George Galloway’s Fears for Catholicism in an Independent Scotland

I find it difficult to understand why George Galloway’s upbringing as a Roman Catholic in Scotland has led him to fear Scottish independence.

http://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/political-news/galloway-attacked-for-snp-catholic-slur.21116305

Fair enough that Galloway opposes Scottish independence and fair enough if he wholeheartedly believes in Scotland’s place within the United Kingdom and everything that it entails.

But it just seems strange to me that he would want to construct an argument against independence on the strength of his perception that there are sufficient numbers of ‘loyalist sectarians’ in Scotland to present a danger to Scottish Catholicism, if located outside the framework of the Union.

Worse still that he felt it appropriate to draw the troubles recently faced by Neil Lennon into the equation.

Not that the latter’s experiences weren’t symptomatic of the type of religious and racial bigotries that spoil certain parts of Scottish society.

It is just that Galloway’s reason for making this particular reference looks more like a cynical attempt to plug his book on Neil Lennon, rather than a means of supporting a coherent and robust anti-independence argument.

And for Galloway to go on to mention that the SNP has an anti-Catholic mentality in its roots – referencing William Wolfe – is to ignore the clear and unambiguous support that Alex Salmond has previously given for faith schools in Scotland and their benefit to Scottish society:

http://www.heraldscotland.com/salmond-let-s-celebrate-catholic-schools-rather-than-grudgingly-accept-them-1.828354

To argue against Scotland having the autonomy to make its own decisions based on an attitude of the SNP’s Convener in the 1970’s is an absolutely pitiful attempt to divert attention away from what Scottish independence is actually about, and raise fear and consternation in the hearts and minds of Scotland’s Catholics.

Agreeing that Scotland should be an independent country is absolutely not equivalent to embracing the policies, views and attitudes of the Scottish National Party, neither currently nor historically. The SNP may not even be part of the governance of an independent Scotland. It is about embracing an opportunity to make Scotland economically stronger and socially better than it ever will be within the United Kingdom.

George Galloway has the right to express his opposition to Scottish independence. But to oppose the right of a country to regain its autonomy by stirring up fears about Scottish nationalism historically crossing over with anti-Irish Roman Catholicism is completely unfair.

Not only does it reveal his lack of faith in Scotland’s ability to build a successful, progressive and inclusive future on its own intellectual merits and using its own natural resources; it also betrays his ideological preferences for a political and economic framework that helped build the social context within which Scotland’s distinctive brand of sectarianism took root and flourished.

George Galloway warned that we should ‘be careful what we wish for’.

But perhaps he should be more forthcoming about what it is he really fears.

The Unenviable Plight of Today’s Football Managers (With Reference to Mancini)

Perhaps it is the lure of stepping into a role in which achieving greatness as a football manager has been sold as a distinct possibility; perhaps it is about not being able to reject a lucrative offer to rub shoulders with the self-styled super elite; or perhaps it is simply about believing in the myth of football as it traditionally was.

Whatever it is that draws some football managers into roles for which their previous posts and achievements may or may not have prepared them, it is impossible to ignore the obvious facts that too many appointments are the result of hasty board room decision making, whilst many others are simply ill fated from the start.

Roberto Mancini would know all about that. A successful manager who had won seven trophies in four years prior to joining Manchester City doesn’t suddenly become any less of a manager after a poor season with the club. Yet his inability to achieve the ridiculously ambitious targets set by the club’s unimaginably wealthy owners meant that he was, in their view, worthy of quick dismissal, and a bucket full of compensation.

Therein lies the problem. Too often a manager’s fortune is determined by his ability to deliver results which, in many cases, are highly unrealistic given the context; the context within which Mancini, and others like him, have been expected to deliver sustained domestic and European success, has been deeply flawed for years.

It is no longer about football. It is not even about any particular clubs. The clubs are important, of course, but only in the secondary sense that they are waiting to be exploited to satisfy the excruciatingly tough demands of the billionaire business men financing the game; it is about ensuring the relentless and inexorable march towards global market supremacy for their own individual brands, and on some occasions, it is also about drawing a glittering drape over the multifarious activities of their faceless business associates.

