Why is the Scottish Review

so down on our

beautiful game?

Sectarianism and football (2)

Robert Doherty

I am a reader and admirer of the Scottish Review. Its articles and contributions inform, challenge and irritate me in equal measure. Unusually I have found the energy to take to the keyboard to respond to a number of recent contributions, however stylishly written, that seem on the surface to denigrate our national game (Jill Stephenson on 26 July and Christopher Harvie on 28 July).
     It is obvious that any successful publication will tend to reflect back to its readers their own values, concerns and prejudices. So why am I writing? Forcing myself to get to the deeper point, I write to charge well-heeled sections of the Scottish Review commentariat with a visceral unease and barely concealed abhorrence of Scotland's working class.
     Football is a beautiful game; it has its own art and aesthetics. It can be enthralling, exciting, it can elicit gasps of wonder. For the knowledgeable spectator there is a beauty in witnessing a ball being hit into the air over 70 metres for it to land perfectly at the feet of a team-mate who effortlessly brings it under control without a brake in stride. But I digress: the disparagement of football fans and the calls for the erasing of Rangers and Celtic are code for a loathing of what is perceived as the raucous male unwashed who come into sight around them. Calls to ban them, close them down and spend the money taken up policing the circus of the populace on steamship heritage, Scottish opera and government subsidies on hummus, do not take us very far.
     The people's game has downsides, but even in Glasgow it has wonderful positives; entertainment, the positive sporting engagement of our youth. Look at the response, warm with humanity, of both sets of supporters to the Ibrox disaster or consider the reaction of ordinary Rangers fans to the death of Tommy Burns. On the downside, this form of popular entertainment has provided a vent and focus for antagonisms and acts of violence by those angry and antisocial young men that Scotland seems to nurture with such efficiency.

 

     What is particularly disappointing is the lack of perspective among the Scottish Review's disparagers of football. They seem to be inspired by the media coverage and representation of the recent tensions and headline-grabbing events and crimes attached to our national game. The current attention to sectarianism, racism and the savage persecution of Neil Lennon is deeply significant and is hopefully a harbinger of a new phase of social change through confronting, in this public space, social evils tolerated for too long. The past season has been historically significant for those of us with an interest in football as an arena for gauging social tensions and the integration of Scottish society.
     Nevertheless, the recent heart-warming retreat in disarray of the Murdoch empire should remind us of the dangers of naively allowing the media to represent the world to us. Violence and antisocial behaviour at football games, detestable as it is, is a sideshow in scale. If you want a dimension of Scottish life to point the finger at and can fight the temptation to despair, then turn an educated gaze to the horrific levels of territorial and recreational violence and knife crime that stains the streets of our dark urban landscapes red.
     If it was possible to magic away the people's game the same aggressions and destructive national behaviours would simply remerge in other fora. The problem is within us as a nation, not football, it is located in a cultural poverty and a concomitant psychological dysfunction. We need to strive for new dominant cultural norms across all classes of Scottish society that produce better people, healthier, respectful and equipped to live an affirmative life. In fact our love of football and its place in contemporary Scottish culture can provide a location for education and a site of struggle toward the forging of new social norms.
     So commentariat and distinguished and educated readers of the Scottish Review, you are the leadership class, you have enjoyed the privileges, the opportunities, you have the leadership capacity. Here is a challenge worthy of the ethos of the Scottish Review. Resist the temptation to conceitedly wish into oblivion those characterised by 'drunkenness, verbal incontinence, and violence'.
     The Scottish underclass is our underclass, your fellow Scots, like you one of Jock Tamson's Bairns. You may not love them, many of you fear and loathe them, but cultural change is difficult from under the constricting oppressions of the bottom of the social order. A better Scotland needs vision and virtue. What we need from our commentariat is understanding and compassion and above all cultural change through real service to our perennial underclass.

 

Robert Doherty is a Celtic supporter and lectures in the school of education at the University of Glasgow