Take a Liberty (Scotland): September 2011

Statement from Take a Liberty (Scotland) to Celtic and Rangers Supporters Trusts, Organisations, Fanzines, Bloggers and Supporters.

To register your support for the statement email s.waiton@btopenworld.com

The protest by the Green Brigade opposing the Offensive Behaviour at Football Bill at Celtic Park is to be supported. The opposition to the Bill, to police surveillance and to the over regulation and criminalisation of Celtic fans was brilliantly organised and had a significant impact at the Inverness game.

In the Green Brigade statement the point is made that the proposed legislation denies football fans the right to freedom of expression, something that is already a problem for many fans.

The Green Brigade rightly called on all Celtic fans to take a stand against the disproportionate policing of supporters at games. They are right to call for this, Celtic fans are already being arrested and charged for little more than singing songs and if the Offensive Behaviour Bill goes through the likelihood is that policing will become more intense.

Many Celtic fans, and especially the Green Brigade believe that their songs are political, not sectarian, and should not be targeted by the police, but that is not the point.

The point is that NO FAN SHOULD BE IMPRISONED FOR SINGING regardless of what the song is about.

Rangers and Celtic fans may dislike what each other represent and sing, they may even hate each others’ traditions but do they, and do the supporters associations think their ‘enemy’ supporters should be locked up for singing songs they find offensive?

If they do they should come out and say so.

If not they should recognise that they have a lot more in common than they might like to think – they both have an interest in supporting freedom of expression at football.

We should all demand tolerance.

Tolerance does not mean we are ‘non-judgemental’. It is all about judging. We should say what we think about one another, about what their fans and what our own fans are saying. That is what a free, tolerant society is all about. Genuine tolerance means we judge, say what we think, but also accept that others who we disagree with must also have that freedom without the threat of arrest.

I MAY HATE WHAT YOU SAY
BUT I WILL DEFEND TO THE DEATH
YOUR RIGHT TO SAY IT

If Rangers and Celtic supporters, bloggers and associations came out in support, not of their own right to sing what they like, but their opponents’ right to do so, the case against the Bill would be strengthened immeasurably.

There are two options open to Celtic and Rangers fans and associations, either tolerate one another (while hating each other if you so wish) and defeat this Bill and start to change the way football fans are being targeted and criminalised. Or remain in your shell, defend yourself and give two fingers to your ‘enemy’ and watch as the Bill is passed and football fans across Scotland are regulated and imprisoned even more than they already are.

Stuart Waiton

Sign the petition at:

http://www.petitiononline.com/1967a/petition.html

The Offensive Behaviour in Football Bill is a ‘Snobs’ law’

Abertay University academic and founder of Take a Liberty ( Scotland ) Stuart

Waiton is giving evidence today (6^th September) at the Scottish Parliament

Justice Committee addressing the Offensive Behaviour in Football Bill.

Alongside Dr Waiton will be Pat Nevin, Graham Spiers and Professor Graham Walker.

Waiton will be arguing that this bill has been driven by a form of political

grandstanding that is more about publicity than politics. What he labels a

‘snobs law’, Dr Waiton believes will undermine the moral legitimacy of the

law and help to create a new division amongst football fans who will spend

their time telling tales on one another for ‘offensive’ singing at matches

or blogging online.

The statement that Stuart Waiton hopes to present to the committee meeting

is printed below:-

The first thing to notice about this bill is that it specifically targets

football fans and nobody else. It appears that this creature ‘the football

fan’ can be treated as somehow different from everybody else, or as George

Orwell might have said, ‘Four rugby fans good. Two football fans bad’.

In this respect the bill follows on in the fine old ‘crusty’ conservative

tradition of fear and loathing of the ‘great unwashed’ who attend matches,

and continues in the vein of criminalising these fans, using up incredible

amounts of police time watching and listening out for ‘rowdies’ shouting and

singing linguistically incorrect songs.

Interconnected to this old form of snobbish conservatism, here we find a new

form of hyper intolerant conservativism being expressed through the

‘tolerant’ political, media and cultural elites. Illustrating the

fantastical world of this new ‘tolerant’ elite, Roseanna Cunningham,

Minister for Community Safety and Legal Affairs argues that sectarianism is

undermining the very fabric of a tolerant Scotland – a tolerant Scotland

that she believes can be enforced by imprisoning football fans for singing

offensive songs for up to five years!