They understand that football clubs have the potential to become powerful global business machines, if driven in the direction that market forces dictate. They will quickly and ruthlessly change whatever they deem detrimental to their objectives, and do so with alarming frequency and coldness: more often than not, it is the manager who is sacrificed first.

But whilst the clubs themselves may be of secondary importance to certain owners and backers, they remain of primary importance to their supporters, as do the solid traditions and unbroken histories that have shaped their clubs over the generations.

That aspect is now disappearing from many clubs, and it will be very difficult to restore without completely reversing the deeply set trends of recent years. But to do that now would be to pull the rug from under the clubs that draw the big crowds and the major sponsors, destroying the very fabric of today’s game in the process. And it may also open up another can of worms that many in officialdom would rather ignore – that the definition of sporting integrity has long since been auctioned off to the highest bidders.

Mancini’s dismissal is symptomatic of how so many top flight football clubs in Britain have been ripped out of their natural community settings, and had their purposes altered, whilst most football managers, like Mancini, have remained firmly wedded to their traditional footballing ideals. The two purposes rarely fit together comfortably.

But if that is the unenviable plight of today’s football managers at the top of their game, then so be it; if that is the career they choose, they just need to accept it and get on with it. That said, I believe it is an indictment of the game that there are actually very few managers who have the ability to succeed at the very top these days; and sadly, those managers who may have stood a chance of succeeding, are seldom given sufficient time to try.

Some Thoughts on Alex Ferguson and the Future of English Football

It is worth thinking about whether Sir Alex Ferguson’s decision to retire will have an impact, not just on the next couple of seasons at Old Trafford, but on the next five to ten years in English football in general.

Most of Ferguson’s successful teams have been built on the raw ingredients of hard work, loyalty and will to win. Tremendously gifted players have come and gone during his time in charge, but Ferguson’s talent has always been to instil his personal toughness into his teams and make them want to play out of their skins for him.

Being able to say exactly the right thing, at exactly the right moment, is a talent that only a few managers possess; but being able to condense the lessons of an entire upbringing into that single droplet of psychology is what sets Ferguson apart as a truly unique manager.

Remarkably, his intelligent and ruthlessly domineering football personality also sets the tone for the dynamics between the other teams in the league. Ferguson’s uniqueness is part of its cherished character; his irreplaceability is part of its unspoken problem.

Harnessing some of that uniqueness and injecting it into the Premier League as a globally marketable product has been the focus of commentators, pundits, writers and broadcasters for a number of years now. Regardless where things go from here, I think the marketers of the Premier League will know they have now lost its prize asset.

They have already started to project some of Ferguson’s key attributes onto Davie Moyes in the hope that the former’s departure does not have a harder impact on the future dynamics of the Premier League than its marketing machine can handle. To push the idea that both are ‘cut from the same cloth’ is telling.

A handkerchief might be cut from the same cloth as the finest suit, but to turn up for work wearing only a handkerchief would be a disaster, unless you are relying on the same wave of collective denial that has swept through the entire Premier League for the past few years now.

This is not to deny the very good managerial ability of Davie Moyes. It is just to point to the obvious fact that the focus of attention is now quite rightly shifting towards the real power house of European football, which has been built on a different type of foundation.

The ridiculous and unsustainable financial boom that has elevated the Premier League to its false position will naturally come to an end in the next five to ten years, if not sooner. And there will be no other characters of Ferguson’s stature, cut from the same cloth or not, capable of grabbing it by its throat and stopping its eventual decline.

Some Thoughts on Margaret Thatcher

I think it is too easy to forget that the set of policies and values that define what we often disparagingly refer to as ‘Thatcherism’, would have probably come to pass anyway, regardless of whether Margaret Thatcher herself had been their instigator. Global market forces would have ensured that.

