I am sure that the recent crop of hagiographies masquerading as obituaries would have nauseated and delighted the late Conor Cruise O’Brien in equal measure.

He was brilliant, complex and difficult man.

Whatever, or whoever, he was he was certainly significant.

In the Irish Independent  (30/12/2008. www.unison.ie) Kevin Myer’s memoir of his first meeting with the “Cruiser” was doubly interesting because it recalled an incident told by the Cruiser himself in his seminal “States of Ireland”.

Published in 1972 I read the book in the 1980s. One incident stayed with me long after I had put the book down and I wondered if it had been a moment of epiphany for the Cruiser.

He recalled an incident in 1969 when he and a colleague had been set upon and beaten by a crowd of Loyalist in their Londonderry.

The standard response of an out of shape, middle aged middle class man with no physical history. The Billy Boys were street fighters the urbane Cruise O’Brien WAS frightened and shocked.

Myers said that the Cruiser was angry with the young reporter for telling the press that O’Brien had run from his attackers. He told the young Myers that this was a lie and that Conor Cruise O’Brien never ran away from anything!  I believe Kevin Myers. The Cruiser was angry nit because he had been lied about, but because someone had told the truth about him. He had run. He then sought to, through his writings, soothe those who had given him a kicking.

He was a brilliant writer, but he wouldn’t have made a Bogsider!

In that he turned the mind that once served former IRA Chief of Staff Sean Mac Bride in the Dept of Foreign Affairs to serve the cause of revisionism.

His analysis of the national question was perfectly timed. 1972 started with Bloody Sunday. The War of Independence generation was still around and able to offer their take on what British rule in Ireland inevitably meant.

The fifty something generation of the southern middle class didn’t want to hear.

The Cruiser gave them a way out-partition was the natural order of things.

This was, in the South, a very heady admixture that had a willing market just ready for addiction.

The Cruiser offered no analysis merely amnesia and the South’s political elite, who had never experienced British rule just wanted to forget.

In Britain he played another role he was the British medias favourite Mick. He told them was no colonial issue that Britain’s eight centuries of stewardship had nothing to do with the current messy difficulties in the Six Counties.

Oh no, it was all Paddy’s fault.

My first memory of reading his journalism was in 1982 when I read a piece of his in the Observer extolling the merits of the Maronite Christians in Lebanon.

The Christian Phalange, the Cruiser lectured, were actually very good chaps. In fact the party run by the Gemayel clan were in fact the Lebanese Social Democratic Party. In fact the reality was more troubling. Pierre Gemayel the head of the clann had travelled to the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Germany. He had met with Hitler and had come back to Lebanon and formed the Phalange convinced that the Maronite Christians of the Lebanon were part of the Aryan race.

The Cruiser’s piece had to be submitted on the Thursday for the page to be made up.

In the 48 hrs that followed the  “Damur Militia” a unit of the Maronite Christian Phalange, with Israeli blessing, entered the Sabra and Shatilla Palestinian refugee camps in West Beirut and slaughtered till they could slaughter no more.

Over 3,000 were murdered.

Even in the Middle East, even in Lebanon it was a shocking outrage.

It was the global lead story every Sunday paper and the Cruiser’s opinion piece, too late to be pulled, looked utterly surreal.

That he could then write  “The Siege” an affectionate treatment of Israel and the history of Zionism indicates that for the Cruiser his objections to political violence were flexible.

In his autobiography he stated that his first memory was when he was a four year old listening to explosions as he played in his family’s comfortable Dublin home.

He later was told that was the sound of the Free State forces shelling the Republicans inside the Four Courts. He recalls that an adult soothed him that he shouldn’t be frightened that everything was going to be ok.

When he was in the Cosgrave government in the 1970s he later revealed that he had that he had no problem when he found tout that the Gardai were torturing republican prisoners. Indeed he hid this information form government colleagues.

Especially when writing about Ireland and the Irish situation for the Cruiser the political was personal.

1916 probably robbed him of his rightful inheritance. He was from Home Rule party royalty. The upstarts in the GPO destroyed Redmondism and the Sinn Fein victory in the 1918 election was the end of Redmondism.

His entire life’s work as a writer, within an Irish context, was a personal vendetta against the belief system of armed republicanism.

It would be difficult to underestimate the triumph of his ideas in modern Ireland. His views have become orthodoxy in the South. No one in political life in the Republic of Ireland would have the worldview of Sean McBride the Cruisers boss in the 50s,or, indeed, Sean Lemass.

