upon our expressions of these 'virtues' in the last decade; online, many have put this down to a cabal of log rolling professional Catholics, all ST holders at Parkhead and out to ensure our destruction. Events of the last year have certainly revealed quite a few people with that aim in mind, but they are of the level of Jim Spence or the internet commenter (!), buffoons who have used the social media revolution to put the frighteners on simpletons and easily influenced chairmen.

 

It may be comforting to imagine an organised enemy intent on your destruction, but the reality is more boring. The loutish expressions of the football crowd are just no longer being put up with, the frankly pseudo-religious stuff, the homophobia, or the big tough swearing all over the shop in front of kids or females (I appreciate my views on this topic are very old fashioned). Civic society always had a class based distaste for the excesses of the mob; look at the split between how football and rugby are viewed. Britishness, Presybyterian? I'd argue that for long, long periods exemplars of these constituencies held Rangers and its fans in greater contempt than any Solicitor General with a foreign sounding name.

 

One respondent to D'Artagnan's piece even went so far as to suggest these traditional virtues are Rangers 'USP' and we ought to promote them positively. One might as well argue for a positive promotion of the workhouse, so out of date is this attitude. 'Times change', but Rangers stays the same 'no matter how society moves on'. Well, I'm happy to say that society does move on - it would be pretty boring otherwise - and I don't believe any amount of effort at resurrecting the extinct will be successful. Like John Hammond, we will find out eventually that the past is the past and trying to manacle it to the present is just counter productive.

 

We can find that out for ourselves, and takes steps to integrate what some see as our heritage into our present and future - and that would not be easy, not because these virtues are somehow repellent in themselves, but largely because of our historical means of expressing them - or we can have it skelped into us by the rest of Scotland, in which case we will end up doing someone else's bidding.

 

I'm not sufficently modest to resist the 'I told you so' over internet controls: I spent years and years urging a voluntary clampdown on excessive posting, we did nothing and ended up with the current law which no-one seems happy with. The same will happen with these outdated visible and audible symbols and especially with the way in which we utilise them.

 

Fond of the Royal Family? You're probably in the majority. Mixing 'GSTQ' with King Billy on his wall? I can't see Her Maj going for that one.

 

Stoutly British? Again, probably the majority. I think the SNP will lose the vote, narrowly (I expect about a 61-39% split). Mixing your Britishness with Rule Brittania & flag fests? Not very British, really. Quiet patriotism is the British way.

 

Of a religious bent? Well, here you may not be the majority, but by gum we have many laws which protect religious expression in Scotland, many of which I'd happily bin tomorrow, since they allow discrimination for which non-religious people would be locked up. Mixing religion with the football, though? It's all a bit 20th century.

 

If you're all of these things, and a big Bluenose, I can only imagine your bewilderment as the country changes and what was allowed is outlawed. I felt similar last week, probably, as first a royal baby was born (horrible expression - implant elitism from birth, shall we?) then a new Archbishop of St Andrews was appointed. Big news all round of no interest to me at all. I didn't feel much of a part of that society...I guess it happens to us all.

 

The dinosaurs are gone. We can leave them to history, or we can join them.

Edited February 23, 2017 by andy steel

[Waltersgotstyle 297]

Some of our fan base refuse to move with the times.

[amms 0]

I see you've found your mojo again my friend, stirring stuff. I couldn't agree more.

[Cotter 0]

Wasn't it great the way we went down to Sheffield and were pure British together? No it was embarrassing like it always is. "They're Scottish, the twats" is the standard and understandable response. Having said that, I do wish we could sort out the words of the Billy Boys - most emotive football chant ever. Not likely though. Plenty of ****** bastarding audible at the Albion game.

 

I should mention that I have no motivation for debate on this issue, it's pointless. Change will happen naturally if it ever does.

[simplythebest 0]

We should never lose our British and Unionist identity, especially when people are trying to break up the UK.

[der Berliner 3,283]

There is something that is actually missing. While quite a few people do sing these songs because they represent their mindset, some of the tunes are rousing stuff that really gets people going. Many of the songs were actually written for that reason too, even though not intended for football grounds. So if these songs are seen within the football context, and solely the football context, much of the rather questionable lines are watered down quite a bit. In Scotland though, the media and other certain people have utilized these songs to their own agenda, decades after the "real troubles" beyond the Irish Sea, and made an orchestrated campaign of it. The best example is The Famine Song, that AFAIK was never a song but only some cynical banter stuff (remember that the Washington fans also asked "Where in Ireland is Glasgow?" when the Yahoos came over), before a group made an equally cynical song of it and that was represented as the chant we use. Even the song was not "racist" or somesuch untowards the Irish, but it was aimed at one club and its support alone. Yet, it was taken out of context and utilized for you-know-who's agenda. What next? Will the chewing-gum industry make a similar assault on West Ham's bubble-blowing when it suits them?