For this reason, it is arguably the case that Margaret Thatcher ought to be accorded a certain amount of respect, given the incredible foresight she possessed and given her rigid determination to see the inevitable changes through in the face of fierce criticism and widespread condemnation.

Perhaps she ought to be credited with having instigated the uncomfortable changes that were long overdue and absolutely required in the country’s prevailing economic and political philosophy; perhaps she ought to be credited with recognising that if Britain hadn’t undergone dramatic change at that time, if the stranglehold of the unions hadn’t been broken, if the state hadn’t been shrunk back, we may have fallen too far behind in the global race to ever catch up again. She was probably right.

Be that as it may, Margaret Thatcher triggered a change in Britain – and in Scotland, particularly – that plunged many individuals, families and communities into unbearable poverty and despair. Her uncompromising neoliberal attitude that entailed that we all must learn to fend for ourselves and not blame society for our ills gave her the moral space she needed to rip the heart out of many communities, the effects of which still linger today.

To dismantle the heavy industries she did was to create the impetus for a positive change in direction; to dismantle them in the manner she did created horrendous hardship and misery. To affirm that the individual would just have to look after himself (because of her changes) was unforgiveable. She believed in obligation before entitlement, but created a framework in which fulfilling any sort of obligation for many became psychologically and economically impossible.

It has been mentioned already, but perhaps if Margaret Thatcher hadn’t been so determined to impose her stern policies across the key industries and communities that defined Scotland at the time, the Scottish psyche may not have come to harbour so many negative sentiments against the absolute sovereignty of Westminster.

Devolution may not have happened and an independence referendum may not have been in the offing. For that, we should be thankful. Had it not been for Thatcher, 18th September 2014 would just be another day in Scotland…

Some Thoughts on Paolo Di Canio

Paolo Di Canio’s recent appointment as manager of Sunderland Football Club is widely regarded as being a controversial one, largely because of certain provocative gestures he made whilst playing for Lazio, and an interview a few years back in which he is reported to have said that he was ‘a fascist, but not a racist’.

That Di Canio wholly subscribes to an extremist political movement that is defined by sustained episodes of violent racial discrimination is completely unfounded, and something he has denounced on several occasions; that his comments have been misunderstood and twisted to fit the sensationalist agendas of the press and its slavering audience is a much more likely assumption to make.

The appointment was sufficient for former Labour MP David Milliband to resign his position on the Sunderland Board, given Di Canio’s ‘past political statements’, and for many sports writers and commentators to have a field day in condemning both him and the club for his presumed affiliation with a movement that is said to promote hatred, killing, persecution and intolerance.

But without a full and complete statement of his position, it is difficult to understand exactly what Di Canio thinks and why he declared himself a fascist who wasn’t a racist, when in the minds of many people the two notions are vile and inextricably linked.

It may be that our understanding of fascism is just too limited, too politically distorted, and too riddled with cultural assumptions that we are simply unable to appreciate what may be the subtleties of Di Canio’s unique and personal view.

Perhaps Di Canio was simply referring to his sympathies with certain cultural, political and economic aspects of fascism, as an Italian movement from a period in history that valued collectivism over individualism; personal discipline, hard work and obedience, over laziness, revolt and anarchy; and strong, healthy individuals who lived and worked for the common cause of bettering the Italian nation.

Whilst it may have been an authoritarian and nationalistic movement, it does not necessarily follow that being sympathetic to some of the aforementioned values in their own right entails supporting violence, persecution and racial hatred. Maybe that’s where Di Canio sits.

The problem is we will never get an explanation of Di Canio’s true position now as a result of the media fuelled furore surrounding his move to Sunderland and our tendency to jump to unwarranted rag style conclusions.

Given how we have come to understand fascism in this country, and given the style of news we like to indulge in here, it is highly unlikely that he will speak again on the matter, especially not to the British press gang sniffing around for their next big story. He is here to manage a struggling football club and I am sure he will do that with distinction.

(As an aside, consider the position of an individual who declares that he is a supporter of the Labour Party in Britain. Nothing wrong with that, given the core socialist views that define this party; however, it was under a Labour Government that Britain entered into an illegal war with Iraq.