With argument won in the South it was only a matter of time for Northern nationalism to capitulate.

He has turned the Provos into guarantors of partition in their government positions in Stormont.

Myers’ observation that the Cruiser had “intellectually decommissioned the ideology of armed republicanism” is impossible to argue against.

When O’Brien entered public life it was still common currency within the environs of Dail Eireann to discuss “national purpose”.

Today such a concept would seem hopelessly anachronistic.

Gerry Adams once referred to the Cruiser as “ a dangerous crank.”

Well the ex-labour minister has rendered Adams and his movement as dangerous as a pond full of ducks.

Ten years ago he published his autobiographical “Memoir”. In it this the advocate of the “Two State” solution to the Irish question stated that under certain circumstances the only way for Northern Protestants to preserve their identity would be to join a united Ireland! He didn’t spell out what those specific circumstances would be.  In the final years of his life his writings became laced with apocalyptic predictions, which, happily, never came true.

The last one I touched based with was when he was predicting a military coup in the Republic of Ireland.

Despite becoming something of a joke character in his later years, especially as his prophecies became moiré and more awful and every time unfulfilled he was a substantial figure.

He dismantled the legitimacy of 1916 in the minds of the southern middleclass.

When he did that it would be inevitable that the war in the North would be viewed through a different prism.

Although the peace Process was very much the creation of his mind he stayed outside it predicting Bosnian style chaos would result from it.

Earlier this year the British army had a home coming parade through Belfast. In fact it was a victory parade of the United Kingdom.

A Sinn Fein counter demonstration turned up with Gerry Adams at the head.

There they stood impotently holding placards. I hadn’t noticed that the Provos had become CND.

When States of Ireland had been published in 1972 Adams was an Army Council member secretly flown to Britain for a parley with Northern Direct Ruler William Whitlelaw. In 2008 he had become Monsignor Bruce Kent politely asking the British presence in occupied Ireland to keep the noise down.

That is the extent of Britain’s and the Cruisers victory over the belief system fashioned in 1916.

There is one aspect of this counter-insurgency victory that remains the wild card.

The same tribe that Conor Cruise O’Brien fled in terror from in the Bogside are still there in their Northern Laager. As ever fearful of the hordes of natives who inhabit their settler nightmares.

If their insecurity levels rise they have an autonomic tribal response. Kill a few Taigs.

They may still be the undoing of the surrender of Irish nationalism that was signed into law at St. Andrews in Scotland.

A new generation of Billy Boys will, at some point in the future, feel the need to kill a few Fenians to remind the minority northern tribe in the North of their subservient place in the scheme of things.

A new Malvern street could sweep away all the smoke n mirrors of the Provisional movement’s political project.

The blueprint for the long retreat away from Republicanism by the Provos was written by a dangerous crank.

Today’s Ireland owes much to Conor Cruise O’Brien.

It will be for future generations to assess whether or not he made national cowardice acceptable.

This site started  in the summer of 2006 as an archive of my work in print journalism.

The work stretches back to the 1980s and there is still work to be scanned and uploaded, but we’re getting there.

I continue to be indebted to the quiet genius that is Frank Gribbin of Ocularjigsaw.com

Without Frank this site would not exist.

My ambitions for the site in 2008 was to develop a blog and encourage traffic to the site.

This was a major task for Frank and, as usual, he undertook the work with his usual stoic determination.

The hits to this site started in the hundreds at the start of the year they are now in the hundreds of thousands.

I have a strict policy of not responding to the posts that I approve on the site.

That policy will continue in 2009.

That does not mean that I am disinterested in their content or ungrateful for the time people take to post on the site.

I am very committed to the  online community I am trying to nurture here and my thanks goes to all of you who have posted on the site this year.

My rules for approving posts in 2008 have been fairly simple.

Everything will be approved unless it is abusive, libellous or badly written.

Those will continue to be the rules in 2009.

So from Ireland’s western seaboard I trust that all of you and those close to you will have enjoy a happy and peaceful 2009.

Is mise le meas mor

Phil Mac Giolla Bhain

 

 

 

 

EXCLUSIVE

By Phil Mac Giolla Bhain

A controversial Scottish churchman tonight slammed the well-loved Irish ballad “The Field of Athenrye” as “ vile, vicious and racist” and compared the Pete St. John ballad to the infamous “Famine Song.”

Reverend Stuart MacQuarrie is part of the chaplaincy service at Glasgow University and he made the outburst on a BBC Radio 4 debate on Celtic Rangers rivalry on St.Stephen’s day night.