 

Outdated songs? Have you ever heard the Dutch national anthem? Rousing for sure. Have you ever read the words? Or that of the French national anthem? Do you know that the Germans still sing the same national anthem like Nazi-Germany, only "omitting" the first verse, which goes on about the German borders from 1933? I was born and bread in the "other half" of Germany, who had their own, newly written national anthem, starting with "Revived from ruins ...". There's no way I'll sing the "excused" old anthem, which was of course written to celebrate the spirit of liberty and freedom roundabout the Napoleonic wars. Outdated ...

 

The point is that we, the support, should make sure why we sing certain songs and for what reason. If others explain it for us, we'll always end up losing, as we've done for the best part of a decade now.

 

IMHO, Rangers support should sing football songs, of which we have plenty. If we air some other song though, be it Simply the best, Penny Arcade (I cannot get my head around why that was ever taken up), or Derry's Walls, we should make clear that it is a sung to get people going and create an atmosphere.

Edited July 29, 2013 by der Berliner

[Chibmark 15]

What a refreshing read.

 

Thanks, Andrew.

[The Real PapaBear 0]

I imagine most of us will have seen the move 'Jurassic Park' at some point, ...

The dinosaurs are gone. We can leave them to history, or we can join them.

 

I may have read a better post in my 21 years of internetting, but if I have, I can't remember it.

Stunningly good stuff.

[calscot 0]

Brilliant bit of writing.

 

I think before the days of PC niceties, a lot of the stuff could be seen as banter, but when you have the whole world appalled at the effects racism and sectarianism and making a fist of cleaning it up, then it all starts to become malevolent and nasty. The banter excuse is gone as it no longer has a context.

 

While we have been picked on by UEFA due to the gleeful light shone on us by others, they seem to be picking on many other clubs too, not just us. We are just becoming another thorn in the foot that they will want to remove. We are becoming the troublemaker who disrupts the well behaved class and needs punishing or removing. We're the kind of no hoper who responds to tellings off and punishments by getting louder and more outrageous, with the "I can do what I want" attitude. But in a civilised society, the kind Britain stands for, and in the context of being a good Protestant, this is just not true.

 

You really have to wonder what impression we are giving of Britishness and Protestantism. Instead of being good citizens and Christians it seems we're more into effing this and that and killing or suppressing others as well as having a strange relationship with the Orange Order instead of the Church of Scotland while singing praises of the divine leader of the Church of England. The Sash seems a very unChristian song as it seems to be about worshipping a false idol. You have to wonder why we're singing that instead of "Will your anchor hold" if we are truly Presbyterian. Surely God and Christ deserve a mention by their followers? And yet they are very noticeable by their absence.

 

Even our football credentials are flawed with Follow follow not about following the team but effing the Pope and the Vatican.

 

Maybe if some want to represent Britain, Protestantism and the royal family, they should at least do so in a way that makes them something to be proud of, in a civilised and pious way.

 

Some of the songs we sing instead of being virtuous, are appealing to the baser and more bitter attitudes of society. I don't think that's a very good USP, except for recruiting the ugly, angry, narrow minded, boorish part of our population.

[der Berliner 3,283]

But don't some in here take these songs to a level that needs not to be there again? As I tried to point out above, if you take these songs out of the football context, the football fan "folklore" so to speak, and reboot them to something more than what is actually meant by 90% who sing them on a match day, you essentially cater to the PC brigade and the hordes from the East, who see (or envisage) more than there is?

 

Don't get me wrong here. I simply do not care for any Protestant or Loyalist cause, any links to the Orange Order, UVF and whatnot. I'm here as a football fan and when I sang TBB or the Sash or Here lies a soldier, I was not doing it for the promotion of the cause of the aforementioned et al. I sang it in a football context, as they are rousing tunes that incite togetherness on the day. Much like I would sing "By the rising of the moon" in an Irish folk context, and nothing more. And I for one am strictly against other people (see above) telling me what I think or feel or look for when singing these songs. Which is what they are trying to do. That these songs are by far not the finest text-wise is rather obvious and up for debate. But not on their terms.