At one level of course football and football fans behaviour should be

understood as different. Where else do you find grown men and women

shouting, swearing, pointing, singing, wearing ridiculously coloured

clothes, hats and scarves, jumping up and down hugging the nearest stranger

with tear filled eyes as part of an impassioned tribal display of hate, love

and impreganable loyalty.

This is football, it is unlike any other public arena, and up until

relatively recently we have been worldly enough and indeed genuinely

TOLERANT enough to realise this fact. Indeed for many, there is no need to

‘tolerate’ football fan’s behaviour, because the passion, gallows humour,

and even the offensiveness on display in football grounds is what helps make

it the greatest game in the world.

While this bill is focused on ‘sectarian’ behaviour at football it does in

fact target any form of offensive behaviour that can be said to potentially

lead to public order offences. Depending upon your interpretation this could

result in almost any rowdy fan being arrested and imprisoned for behaviour

that has been going on at matches for generations.

Some people clearly will be offended by certain songs and behaviour at

football matches that have previously been outside the remit of the law. But

there is a problem. Part and parcel of fans behaviour towards one another

and to the opposing team IS TO BE OFFENSIVE. Offence is part of football fan

behaviour - you may not like it, but that does not mean it is or should be

criminalised. I am offended every time I sit down at a ‘ West End ’ dinner

party and listen to the prejudices about the white working classes who it is

assumed are on the verge of a racist or sectarian pogrom but I don’t expect

these hate filled intolerant individuals to have laws used to silence them.

It is worth bearing in mind that within the pantomime of football what

appears to be sectarian is not necessarily all it appears, as fans go home

to their Catholic wives, Protestant drinking mates and nondenominational

neighbours. The reality is that Scotland , especially for the younger

generations, is a largely modern secular country where religious ideology

and dogma has little or no dynamic. This is in fact why it is almost always

football that is targeted as the place of sectarianism, because it doesn’t

exist anywhere else. And if it doesn’t exist anywhere else, the reality is

that it doesn’t exist in football either.

In other words, what we are witnessing at Celtic and Rangers games is an

ersatz form of 90 minute sectarianism. It is a tribalism based on football

not religion, despite the religious association of both teams.

The political grandstanding by Alex Salmond is not the act of a conviction

politician, but the opposite, the act of a politician who has few genuine

convictions, big ideas or issues that can carry the people of Scotland .

Sectarianism has consequently become a safe moralising issue (after all, who

argues FOR sectarianism?) which feeds into the trend to ban, regulate and

control more and more areas of everyday life.

Unfortunately, one of the worst possible outcomes of the proposed Football

Bill is that it will actually create a new breed of thin skinned chronically

offended football fan; a new ‘sectarian’ divide of fans who trawl fanzines

and monitor the terraces to find opposing fans who they can report to the

police.

A recent opinion poll suggests the Scottish public are against sectarianism

and rightly so. It does not however explain what people understand by

‘sectarian behaviour’ nor does it suggest that most Scots think fans should

be locked up for five years for being offensive at football games. On the

other hand, if the poll is to be believed, the ‘fact’ that, ‘85% of Scots

believe that sectarianism should be a criminal offensive’ is not something

that Roseanna Cunningham should be excited about, as she appears to be, for

this would reflect a profound loss of tolerance within Scotland – a nation

once built upon the Enlightened and Liberal traditions of John Locke and

John Stuart Mill.

Making ideas or thoughts into crimes is the height of intolerance and the

hallmark of a profoundly authoritarian regime.

As it happens, with much that is associated with the issue of sectarianism,

one suspects that this survey obscures more than it reveals about a topic

that has become a moralising football for the various conservative forces in

Scotland . More interesting than the dubious figures in the survey is the way

in which Cunningham appears to be unaware of the anti-democratic, illiberal

and authoritarian consequences of arguing that certain thoughts or ideas

should be illegal.

Ideas we disagree with cannot be policed out of existence. But let’s get

real and recognise that for the vast majority of fans, even Celtic and

Rangers fans, their shouts, screams, songs and insults are not part of an

impending sectarian pogrom, but part of the pantomime that is FOOTBALL.

The Offensive Behaviour Bill should be kicked into touch.

Sign the petition at:

http://www.petitiononline.com/1967a/petition.html

Friday, 30 September 2011

Sign the petition against the 'Anti-sectarian Bill'

'Sectarianism Bill' debated in the Scottish Parliament

Tuesday, 27 September 2011

Celtic And Rangers must unite to beat the ‘Sectarianism Bill’

Wednesday, 14 September 2011

Sign the petition against the 'Anti-sectarian Bill'