Celtic: What's it all about?

The fallout from the Leigh Griffiths affair continues apace and I've spent the day batting away accusations of being an apologist for racism or being "stupid." I don't discount the possibility, but the person who alleged this stupidity on my part was unable to explain herself.

Now what could it be I wrote yesterday that merits being called an apologist for racism?

Could it be the part where I said Leigh Griffiths had stepped out of line?

Or the part where I said he should be fined to the maximum allowed (if found guilty after a proper investigation)?

Maybe it was the bit where I described the refugee chant as "stupid," "mindless" and "nasty?"

Perhaps it's because I said refugees should always be welcomed because we have a duty to provide a safe haven for the oppressed?

Or more likely it was because I do not consider the chant to be racist at all. You see, to defend anyone against the accusation of witchcraft... oops, sorry, racism, is to be guilty of it yourself. It stands to reason, doesn't it? Racism is bad, and can't possibly be defended or condoned so... er... did I suggest it is okay? Answers on a postcard...

Anyway, some of the criticism has got me thinking. Particularly the charge that no Celtic fan, on account of our history, should tolerate a song calling someone a "f****** refugee."

I actually agree with that statement and have said Leigh Griffiths should be punished if he sang it. But here's something that may be controversial to say - Celtic was not founded by refugees.

The founders of Celtic were, to a man, citizens of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

When they left Ireland for Glasgow they crossed no international frontiers or borders. They required no special permission to enter, remain, work and live in Scotland.

They were migrants, not immigrants, no different from the Highlanders who likewise streamed into Glasgow throughout the 19th Century. The Donegal dialect spoken by most of the Irish in Glasgow was closer to the Gaelic of the Highlanders than it was to the dialect of Irish spoken in Kerry.

Of course, as if it needs to be stressed, this is not to lessen the inhumanity of the treatment meted out to the Irish by successive British governments. They were driven from Ireland by poverty and hunger, but unlike those who went to America for example, they were not refugees.

The point I'm trying to get to is, as we're told no Celtic fan should condone calling anyone a f****** refugee;" what is Celtic all about?

There seem to be various factions within our support laying claim to the heart and soul of Celtic and suggesting anyone who doesn't agree with them is not a "real" Celtic fan.

I alluded yesterday to a leftist, Atheist wing of our support, who make various claims about the views of the founders of Celtic, which no "real" Celtic fan should deviate from.

To listen to them, you'd think Brother Walfrid and Co. sat in St Mary's church hall quoting Marx and Engels at each other, founding a football club in order to facilitate the redistribution of wealth and impose equality of outcome on society, while planning an early campaign to redefine marriage to include same-sex couples.

To me, Celtic is about football. Preferably pure, beautiful, inventive football, but you can't always get what you want.

That's why I refuse to join in the hounding of Neil Lennon whenever we only beat St Johnstone by a single goal, or (horror of horrors) get knocked out of a cup competition before the final - something that apparently never happened to Celtic before Rangers went bust.

Another thing Celtic is about to me, is the Scots-Irish experience. As Tommy Burns said, "you're playing for a people and a cause."

Celtic is club and country rolled into one for me. The club represents the aspirations and dreams of all the children of Dark Roisin in Scotland.

Celtic is also about the underdog. We naturally side with the oppressed against the oppressor because we've been there ourselves, and in the not too distant past.

That's why when I see an enraged mob turning on Leigh Griffiths my sympathy is naturally with him. I want to examine exactly what it is he's accused of and I want him treated fairly, not tied to a stool and dunked in a pond to see if he floats.

Now Celtic may be all, some, or none of those things to you. Whichever it is, that's fine by me, you've every right to support Celtic for whatever reason you do.

What I can't accept though, is any insistence that your vision of Celtic is the only valid one and any attempt to marginalise and drive out opinions that dissent from your own.

There's one thing which can't be argued with though, and that is the ethos that made Celtic what it was from the beginning: the Catholic faith.

The first circular released by the club in 1887 makes that clear. It oozes Catholicity.

http://www.thecelticwiki.com/page/The+first+circular.

I wonder what Brother Walfrid would have made of Leigh Griffiths?

Here we have a young man who has possibly (because the video is far from clear) joined in with a chant calling another player a "f****** refugee." Brother Walfrid would definitely not have approved.

Would this man of God then, have insisted on Leigh Griffiths being banished into the wilderness, career in ruins, as our lefty, anti-racist crusaders insist he should be?

I can't say for certain, but as a Marist Brother, I feel sure he would have been guided by Christ, who when asked how often you should forgive your brother who has sinned against you, said not seven times, but seventy times seven times.

I'm fully aware that many of my fellow Celtic fans do not share that Catholic faith of Walfrid's and  mine, and that's just fine. You are no less of a Celtic fan because of it.

But who can lay claim to be acting more in tune with what Celtic is all about when dealing with a Prodigal Son like Leigh Griffiths - the hang 'im high anti-racist brigade, or those of us who say he deserves a second chance (not to mention a fair trial)?

Leigh Griffiths and a Modern Witch Hunt

The videos which have emerged in the past week of Leigh Griffiths joining in a pub sing-along with other Hibernian fans has revealed a self-righteousness among some Celtic fans which is deeply unattractive.

A witch hunt, and I use that term advisedly, has ensued resulting in large numbers of Celtic fans calling for a young working class man to lose his job, over what in the great scheme of things amounts to little more than a minor misdemeanour.

Let's forget for a moment the role of the reprehensible Daily Record in this tawdry affair. The mob are dancing to their tune, but that is to ignore the indisputable fact that Leigh Griffiths has stepped out of line.

As a professional footballer, it probably wasn't the best idea to attend the recent Hearts-Hibs derby match with his old mates and hang out drinking in his old haunts all day.

