Hello, hello, it’s time for you to go

Ian Bell calls for a police crackdown to help David Murray end bigotry at Ibrox

In parts of the north of Ireland, among those quaint communities where kerb stones are still painted a tasteful red, white and blue, a new strategy has evolved over the last decade or so.

Loyalism, they tell you these days, is in no sense bigotry. It is, instead, “cultural”, an embattled tradition that cannot be understood by an outsider. It is entitled, they say, to the same respect as any version of Irish nationalism. Intellectually, the tactic amounts to Ulster tit for tat. The Taigs have been pulling the “oppressed community” stuff for years, they hint, so why can’t we do the same?

South Africa’s whites used to deploy that argument. Italian fascists and Spanish racists – devoted fans to the last creep – can give you chapter and verse on the subject of their abiding loyalties to club, country, culture and race. Do we buy it?

My old, departed friend Dominic Behan used to love winding up Prods and Papes alike by explaining that King Billy fought at the Boyne with the Vatican’s support. Dom didn’t expect to educate anyone, but he enjoyed overthrowing their preconceptions. Their “traditions”, in his book, were the fruits of mere ignorance.

Which brings us, finally, to Glasgow Rangers Football Club, David Murray, decency, and culture. “Billy Boys” is not a song that has ever bothered me much. I grew up with that, and with “The Sash”, and with “The Soldier’s Song”. Fenian blood and the rattle of the Thompson gun: come to Glasgow, bring the kids, take in a game.

But I also followed the hallowed (supposedly) Drumcree march, once upon a time, in a year when tensions were high and there was more orange around the cramped streets than the average retina can handle. Later, I was in Omagh, bare hours after “pure” Irish republicanism had ripped the heart from an innocent country town. Football matters.

It matters because of the things that can be attached to a sport. At Ibrox, “a section” of the support believe that they, and only they, are the true emotional owners of the club. They will sing “Billy Boys” precisely because they are asked to do no such thing. They will celebrate hatred because such – or so the smarter examples like to argue – is their tradition.

Put this on the record: Murray has done as much as is humanly possible to eradicate a disease, and has done so for two reasons. First, as I believe absolutely, he is offended personally by certain of the bigots who pay for their season tickets. Secondly, as the custodian of a business, he understands reality. “Billy Boys” is unspeakable, but these days it is also utterly illegal.

Uefa will no longer stand for it, as Ibrox was informed last week. The Scottish Football Association, having discovered a spare testicle, will no longer stand for it. The Scottish Executive has created a law that could scarcely be more plain. The rest of us, spared a Glaswegian heritage, can no longer be bothered, meanwhile, with the ape-descended creatures who claim to chant on behalf of Scottish football.

Murray’s “Wee Blue Book” of alternative Rangers songs will find few takers, I suspect. The chairman’s warning, pre-season, that bigots are putting the very future of the club at risk was hugely important, but still liable to be taken as a challenge by the knuckle-draggers. “Pride Over Prejudice” is a laudable slogan, yet it contains an implicit problem: for certain Rangers fans, prejudice is the source of all their pride.

Jack McConnell and the Scottish Executive plan a second “summit on bigotry”, or so I hear. Everyone from the Old Firm to the Orange Lodge to the Roman Catholic hierarchy will turn up to speak reasonably on the subject of unreasonable behaviour. Each will say that religious hatred is deplorable. As ever, the devoted haters will not be invited to comment.

What do we do? More importantly, how do we do it? Uefa’s statement last week was verbose but important. “Any national association or club,” it said, “whose supporters engage in behaviour which insults the human dignity of a person or group of persons, by whatever means, including grounds of colour, race, religion or ethnic origin, will incur a minimum £13,000 penalty.”

The joke is failed by its punch-line, obviously. The subs’ bench at Ibrox could settle such a fine just by emptying their pockets. Murray has recognised, nevertheless, that the “human dignity” issue can no longer be ignored. For him, it seems, this has become personal. For him, as an entrepreneur without a recent peer in Scotland, bigotry is also bad for business. Very bad.

The solution will cost him a shilling or two. It will also call into question the strategies of the Glasgow polis, whose fear of “a riot” is laughable. For all that, the obvious tactic is not unknown to coppers in that fair city: lift them.

If the song begins, lift them. If trouble ensues, lift them. In my bruised experience, if it really matters, the spiritual heirs of the Billy Boys are not the toughest you will ever meet. Their opposite numbers at Parkhead, with their own line in blood libels and hatred, have an equivalent tendency to run for cover when things become serious. Lift them.

It’s not sophisticated, I grant. For a week or three Mr Murray may have to shell out for a doubling, at minimum, of the police presence in his fine stadium. Better that, though, than “ejection from the stadium”, “withdrawal of season tickets”, and the usual polite sanctions. If Murray is serious – and I truly believe he is – we can coin a little phrase: get it done, and get them done.

If there is real pride in Rangers, allow no prejudice. The police in Glasgow have obligations, under the law of the land, to safeguard public safety. Hold them to that duty. Bigots threaten us all, in football and far beyond.

Hello, hello? Are you listening behind the goal? Time’s up.

Taken from the Sunday Herald