Does supporting Labour then automatically mean someone who agrees with invading other countries without mandate, and engaging in deplorable acts of murder in the name of fake national interests? Perhaps David Milliband could help answer that question, as he takes his principled leave from the Stadium of Light.)

An Ugly Impasse

It is hard to think that the Offensive Behaviour at Football legislation has had anything but a negative impact on the attitudes and behaviours of those it was intended to manage, despite the Scottish Government’s bullish claims to the contrary.

Whilst the police argued that they required a greater range of powers in order to deal with the perceived escalation in sectarian hatred in connection with some aspects of Scottish football, many others were reluctant to entertain the idea that existing laws were inadequate.

One outcome of this is that the greater range of powers seems to be stretchable to match whichever interpretation of the occasion is deemed to suit, with the interpretation sometimes appearing to be influenced by the media, other times by an inability to understand political context and poor knowledge of historical fact.

As a result, a strong belief has emerged within certain groups, particularly the Green Brigade, that the manner in which they choose to support their team has been criminalised unnecessarily and that some of their members have been subject to police harassment, victimisation and disproportionate response.

Whether the controversial containment tactics used by Strathclyde Police in Glasgow on Saturday were appropriate to the situation has been challenged. Whatever the eventual outcome of that, it is clear that the march was unlawful in the sense that no permission was sought from the local authorities in advance. The police would have failed in their duty had they not intervened.

It is difficult not to acknowledge that the Green Brigade has become a powerful force with strong political views, a fact which may sit uncomfortably with some individuals within Celtic FC. But it is even more difficult to avoid the thought that extinguishing, rather than monitoring, a force of this nature is a primary objective of the police. It may draw into a long and complicated war of attrition. Neither side will back down. Neither side will win.

Whichever way you view it, the central issue remains that the Scottish Government caved into pressure to introduce a piece of poorly written and completely unnecessary legislation. In doing so it managed to create a context of confusion, mistrust and tension – perfectly illustrated by the now toxic relationship between the police and the Green Brigade – and we are still no closer to eradicating the problem of bigotry in Scotland.

Like most, I would be relieved to see the end of the type of bigotry that infects football here. As it happens, I would also prefer that political views were not expressed at football matches in a manner that risked creating the impression that such views were in some way reflective of an unwritten part of a club’s story.

Given the background causes, I am not convinced that either will transpire any time soon – but that neither justifies the Scottish Government’s poorly conceived legislative solution to the problem, nor does it excuse disproportionate police response to perceived episodes of non-compliance with that legislation.

We may have reached an ugly impasse. It is time for a re-think – without the media circus, without politicians positioning themselves to win favour, and this time with people who understand the true nature of the problem in this country.

Could Player Co-Ownership Help Scottish Football?

It is no secret that Celtic’s ability to identify and develop young players with potential has reaped tremendous rewards in recent seasons. Michael Grant recently wrote an article in The Herald suggesting that a potential threat to this successful formula is that other clubs would soon copy it:

http://www.heraldscotland.com/sport/football/the-problem-with-celtics-global-approach-is-that-the-world-takes-notice.20467713

A threat related to this is that the increasing levels of debt across Scottish football could make this strategy difficult for Celtic to sustain in years to come. In order to attract young talent to Scotland, there has to be something decent on offer. The lure of Champions League football and the fast track to the English Premiership that playing in that tournament offers currently fulfils that requirement.

But the continued danger of other clubs going into administration or out of existence entirely must be a concern, in the sense that it may influence a young player’s decision on whether or not to take the chance of coming to Scotland in the first place, particularly if other clubs in relatively healthier leagues begin to offer the same route to the top.

So it is interesting to think about whether something similar to the Italian model of player co-ownership could be of benefit to Scottish football (and Celtic!) in the medium to long term as a means of averting this type of threat and ultimately sharing the wealth whilst helping to improve standards?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co-ownership_%28football%29

Player co-ownership is a useful tool that enables clubs to share risks and rewards in the transfer market and in the development of young talent. Essentially, two clubs work out an agreement whereby they share ownership of a player, benefitting from playing rights where appropriate, and a share of the financial rewards if the player’s transfer value increases.

