Why the beast of bigotry has bared its teeth once more ; 'The police have abysmally failed to control the crowd manifestations of bigotry at football in recent years'

IN recent years Scottish politicians of all parties have tried tosell the nation abroad as the land of the Scottish Enlightenment,that remarkable flowering of intellect and culture in the 18thcentury which, alongside similar developments in France, the Germanstates and England, created the philosophical foundations of themodern world as we know it today.

At the very heart of that extraordinary phenomenon was tolerance,the capacity to present radically different views among thinkers, toargue passionately and robustly about complex issues, but never,never to descend into division, hate and enduring animosity.

Today, sadly, people elsewhere may have a somewhat different viewof our "enlightened" country. The disgraceful events of recent dayshave not been concealed within Scotland as a dark national secret.Instead, when the story of the letter bombs being sent to themanager of Celtic Football Club and some of its supporters brokelast week, the news rapidly spread around the world.

For the historian this particular phase in the age-old saga ofScottish sectarianism is both painful and puzzling. For one thing,there has been remarkable progress in this area over the past 40years or so. Conceptually, I tend to see the problem as twofold innature: structural sectarianism, or labour-market discrimination,and attitudinal - in more simple terms, bigotry and prejudice,residing in the mind and the emotions, but not necessarily causingfundamental damage to the life-chances of fellow citizens.

The historical evidence is now overwhelming that Scots of IrishRoman Catholic ancestry experienced the former type down to the1970s, particularly in the engineering trades of the old industries,banking, insurance, law and accountancy, and especially in westcentral Scotland.

It was one reason, among several, why Irish Scots, at least thoseaged 50 or below, only achieved occupational parity with theirfellow Scots in the 1990s, virtually a full century after theirethnic cousins, the American Irish. That structural sectarianism isnow more or less consigned to the past. In 2004, for instance, onlyeight from 8000 employment tribunal cases were brought in Scotlandunder the UK Employment (Religion or Belief Act) of 2003, and a merefour of these had the slightest sectarian connotation. This is anachievement to be celebrated. Further, through strategicinitiatives, legal action and educational inputs, ScottishGovernments have tried to eradicate the second symptom of thedisease, namely attitudinal discrimination. They have been joined intheir campaigns by the efforts of Celtic and Rangers, generally seenas the two sporting conduits for this kind of unpleasantness.

Here, however, there has been much more limited success. Even ifthe recent criminality can be regarded as the exceptional acts of aderanged person or persons, there is plenty of other evidence notsimply that the sectarian beast has not yet been slain, but that inthe last few years it has surprisingly managed to recover a newvitality.

This includes the continuing and widespread incidence ofsectarian-aggravated breach of the peace under Section 74 of theCriminal Justice (Scotland) 2003; unrelenting and extensivesectarian chanting at certain football matches, usually ignored bythe forces of law and order, as many thousands of fans commit publicand brazen acts of illegality in full view of the cameras; the trulyvile posting on various internet sites; the claim by senior Catholicchurchmen, including Cardinal Keith O'Brien in 2006, that the rootcause of the problem is not "sectarianism" but "blatant anti-Catholicism"; continued criticism of denominational schools, despitetheir impartially acknowledged academic quality; and the absence ofsuch attacks in other countries where such schools are also common.

All of this, strangely, is taking place against a background ofever more "mixed" marriages and partnerships in Scotland, the end ofthe age-old Catholic fear of Scottish nationalism, benignecumenicism between faith communities, the rapid erosion oftraditional church-going and the convergence of Catholics andProtestants in both labour markets and occupational structures.

Yet it is not widely known within our country that Scotlandremains the only jurisdiction in the world to which Irish Catholicsand Protestants migrated which has an anti-sectarian strategy in2011 because it is deemed essential that such a policy should stillbe in place.

The evidence is not yet available to fully explain the conundrum,so the first plea is for more academic research on a controversywhich could now deal serious harm to the reputation of this nationacross the world.

For instance, if the Catholic Church believes that anti-Catholicism is a root cause, then the Crown Office shouldimmediately publish its data on sectarian- related criminality 2004 -2011, including the religious background of both perpetrators andvictims. Not to have done so thus far is in the current context agrave dereliction of public duty. If this problem is ever to betackled effectively, absolute intellectual honesty and evidentialtransparency must be at the heart of the endeavour.

But despite the gaps in knowledge, some reasoned speculations arestill possible. There seems to me to be a veritable cocktail ofcomplex influences since the 1980s. A hugely expanded ScottishCatholic professional class is no longer prepared to keep a lowprofile and ignore perceived slight and prejudice. The de-industrialisation of many areas of lowland Scotland has spawned ageneration of young men in the post-religious era seeking anidentity.

Sadly, they have few other possibilities other than atavisticloyalty to high-profile football teams. Rangers, long theestablishment soccer team in Scotland, is in serious trouble withEuropean football authorities and still faces massive financialchallenges. Their support base is not likely to be discomfited onlyby this but perhaps also by the threat to their Unionist identity asthe SNP remains a strong force in Scottish politics and devolutionmatures to "devolution-max".

Again, one academic commentator writing in 2000, himselfsympathetic to the Rangers cause, described the perceptions amongsome Protestants of "the relative coherence and purposefulness ofthe Catholic community and the decline symbolically and materiallyof Presbyterianism in Scotland". If correct, are we seeing here areaction to this development? Certainly the Roman Catholic Churchhas never been more vocal (and influential?) in Scottish public lifethan at any time since the Reformation of the 16th century.

Finally, the police have abysmally failed to control the crowdmanifestations of bigotry at football in recent years. The legalpowers are unambiguously in place. They have, however, rarely beenenforced systematically inside the grounds, which has inevitablytended to give licence to the chanting of songs which are not onlyoffensive but downright illegal, beamed into the homes of the nationand viewers abroad. If more action had been taken sooner, at leastthe public display of rampant bigotry would have been controlled. Ifthe events of recent days have had at least one effect, surely itwill be that those besmirching the name of Scotland will in futurefeel the full and unrelenting force of the law of the land.

Tom Devine is Sir William Fraser Professor of Scottish Historyand Palaeography at the University of Edinburgh and an academicadviser on anti-sectarian strategies to previous Scottishadministrations.

By Tom Devine