Continue Reading

As the world celebrates the birth of a baby boy born in abject poverty. There is another infant that I haven’t been able to get out of my head all week.

Baby P looks up at me in the picture everyone has seen and asks questions that no one in polite society seems to want to seriously answer.

It has often been mentioned that there isn’t a resigning culture in Irish politics, that, unlike in the UK, people here cling onto their government positions as if their lives depended on it.

In Britain, on the other hand, a chap falls on his sword, does the honourable thing.

Still the little face looks up at me, at all of us.

The report on the case was swift and, at first glance, comprehensive.

There will be, in the New Year, high-level seminars about improving systems in Child Protection.

I have, since I qualified as a social worker in the UK in 1990, taken part in various re-inventions of essentially the same system.

What is never looked at is who works in the system.

We have, by ideology and happenstance, selected as our front line child protection workers probably the least able people to step into the type of “families” that can turn a child into a corpse.

When I took up my first post as a Social Worker in Glasgow in 1990 I realised that there was, within many of my experienced colleagues, an element of avoidance being practiced.

These nice middle class women just didn’t like being in grubby houses full of drunken violent people. Glasgow does a rather nice line in such abodes.

Moreover although the entire ambience of the professional discourse in social work was one of gender equality, feminist social constructivism, no essential difference between men and women except that men are always bad.

That ideological position was conveniently forgotten when the presence of a young fit man capable of swift violence was required.

I soon found that my female colleagues wanted me to accompany them on “home visits”.

Verbal abuse, threats and, occasionally, violence would be directed at me by some adult during a visit.

One the occasions that a physical response was required after the female colleague got back to the safety of the office a spin would be put on the  “critical incident”.

“Couldn’t have I handled the situation differently?”

“Yes I could have let Mr. Smith nail you to the wall as we told him that his kid wasn’t coming out of care!”

Social Workers are lamentably poorly trained for the function they provide. In the absence of any strong evidence based validity for what they do ideology-feminist ideology-fills the vacuum.

They are selected for their social work course on their ability to ideologically conform and parrot a 1970s feminist catechism.

This makes about as much sense as hiring someone to work as a bouncer on the basis that they have an excellent stamp collection.

Baby P died, in part, because the cost of protecting him wasn’t paid by the staff paid to do just that.

One female colleague of mine in Glasgow once on a joint visit was startled when I knocked on a door in a Glasgow tenement. I knocked the door loudly, very loudly. I looked at her and explained, “ it is eleven in the morning, they’ll still be sleeping, they’re drunks.”

This was later dissembled in supervision as “judgmental”.

They were sleeping because they were drunks.

My loud knock on the door got the man of the house stumbling out of his alcoholic stupor.

The lazy chaos of our child protection system is feminism in action.

Feminism in action is feminist inaction when faced with the ideal family unit of feminist ideology-the single mother on welfare.

When I was team leader with Northern Area Health Board in Dublin earlier in this decade I found the identical belief system among a similarly feminised workforce.

Only an Australian social worker seemed to have the muscularity to be an effective child protection worker. That she clearly was dismissive of feminist thought was, in my opinion, no coincidence.

There is nothing especially new in the circumstances that surround the death of this little boy. He joins a list of dead children that were failed by statutory services in these island going back to Maria Caldwell in England in 1973 to, twenty years later, Kelly Fitzgerald in Mayo.

If you think that baby P couldn’t happen here in Ireland then you are also probably confident of the robust health of our banking system.

While we think that nice middle class women gently knocking on grubby doors in Darndale and then skipping away delightedly that there was no answer is a child protection system then an Irish Baby P is only a matter of time.

Dead children are the price we will pay for paying homage to an ideology that those in power seem helpless to challenge.

The next Baby P does not need strangers bearing gifts, but the helpless child will need wise men to barge through the feminist created chaos and say “enough!”

 

 

Words are important; well you would expect a journalist and author to believe that.

Words condition the response. Words have baggage. Words are never ever neutral. Never.

I have been thinking about this increasingly since writing the last blog about Eoin Ryan’s visit to Scotland.

The visit had been arranged after Alyn Smith MEP had heard Eoin Ryan raise the issue of the Famine Song controversy in the European parliament.

Ryan had been very precise in the use of this language when raising TFS issue.

This was a problem of racism and, to further press home that point, Ryan had flagged up his long standing interest in combating racism in football across Europe.