In the absence of a large enough fan base, an arrangement of this sort may help smaller clubs in Scotland benefit from Celtic’s global scouting system and solid financial position. Of course, it may seem too altruistic to imagine that Celtic would do such a thing, but short of being invited into a stronger league elsewhere, it may contribute to an improvement in standards here – and in the meantime, Celtic would benefit by sharing some of the financial risk and player development time with other clubs, whilst still receiving the lion’s share of the rewards.

In Italian football, the model usually involves a 50 – 50 split between two clubs. But it wouldn’t necessarily have to be that way in Scotland. It could be that one or more clubs in Scotland could pool their resources to buy into a 20 – 80 split with Celtic, thereby benefitting from access to players they couldn’t otherwise afford, and benefitting from a share of transfer fees they would otherwise lack. Player co-ownership may help financially stricken Scottish clubs stabilise and gradually improve, by providing a life-saving revenue stream currently denied to them.

It goes without saying that player co-ownership isn’t going to come with a guarantee. There are no guarantees for Celtic either. And whilst it may be difficult for Celtic to contemplate sharing the fruits of its labour in this manner, something like this could actually turn out to be a critical step in ensuring the survival of Scottish football in the long term – particularly if the clubs who benefitted were then obligated to do the same for other clubs, just as soon as they were in the position to do so.

Last Thoughts On Cardinal Keith O’Brien

Cardinal Keith O’Brien’s recent admission of sexual misconduct has led many people to call him a hypocrite, not least those offended by the uncompromising and disrespectful stance he took last year on same sex marriage within the Catholic Church.

The wider response has been of mixed emotions, including sadness, anger, disappointment, and disgust. Disillusionment with Catholicism may not be too far behind. But it is worth pausing for a moment to think about this situation before passing judgement. It is too important to ignore.

In today’s society we are continually bombarded with information. Most of it is just opinion that makes some people wealthy, and other people bankrupt, some people revered, and others dishonoured. But most of the time it is just opinion that speaks to something in us, and rapidly gathers momentum. More often than not it takes us off in the wrong direction and we lose the opportunity to address important problems.

As a result, we are often far too quick to accept what other people tell us as fact and arrive at unfair and unwarranted conclusions. Sometimes we are inexorably dragged in this direction because certain opinions carry some of the sensationalist impact we have been trained to crave these days, and other times because they appear to provide the perfect ammunition to criticise individuals whose ideologies we strongly oppose.

But is there a more sympathetic way of thinking about the personal crisis of Keith O’Brien that would allow us to dig a bit deeper into his personal psychology in order to shed some light on one of the core problems in the Catholic Church, whilst still acknowledging that his actions were completely wrong and emotionally damaging to the people involved?

We understand from Keith O’Brien’s own confession that he recognises his behaviour fell short of the standards expected of him in his role within the Catholic Church. We do not know the full detail. Perhaps we do not want to know it. But I think the key to understanding him may be that his admission is retrospective in nature.

The reason why I think this is key is that it is perfectly possible to subscribe to a set of general beliefs, yet occasionally behave in a manner that would appear to be inconsistent with holding one or more of them, without it necessarily being the case that you have made a clear and rational judgement, at that precise moment in time, that your behaviour is right or wrong. Often that clarity comes after the event.

We need to take account of the fact that there may be an element of psychological and physical compulsion in this type of situation that overrides the rational links between some of our beliefs and our actions, resulting in behaviour that others would immediately describe as hypocritical because of their third person perspective or simply their preferred agenda.

Perhaps Keith O’Brien does subscribe to the view that acts of a homosexual nature are immoral and that it is wrong for anyone to abuse the power of their position. But perhaps he also felt psychologically and physically compelled on certain occasions to act in a certain way towards other males, who happened to be young priests under his watch. Perhaps this led him to take whatever desperate steps were required to conceal this information from the public domain.