He should be able to do that, but the reality of the situation is that he was putting himself in a situation where there was the great potential for just such an embarrassing incident to happen.

I think we can all accept that the first chant Griffiths took part in was naughty, but essentially harmless. He was rightly fined by Celtic for his actions which caused embarrassment for the club.

Then, conveniently, a second video emerged, this time showing Griffiths possibly (because it's virtually impossible to tell) chanting the words, "Rudi Skacel is a f****** refugee."

While most Celtic fans had no problem whatsoever with the first chant, this second pushes the hot-button 'racism' issue and as a result a large number of fans have turned on the player.

This is where I have a problem. The song itself is indefensible. It is nasty, distasteful, unpleasant. Leigh Griffiths should not have been singing it, in the same sense that no one really should be singing it.

The reason that the mob has turned on Leigh Griffiths though is not that he sang a nasty, distasteful song about Rudi Skacel. The reason so many have turned on him is that the chant is, apparently, racist.

It has been compared to the 'Famine Song,' which actually is objectively racist - it targets people of a specific ethnic group and invites them to 'go home.'

The 'refugee' chant on the other hand makes no mention of its target (Skacel) being of any particular racial or ethnic group. Neither does it mention his nationality.

A refugee can be anyone who has taken a particular course of action, ie, fleeing persecution in their homeland. To be a refugee is not to have any innate characteristic. Apart from having taken that particular course of action, refugees share no other common characteristics, race, ethnicity or nationality.

As a Catholic, I believe that refugees should always be accepted, nay welcomed, in this country, no questions asked. We have a duty to offer protection and safety to those in need. As I'm often told online by the increasingly leftist, Atheist wing of our support though, I have no right to force my beliefs onto others. Apparently that's their job.

Rudi Skacel is a citizen of the Czech Republic. As an EU citizen, he has the full right to live and work in the UK. He has not fled persecution in his homeland. The chant is patently in error about Skacel's status.

By the same token, no one from the Czech Republic living in the UK is a refugee.

At this point, the mob throw their hands up in exasperation and say, "Of course it's racist, why do you think they're calling Skacel a 'f****** refugee?'"

Well the answer to that is, I don't know and neither does anyone else who has not sung it. We are into the realms of speculation now.

Could it be that thousands of Hibs fans think Skacel actually is a refugee? Possibly they do. Could it be that thousands of Hibs fans hate refugees? Maybe, but it still doesn't necessarily make them racists. Not nice people for sure (if that's the case), but not racist.

I don't discount these possibilities, but here's another one - it is motivated by the age old desire of the football fan to denigrate a rival player in song.

I'm old enough to have stood in the Jungle and belted out a song about Ian Durrant which would provoke similar howls of outrage from the self-righteous if it was repeated today.

I stood on the old Celtic end in January 1988 surrounded by thousands of fellow fans directing monkey chants and worse at Mark Walters, while people closer to the pitch threw bananas at him. I saw someone outside the ground that day dressed in a gorilla suit. Should we all have been banned for life from Celtic Park, banished from the Celtic family forever? Or did we all just need a good kick up the backside and told to wise up?

At the turn of the millennium, the supporters bus I travelled on used to while away the long hours of our trips to Celtic park by singing an offensive song about Michael Mols' wife and her, let's just say, not exactly model looks.

In recent seasons, we've heard songs about Charlie Adams' sister and even this season, the song about one of the de Boer twins' nocturnal (presumably) activities has resurfaced.

All of those chants were/are nasty in their way, but I don't remember many people being up in arms about them (the Walters incident apart).

So what makes Griffiths' refugee chant different is the alleged racist connotations.

Griffiths is guilty of nothing more than joining in with a distasteful chant with other fans of the team he supports.

It is a chant Hibs fans have been doing for several years, yet never once have I read any condemnation of it in the Scottish MSM. Hibernian has never been cited for their fans chanting it by the SFA, and yet suddenly the Daily Record realises it is racist when Leigh Griffiths is caught singing it? Not forgetting that it is far from conclusive that Griffiths actually sings it on the video that has emerged.

If Leigh Griffiths has chanted this song, he has done wrong and should be sanctioned appropriately, but let's keep things in perspective.

The baying for his blood by many Celtic fans at the moment is the result of a dubious charge of racism, leading to an almost Pavlovian response. It is a perfect opportunity for the enlightened chattering classes to attack the unenlightened working class football fan.

Anyone who dares to defend Griffiths against this charge of racism is attacked for being racist themselves. It is becoming a modern witch hunt, with the accused already deemed guilty as charged before the accusation has been examined in the light of a rational investigation.

Do Hibs fans hate refugees? Has their Rudi Skacel chant resulted in mobs of Hibs fans attacking refugees in the Capital? Are Czechs or other central Europeans at increased risk of assault in Edinburgh compared to the rest of the UK?

Or is it just a stupid, mindless, nasty verbal attack on a rival player, the likes of which is chanted by football fans of every team all over the world?

Leigh Griffiths was rightly fined by Celtic for his Sunday sing-a-long to the Hearts going bust chant. I don't know if Celtic were aware of the Skacel chant when this was dealt with, but it happened on the same day. Griffiths has not gone out after that and been caught doing the same thing again.

I'm also suspicious of any suggestion that the videos emerged separately. This has the appearance of a drip-feed of revelations, timed to cause maximum damage.

If Celtic were unaware of the Skacel chant when Griffiths was originally fined, that fine should be increased to the maximum allowed.

What I find unpalatable though is this insistence, this demand, that Griffiths must be sacked. That a young man's career should be ruined simply because of a dubious charge of racism.

That would not be justice, but vindictiveness, forced by a modern Inquisition determined to drive out anyone whose views do not conform to the prevailing liberal consensus.