Ryan, who is one of the authors of a key European report on football in Europe, stated to the press before his visit to Scotland was that he was heavily involved in the EU white paper on Sport. The Dublin MEP stated that one of the major aims of the White paper was to eliminate racism in sport in Europe and, in particular at football stadia.

When Ryan had been interviewed on RTE’s “Drivetime” radio programme by anchor Mary Wilson she persistently used the term “sectarianism” when describing the Famine Song (TFS).

Ryan was too gallant to correct the RTE lady. However he continued to use the term “racism” as opposed to the inappropriate “sectarianism”.

Alyn Smith’s press officer is Grant Baskerville; he handled the PR for Ryan’s trip.

This is the press release that he sent out:

ATTENTION: NEWS DESKS

SCOTS & IRISH MEPS IN ANTI-SECTARIAN PROGRAMME HOSTED BY SCOTTISH GOVERNMENT

Alyn Smith SNP Member of the European Parliament for Scotland will tomorrow (Thursday) welcome his Irish counterpart, Fine Fail MEP Eoin Ryan to Scotland for top level talks with the Scottish Football Association, Sport Scotland and a host of anti sectarian charities in Glasgow.  The pair will then travel to Edinburgh to meet with Minister for Community Safety Fergus Ewing MSP at Holyrood.

The programme has been organised by the Scottish Government, and comes in the wake of Mr Ryan raising the issue of sectarianism in the European Parliament last week in Strasbourg, whereupon Mr Smith invited him to Scotland.  The programme will highlight the ongoing work that is taking place by charities, clubs and the Scottish Government to combat the issue and explore EU avenues of support for these efforts.

Alyn Smith said:

“We have a full day in store that covers everything from grassroots to Government Ministers.  Eoin is a friend of Scotland, and I am sure that he will be thoroughly impressed with the measures that are being taken by all parties involved, and I’m grateful to the Scottish Government for putting such an impressive programme together so quickly.

“In Scotland, key organisations such as Nil by Mouth and Show Racism the Red Card work hand in hand with the Scottish Government, Scottish FA and most importantly the clubs themselves to tackle sectarianism.

“The Scottish Government are showing real leadership on this issue through a variety of initiatives and funding programmes.

“We have a strong history and commitment of tackling issues like this head on, but we can never be complacent.  The sad reality is that when a vocal minority, on any side, behave in an unacceptable manner, it not only reflects poorly on their club, but also their city and their country.  We must not allow them to tarnish Scotland’s reputation in Europe.”

ENDS

 

Eoin Ryan MEP had raised the issue of anti-Irish racism in Scotland at European parliament level.

He was invited to Scotland to see the sterling work being done on the ground by voluntary bodies and public agencies. However this concern about the racist abuse being directed against the Irish community in Scotland becomes “anti-sectarianism”

This isn’t mere semantics. This goes to the heart of the matter of the denial of the existence of the Irish in Scotland as a distinct people.

This is bizarre given the import TFS, which is telling, people to “go home “ to Ireland, clearly anyone whose home is Ireland Ipso facto, Irish.

It is a logic I cannot argue with. Hence these words are blinking to life in Donegal not Glasgow.  However the same people who would sing TFS and taunt those of Irish descent that they should go home to Ireland sneer at the very idea that people born in Scotland can consider themselves Irish even when they travel on Irish passports and have legally verifiable links to Ireland.

I recently attended a St. Patrick’s Day organising committee meeting in Glasgow. I saw some old friends for my time as a teacher with Conradh Na Gaeilge and met some new friends. I said to them, although I couldn’t know their personal circumstance, I didn’t know why they were still in Scotland as this Famine Song surely had crystallised the low esteem in which Ireland and the Irish are still held in Scotland.

No one had an answer for me.

I wish all of them well. They have a huge boulder to push up the hill of anti-Irish sentiment in Scotland that’s for sure.

The “sectarianism not racism” proponents in Scotland implicitly state that there is no Irish community in Scotland.

The facilitators of Eoin Ryan’s fact-finding mission to Scotland were the Scottish Government’s “Equality Unit”.

These equal opportunities folk wanted no media around, but I’m kinda persistent.

Just before the big doors were closing and I was about to be ejected and the meetings commence I spoke briefly with Dave Harmon, Eoin’s press secretary.

I had one chance to put this into his head.