Whatever the case may be, I think we need to exercise a degree of caution when arriving at the conclusion that this makes this type of behaviour hypocritical; at least, it may not be intentionally so. Natural human drives which have been suppressed for too long will eventually find their outlet; regrettably, they do not always do so in the most appropriate manner. It depends on many contextual factors and they are typically immune to rationalisation.

This is not to condone Keith O’Brien’s actions. Not in the slightest. Nor is it to suggest that his actions have not undermined the credibility and moral authority of the Church. They have. It is simply to say that there are occasions in which we can be too quick to make judgements about other people that fail to take into account the complexities of their inner lives.

In saying this, I think it is necessary to recognise that the true tragedy of this situation consists, not so much in the damage to the credibility and moral authority of the Church; but in the emotional and psychological damage caused to the victims of Keith O’Brien’s behaviour. The Church will move on. His victims and others like them may not.

The importance of clarity here is that it may eventually have some bearing on how the Catholic Church decides to reform itself. There may be a painful recognition that follows this crisis. It may be that it is time for the Catholic Church to accept that certain of its beliefs do not fit with some natural truths about human beings, and that it is infinitely more damaging to continually cover up the consequences of this fact, than change in a way that would have avoided situations like this happening within the Church in the first place.

The Enduring Importance of the Catholic Church, Despite Everything

It is difficult to know what effect Cardinal Keith O’Brien’s resignation and the allegations made against him will have on the Catholic Church. According to Professor Tom Devine, the Catholic Church is now ‘facing its gravest crisis since the Reformation’.

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/in-full-professor-tom-devines-reaction-to-cardinal-keith-obriens-resignation.2013029228

In a respectful article, Tom Devine expresses sadness and concern for Keith O’Brien, the man; but also points out that there are difficult questions to be answered if Catholicism in Scotland is to move on from what Devine describes as a ‘tragic affair’.

But he also refers to the ‘powerful resilience of a global faith’ that has endured for more than two millennia as the reason why the Catholic Church needs to be seen as being so much more than its hierarchy of leaders; it is this type of perspective that is easily lost in the midst of this type of crisis and why the Catholic Church will survive.

It is worth thinking about what this powerful resilience consists in and whether the perspective that Devine calls for may contain a valuable lesson about the enduring importance of the Catholic Church when compared to some of the other deeply flawed institutions within our society today.

Granted there are major problems within the structures that govern the Catholic Church. That fact cannot be denied. Nonetheless there would appear to be something deep within every human being that drives us to seek comfort and purpose through each other – and for many people across the world this cannot be understood independently of having faith in God.

It is this deeply human set of emotions and commitments that will endure when the structures and hierarchies of the Catholic Church are scrutinised, criticised and challenged. Despite this, it is dangerous to be complacent and recent events should serve as a wake up call.

Thinking about this in perspective also reminds us that when we place our trust in individuals in whom we actually know very little about, and in the institutions they represent, there is a tendency to assume that their entire being will always be consistent with our expectations. Situations like this tell us it is not. They too are human, all too human, and are liable to make some very bad mistakes.

It is not just the Catholic Church. We have recently witnessed the slow and painful unravelling of many of the highly regarded institutions that define our society. In some cases, we are finally starting to recognise that these institutions are nothing more than monuments to a compelling story that probably never was.

This unravelling has not only opened our eyes to a whole series of uncomfortable truths about the characters in whom we entrust the safe keeping of our affairs; it has also forced an abrupt change in our perception of some of these institutions, from that which supports everything that is decent, dutiful and democratic, to that which blocks our view from the deceptions and duplicities permitted to occur unchallenged in the background.

Across the worlds of journalism, television, banking, policing, sport, politics and industry, we have encountered this unravelling in spectacular form, from faceless traders to brazen celebrities to executive figureheads; yet for the most part, in spite of this, we will have no option but to carry on regardless; business as usual.

