Leading article

 

The wrong targets

 

Tom Gallagher

 

So the Solomons of soccer disorder have hurriedly met, recommendations being made and warnings issued. When the dust settles, it is likely that this will be seen not as a timely effort to rein in feral fans and restrain headstrong managers but as a neat exercise in political positioning.
     In an age of grim austerity, Strathclyde police have struck to defend their budget as down south police allowances and bonuses are being slashed. A government which, in 2008, showed its deep disinterest in what has become known as sectarianism by attempting to end funding for the only independent agency dedicated to doing something about it, scrambles to show that it does after all take the problem seriously.
     Both the police and the SNP government are confident about coming up with hurried solutions for the distasteful spin-offs of the Old firm drama: this, after all, is a working-class phenomenon and ordinary folk, especially in the west of Scotland, have few influential voices in the corridors of power.
     Am I alone in thinking that Strathclyde Police and the SNP-led government are not best-equipped to be giving such lectures? Arguably, the west of Scotland's appalling incidences of knife crime, to which the long-running Old Firm rivalry is mainly tangential, has not occasioned the same amount of police concern. Kenny MacAskill, the justice minister, believes that violent crime is under control and he is opposed to the tough approach to the possession of blades that public opinion cries out for. He is also the one who plays a major role in allocating funding to the police so it is natural that upwardly mobile police chiefs like Strathclyde's Stephen House will respect his sensitivities.
     Into this vacuum has stepped a Caroline Johnstone, an Ayrshire justice of the peace who has resigned from the bench to campaign for officialdom to get real on this issue. I have heard it asserted in the press that a motivation behind Doctors Against Violence, the initiative by Glasgow medics who are in the front line of knife crime, is that the official figures simply do not tally with the numbers of victims who stream through their casualty wards.

 

     The 2,000 locals who marched in High Blantyre following the stabbing to death of the public-spirited young student Reamonn Gormley on 1 February were, at least up to a point, expressing a sense of community abandonment by Mr House's guardians of the public peace.
     He appears to be very much the university-educated technocratic police chief adept at manoeuvring in the corridors of power, placing his police tanks on the government lawn as power struggles over funding rage. Perhaps, like many police chiefs such as Sir John Stevens and Sir Ian (now Lord) Blair, he sees his public career only really starting once he relinquishes his burdensome position and the world of high-powered advisor and professional consultancies inevitably beckons.
     This high-powered civil servant has been threatening a draconian crack-down on Old Firm matches in the wake of last week's trouble. To me, obligatory midweek Old Firm matches before limited audiences appears to be a punishment to be borne by the collective fan-base, most of whom are decidedly non-violent in their appreciation of the game. Imperious colonial civil servants adopted such punitive reprisals on local societies in India and Egypt in olden times; indeed as late as 1970, the decision of the Heath government to impose a curfew on the Falls Road area of Belfast on politically-slanted advice from police and local politicians, helped tilt Northern Ireland towards even deeper polarisation. Often, these days, an east coast-based establishment views Glasgow in the same problematic terms as a complacent London elite once reserved for Belfast and (London)derry.
     One wonders if the chief constable might not be better advised to consider a summit on the long-term impact on Scottish social cohesion of the arrival of large numbers of Roma from Slovakia and Romania. I have yet to see an article in the Scottish press on the huge numbers of people begging for a living from Leith walk to Byres Road who have arrived from eastern Europe. What kind of lives do they lead, who are the dominating figures within their ranks?
     There is handwringing from the police about domestic violence after Old Firm matches but it is rife in that community dominated by patriarchal males (21 years of going to Romania have left me in no doubt of that). If this issue is raised by a public-spirited police man or women, then they run the risk of being branded as culturally insensitive by vocal and influential lobby groups who can determine whether they advance in their career. So silence reigns about how to create a pathway for Roma to settle down in Scotland or acquire the wherewithal to make a go of their lives elsewhere.
     Thirty years ago it was much the same with the Old Firm. Too many vested interests were at stake, so this awkward problem was swept under the carpet. Look at how uncannily similar the evasiveness of radical elites is to what may soon be a compelling problem. They have nothing to learn from the freemasons and other symbols of cultural protestantism whom they have gradually supplanted in the last 30 years.
     Rangers and Celtic chiefs ought to go on the offensive and ask public figures to demonstrate what their qualifications are for turning the Old Firm derby into a mockery of a real football competition. Already, these soccer chiefs have put on the table measures designed to reduce ill-feeling and violent aggression which the politicians would never dream of introducing to their own profession.

 

     We are just about to see the launch of an election campaign which will be a systematic mobilisation of hatreds, especially where Labour and the SNP are concerned. I've stopped counting the number of times when I’ve seen on political blogs, Labour's long-term success being due to the grip it has on a part of the country that is seen as alien and essentially un-Scottish. The character assassination of Iain Gray makes the treatment Kinnock got in the London tabloids mild by comparison. Worse is sure to follow.
     Attendance at Old Firm matches is not compulsory but as a young Scot of school-age it is impossible to be shielded from the bearpit of ugly and pointless aggression that is first minister's question time at the Scottish Parliament. This is because during the 30 or so weeks Holyrood is in session, processions of school pupils are bussed in from across the land to witness this immature name-calling and coat-trailing exercise (at great expense to the taxpayer, Mr House).
     This exercise in distilled rancour offers no real life skills for these impressionable youngsters. Instead, top politicians all too often unite to show that debate and argument really just consist of parroting slogans and trading abuse.
     By contrast, the devotion and energy put into the Old Firm duel has some positive spin-offs. Yes, at times, it may indeed spill over into domestic violence but the phenomenon is also one that promotes family solidarity, enabling fathers to spend a lot of quality time bonding with their kids. It is one of the last great working-class institutions that planners and politicians have been unable to regulate out of existence. It would not surprise me if there are not some party chiefs envious at the solidarity, passion and enthusiasm that Celtic, Rangers and indeed some other Scottish teams obtain from Scottish society. With all their own spin-doctoring paraphernalia, Scotland's politicians usually bawl in front of an empty stage.
     So ambitious police chiefs should stop navel-gazing when it comes to knife crime and politicians should dare to tackle some of the real problems that lead to working-class insecurity and community despair. They should lay off an institution which some quite possibly would prefer to destroy rather than improve or reform.

 

Tom Gallagher's book, 'The Illusion of Freedom: Scotland under Nationalism' was published in London in 2009 by Hurst & Co