“Dave. The words being used here are crucial. This is Derry/Londonderry. They’re using ‘sectarian’ the word to be used is ‘racism’. “

In Eoin Ryan’s final quote to me that day he acknowledged that some people wanted to call the TFS controversy an issue of sectarianism while others wished to call it racism.

“Whether you call it sectarianism or racism you have to stand up to it.”

The trip and how it was reported, or not reported, crystallised for me the essence of the words used in this controversy and what they mean.

My work on this issue has clearly thrown up a clear demarcation between those who would characterise the TFS controversy as “sectarian” and those who would view it as a manifestation of “racism.”

Since TFS controversy broke here in Ireland in September people in the Irish media have largely viewed TFS as a manifestation of anti-Irish racism.

Not surprisingly Irish people in Scotland considered TFS racist.

The police consider the song to be an arrestable offence under Section 74 of the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 2003 in that singing TFS is likely to cause a “Breach of the Peace aggravated by racial prejudice.”

Show Racism The Red Card, as of October 6^th, consider TFS to be racist.

Most reasonable, objective people viewing this controversy would consider TFS to be racist. In Ireland TFS is definitely considered to be racist and anti-Irish.

The issue had been raised months by several TDs in Dail Eireann.

Since Alan Shatter. His party colleague Michael Ring (Fine Gael) Tommy Broughan (Labour) and Joe McHugh (Fine Gael) have all had asked questions of Foreign Minister Micheal Martin about the “Famine Song”.

They all received fairly standard civil service replies to their written questions that the Irish Consulate in Edinburgh was doing a wonderful job etc etc.

It was clear from the civil servant who drafted the answers that they didn’t understand the issue.

Despite being asked by all of these Dail Deputies about “racism” in Scotland directed towards the Irish community they received stock answers about great moved in Scotland to combat “sectarianism”.

 

Alan Shatter TD had submitted a written Dail question to Irish Foreign Minister Micheal Martin in Wednesday, 8th October, 2008

October.

“50. To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs if his attention has been drawn to the fact

that offensive anti-Irish songs were sung by supporters of Glasgow Rangers Football Club

attending the match that took place between Glasgow Celtic and Glasgow Rangers on 31

August 2008 and that the singing of such songs is a regular event and has caused both

fear and concern to Irish residents and their children who on occasion visit Glasgow for

such football matches; if he will take an initiative with the relevant authorities in Scotland

in the interest of Irish/Scottish relations to bring this behaviour to an end; and if he will

make a statement on the matter. — Alan Shatter. [33971/08]

 

REPLY
 

I am aware of the concern, and indeed the intimidation, that can arise from slogans and songs during and after Celtic-Rangers matches.
 Since its opening in 1998, the Consulate General of Ireland in Edinburgh has maintained a wide-ranging dialogue with the Scottish Government on all relevant issues. In September, for instance, the Consul-General met with senior officials in the Scottish Government to discuss recent incidents of sectarianism. Following from these and other on-going discussions, I am assured that tangible new steps to tackle sectarianism are currently being reviewed by the Scottish Government and I am hopeful that the proposed measures will help to improve the situation. The Consulate General will continue to monitor closely developments in this regard.

 

The civil service generated response, which formed Micheal Martin’s written; “answer” used the “S” word. Martin praised the anti-sectarian work of the Scottish government and the work of the Irish Consulate in Edinburgh.

When I received the copy of the written answer to Shatter’s question I called one of the Foreign Minister’s press officers.

Michael Lonegran is a sound enough lad and generally well regarded by the press guys working the Leinster House lobby.

I called him and asked why his Minister had not answered Shatter’s question?

“But he did!”

“He was asked about anti-Irish racism in Scotland. He replied about great work being done in the field of anti-sectarianism in Scotland. He was asked about ‘A’ he gave an answer apropos ‘B’. Is that the same?”

There was silence on the phone.

“I’ll get back to you. When is your deadline?

I told him and fair enough there was another standard civil service generated answer the following day that did mention the “R” word.

At the same time Alan Shatter had written to Rangers directly.

He would, however, wait rather longer than was, perhaps, courteous from Rangers Football club for a reply.

We were speaking as he checked his emails.

His letters finally solicited an email from RFC security chief Kenny Scott.

November the 20^th-almost two months.

This is probably more sad than sinister. This reeks of Celtic under the old board. Threadbare, shambolic, not able to do their business in an appropriate fashion.

Alan Shatter TD is a member of a foreign parliament who had written to Martin Bain about an issue of great concern to a constituent of Mr. Shatter, an architect form South Dublin who had taken his son to the Celtic Rangers match on august 31^st.