The survival of our society in its existing shape depends on our continued commitment to the traditions most of us were unconsciously trained into from the earliest opportunity, a commitment which will probably still endure, but in a much weaker form.

Whichever shape the Catholic Church takes in generations to come – and it obviously needs to eradicate its fundamental flaws – one certainty is that its underpinning faith will endure; there is something far deeper, more powerful and more global within the latter, than there is within our diminishing commitments to the many other flawed institutions that prop up the rest of our society.

‘Offensive Behaviour’, One Year Later

By the end of this week, the Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications Act (Scotland) 2012 will have been in force for one year:

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/asp/2012/1/contents/enacted

One year on, I don’t think we are any closer to fully understanding how to apply this legislation properly. It was a hastily written piece of work, popularly referred to in the media as the ‘anti-bigotry law’, or the ‘anti-sectarian law’.

It hinges on a definition of ‘offensive’ which seems to imply that certain forms of behaviour at football matches are illegal if they cause a certain type of response in others. It has largely been about singing certain songs, or versions of these songs, that provoke an angry reaction because of their inflammatory, racist or sectarian content.

When trying to decide whether a piece of behaviour is offensive, an obvious question to ask is, ‘offensive to whom?’ and the most likely answer is, ‘to any individual belonging to a religious, social or cultural group that feels annoyed, angered, upset or intimidated by that behaviour’.

But relying on a shared emotional response as the criterion by which we judge certain displays of behaviour as offensive is tricky. It not only renders our definition too subjective, it also puts too much weight on a bundle of loosely structured emotions whose inherent volatility ought to mark them out as unreliable markers of definitional consistency in the first place.

The problem is exacerbated by the recognition that the types of emotional response in question are typically learned – but in an entirely damaging sense through involuntary exposure to a negative form of breeding from a young age and into adult life. It is from that perspective that much of what is regarded as offensive tends to be judged by the man in the street.

I think there is a general consensus among many people that the Act was introduced as a desperate measure to deal with an ugly spike in activity within the context of an embarrassing and shameful socio-cultural problem in Scotland. This ugly spike was still too raw in the public consciousness when the Bill was originally shaped, and that was a mistake.

It produced a situation in which the immediate response in some quarters to almost any form of behaviour, even loosely perceived to have a connection with a certain type of religious outlook or ethnicity, has been one of anger and outrage. The upshot is that too many different forms of behaviour have been popularly tarred with the same brush through a distortion in our understanding of what ought to count as offensive.

And from time to time it would appear that even those in positions of authority on match days have done little to prevent the view that what counts as offensive hinges on the misconception that if certain types of behaviour cause upset or anger, simply because they contain references to a particular race, religion or a political agenda, then they must be illegal.

In fairness, the Act itself does appear to recognise that being offensive isn’t simply about individuals feeling upset or angered that the group they belong to has been challenged, parodied or criticised; the key seems to be that the challenge must be made in a form that expresses or arouses hatred and is likely to lead to public disorder.

But surely expressing or arousing hatred cannot be sufficient either, when it is so easy for one group of individuals to feel hatred towards another, just because they are there and making a noise about everything that is important to them? It is all too subjective.

Clearly, there has to be more to it than that. I think it must also come down to whether belonging to a particular group has been challenged or criticised in a way that is contrary to that group’s integrity, or contrary to historical fact.

This would never constitute a definition in its own right, of course, but it would help sharpen up our understanding of what is permissible and what isn’t in a more objective context, provided we can be historically accurate in our assessment!

And whilst this would legally permit certain forms of behaviour to continue, and certain types of song to be sung at football matches, the appropriateness of doing so must nonetheless be assessed against the wishes and expectations of the club they represent – that should always be a key consideration.

It is fairly obvious to me that not every song or action that arouses anger, hatred or annoyance in ill-informed minds is in fact offensive. It is too easy to blame the wrong people here. Not everyone will think the same way about this, but perhaps it is the irrational response that ought to be criminalised in these cases, rather than the initial behaviour.