Finally in December 2008 Deputy Shatter received a letter from Rangers of which I have a copy.

Dated the 25^th November the Dublin TD’s letter had been passed onto Kenny Scott “Head of Security and Operations” at Ibrox.

“Dear Mr. Shatter

Thank you for your letter dated 2 October 2008 and subsequent correspondence dated 5^th November 2008 concerning the behaviour of sections of our supporters at the last Old Firm match on 31 August at celtic Park.

Rangers Football Club has repeatedly made clear it’s opposition to all forms of sectarian and anti-social behaviour on the part of supporters. Despite this we recognise that there are still problems in this area not only on the part of supporters of this Club but other Clubs across the country.

You specifically mention what has come to be known as “the Famine Song”.

This song or more correctly the chorus has been the subject of much attention in the Scottish media in recent months and the club has taken steps to warn supporters that they face the possibility of arrest for singing its. At one match we printed 50,000 leaflets on this subject and distributed them to supporters.

That being said we believe that as a Club we have made great strides forward in dealing with sectarianism not least of which has been the development of our Study Support Centre at the Stadium. Hundreds of thousands of people have benefited from attending sessions at this facility, which demonstrates our commitment to longer term, solutions to this problem through education. Where we continue to see anti social behaviour in our stadium we work with our partners in the police to enforce the law and arrest those responsible. Finally where circumstances warrant we use banning orders to Exclude Offenders from Ibrox.

It has to be pointed out that we as a Club believe that the focus of attention often centres unfairly on this club alone and that the wider anti social behaviour of supporters goes unchecked across Scotland. Last Saturday for example we had significant numbers of visiting Aberdeen supporters racially abusing one of our players as well as directing disgraceful abuse at one of our disabled supporters. This was in addition to shocking references being made to the Ibrox Disaster. I mention this only as one example of widespread unacceptable behaviour in football.

Of course two wrongs do not make a right and I can assure you that Rangers Football Club will continue to work to reduce the type of behaviour I refer to. We would    however welcome a debate on wider responsibility in Scottish football as a whole.

I hope my comments are of some assistance to you.

Yours sincerely

 

Kenny Scott

Head of Security and Operations.”

 

Scott’s letter is interesting on several points. There is no attempt to address the issue of racism. Moreover the Ibrox security man differentiates between the full famine song and the chorus that is heard sang in stadia where Rangers are the away team.

There is mention of the leafleting of the Ibrox crowd at the Motherwell match warning Rangers fans that they were at risk of arrest if they sang TFS.

The crucial omission in Kenny Scott’s letter is any condemnation of TFS.

The lack of any apology to Alan Shatter’s constituent for what he and his son had to listen to on August 31 when they sat near the Rangers support at Celtic Park.

Labour TD Tommy Broughan was contacted by a constituent who had also been at the August 31^st match at Celtic Park.

The Labour deputy wrote to Michael Martin as Alan Shatter had, but he also wrote to the Scottish government and to Gordon Smith of the SFA.

Smith’s reply to Broughan’s letter is worth looking at in some detail.

Dated the 21^st October this year the SFA CEO stated:

“I am sorry to heart that Mr.xxxxxxxx has suffered distress as a result of the racist and sectarian abuse being directed at celtic fans at Parkhead. There are currently great efforts being made to curb the songs and chants from supporters that are deemed ‘unacceptable’. The clubs with the largest numbers of fans are Glasgow Celtic and Rangers FC. Both of them are fully aware that their fans are guilty of abusive chanting but have worked extremely hard in recent years to try and eradicate it. It is not always possible but it is at least recognised by both the government and the football authorities that work should continue on all fronts to improve the attitude of those fans who perpetrate this distasteful behaviour.

Most people agree that there have been great improvements of late and I am surprised to learn that Mr.xxxxxxx feels that there has been a significant in crease in racist and sectarian abuse. He can be assured that this is a problem being addressed by the government, police and football authorities in Scotland.

We are not in contact or discussion with the FAI or any other countries’ governing body as we feel we are dealing with this matter internally.

I hope this answers any concerns you have regarding this matter.

Yours sincerely

Gordon Smith

Chief Executive.”

 

I had been contacted by one of the constituents of Tommy Broughan. Tommy had, quite correctly copied his constituent with Smith’s reply.

What I wanted to know was what questions the Labour TD had asked of the ex-Rangers player who is now CEO of the Scottish Football Association?

“Dear Phil.
Thanks for your recent email and calls to my office.
I did specifically complain about racist (and sectarian) abuse of Irish fans of Celtic F.C. and the appalling impact on xxxxxxx s children and other young Irish fans in my recent representations to the Scottish F.A. and Scottish government.
I completely understand the upset and distress of fans like xxxxxx and the children and young people he takes to Celtic matches.
Please keep in touch,
Very Best Wishes
Tommy Broughan T.D.”

Tommy Broughan had written to the SFA regarding the racist behaviour of the Rangers fans and received an “old firm problem” reply from the formers Rangers player.  This seems to be a standard ploy. If Rangers are highlighted as the problem then bring in Celtic and discuss it is an “Old Firm” problem.

Not only had the Irish in Scotland in general been subjected to TFS, but also specifically a 17-year-old teenager called James McCarthy who decided to declare for the Republic of Ireland rather than Scotland.

McCarthy’s mother’s side are from Donegal.  Donegal North East TD Joe McHugh, newly elected to Dail Eireann in 2007 for Fine Gael raised the FS and the specific racist abuse of James McCarthy with Foreign Minister Micheal Martin:

Question No. 167

 Parliamentary Question  

 To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs if his attention has been drawn to the fact that a person (details supplied) has been subjected to anti-Irish racist abuse from the terraces at Scottish premier league games this month; if he will write to the Scottish First Minister, the Scottish Football Association, and the Scottish Premier League requesting that they take action to stamp out this anti-Irish racism; and if he will make a statement on the matter.

- Joe McHugh.

·       For WRITTEN answer on Thursday, 30th October, 2008.

At this stage you can probably guess what the Dept of Foreign Affairs would make of this clear and concise question. 

Ref No: 37731/08 Proof: 173

 Ireland U-21 and Hamilton Academical FC player James McCarthy

 REPLY

I am aware of the on-going issue of sectarian behaviour at Scottish premier league games and of the distress and offence that this can cause.  Since its opening in 1998, the Consulate General of Ireland in Edinburgh has maintained a wide-ranging dialogue with the Scottish Government on issues. In recent weeks the Consul General has been in close contact with senior officials in the Scottish Government in relation to incidents of sectarianism of the kind referred to in the question. Following from these discussions, I am assured that tangible new steps to tackle sectarianism and racism in sport are currently being reviewed by the Scottish Government and I am hopeful that the proposed measures will help to improve the situation. The Consulate General will continue to monitor closely developments in this regard.

No county in Ireland suffered in the Famine, as did my father’s county.

“We’re from Mayo god help us!” was the strap line of the Famine. The impoverished West is, in the main, where the million starved.

Therefore it isn’t surprising that once this story broke in the media that people in Mayo would be approaching their political representatives to find out what the Irish government was going to do about this outrage.

Mayo TD Michael Ring was also contacted by constituents outraged by this racist song, like Alan Shatter, Tommy Broughan, and Joe McHugh; the Westport man submitted a written parliamentary question to Foreign Minister Micheal Martin.

Question No. 334

Parliamentary Question – Dept Details
To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs if he will raise an issue regarding
lyrics of a song (details supplied) with his counterpart in Scotland; and when he will make contact with this person.
  Michael Ring.

For WRITTEN answer on Tuesday, 4th November, 2008.

Ref No: 37921/08

Song is called “Famine Song”. This is being sung at Celtic vs. Rangers
games in Scotland. People were at a match recently where it was sung and
they were deeply upset and concerned by it as they felt it was very racist.
They were extremely offended by the words of this song

REPLY
I am aware of the on-going issue of sectarian behaviour, including the
singing of offensive songs, at Scottish premier league games and of the
distress that this can cause.
Since its opening in 1998, the Consulate General of Ireland in Edinburgh
has maintained a wide-ranging dialogue with the Scottish Government on
issues. In recent weeks the Consul General has been in close contact with
senior officials in the Scottish Government in relation to incidents of
sectarianism of the kind referred to in the question. Following from these
discussions, I am assured that tangible new steps to tackle sectarianism
and racism in sport are currently being reviewed by the Scottish
Government. I am also aware of ongoing efforts by the football authorities
in Scotland to discourage this kind of behaviour. I am hopeful that the
proposed measures will help to improve the situation. The Consulate General
will continue to monitor closely, and to keep me apprised of developments.

 

If these parliamentary questions prove little else is that the Department of Foreign Affairs currently do not consider the Famine Song is a manifestation of racism.

Given the influence of revisionism within the Dublin state over the last thirty years then this should really come as no surprise to anyone.

There was another political development from Mayo. A man in Achill contacted Marian Harkin MEP. Ironically Achill is one of the few places where people had a fighting chance of surviving the Famine because the sea provided food to the island folk in those dark years. Ms. Harkin has developed a reputation for tackling various issues of discrimination and equality during here time as an MEP.

As a member of the European parliament she sought a European route to deal with TFS.

Marian Harkin MEP contacted UEFA apropos TFS on the 10^th November writing directly to Michel Platini. Her letter to the UEFA president stated that she was concerned about reports of “racist chants from the Rangers supporters.” She wanted to know what UEFA could do about this, as she was concerned that such racism “can escalate out of control.”

The reply from UEFA’s Peter Limacher (Head of Disciplinary Services) on November 20^th was prompt and concise.

Limacher stated that as it was a domestic match that was being complained about then it was a matter for the Scottish football authorities. To this end Ms. Harkin’s letter has been passed onto the relevant Scottish bodies.

One wonders if Marian Harkin MEP will receive a similar letter from Scotland to that Tommy Broughan received from Gordon Smith?

“Famine song? Racism? Rangers? Yes we have a big problem with Celtic and Rangers sectarianism…”

Enclosed with the letter to Marian Harkin from UEFA was a copy of the judgment in 2006 about the behaviour of Rangers supporters in Spain at the Villarreal game.

It was, perhaps, a diplomatic UEFA way of saying to the Irish MEP:

“ look, we know there is a problem here.  We believe you, we have taken action against Rangers in the past and we will be ready for them next time.”

It was, of course, UEFA, which put “The Billy Boys” on a list of banned songs.

After I had received copies of this correspondence between Marian Harkin and UEFA I interviewed Marian to further explore the issue with her.

I put the question to her that the song was, according to those in Scotland who defended the song, merely a manifestation of ironic humour, satirising a mawkish pretend Irishness of some Celtic fans.

“No, no, this is horrible stuff, vile, utterly vile.”

Of those who wrote the Famine song and sing the first few lines at football matches her opinions were equally unequivocal:

“Their intentions are very clear to me. They wish to diminish people.”

It is highly unlikely that anyone in County Mayo would view TFS as “humour”.

“We’re from Mayo God help us!” was the strap line of the Famine story in the grim years of the Irish holocaust.

At least, however, the TFS issue is now on the Irish political radar.

I had commented to Matt Cooper of Today FM’s “The Last Word” that the story of TFS wasn’t the song itself but the official inaction in Scotland at a sporting and political level that had, quite understandably, led those who sang TFS to consider that they could do so with impunity.

Slowly that political inaction is being chipped away.

TFS suggested that the Irish community in Scotland should “go home”.

Wriggling on the hook of public scrutiny and facing police action those who initially sought to defend TFS dismissed those who condemned the song for its racist content as missing the point that the song was merely “banter”.

TFS controversy has, I believe, served the public good. It has stripped bare the nature of the Ibrox belief system. When the issue was presented as one of “sectarianism” then Rangers apologists could look at the number of Catholics signed by RFC since 1989, a catholic captain and a catholic manager. That was progress. However the ban on Catholics playing for Rangers was only ever a handy way of excluding the Irish Catholics who the Rangers sub- culture despise and hate. Hatred of the native Irish Catholics and their descendants is what defines the Rangers sub-culture.

At time of writing there, is on remand from Kilmarnock sheriff court, one of the queen’s loyal underclass.

At Kilmarnock Sheriff Court the week before Eoin Ryan’s visit to Scotland, a 20-year-old Rangers fan was found guilty of committing a breach of the peace – aggravated by religious and racial prejudice – during Rangers 4-0 victory over Killie on November 9.

A Rangers fan had been arrested at Rugby Park for singing the chorus of TFS.

Sheriff Iona McDonald stated that even singing the chorus of TFS rather than the entire song was still racist.“That, in itself, is a racist sentiment,” said Sherrif McDonald.

Result!

I started writing and broadcasting about the Famine Song in September.

I largely did so because those in Scotland who have sports columns did not seem to grasp the importance of this issue.

Hopefully the courts will deal with this issue now as and when required.

As for the soccer authorities in Scotland they have failed to act.

UEFA know of the “famine song” and when Rangers are in European competition next season the Ibrox club can expect a far different response from Europe’s governing body than the “Rangers men” who run Scottish football.