This is Joe’s recent column in the Sindo
BBC Northern Ireland’s newsreader Jo Scott introduced the jubilant tidings on Newsline last Sunday night with the words: “Well, supporters of Glasgow Rangers came out onto the Shankill Road in Belfast tonight to mark their team winning the league title in Scotland. Rangers became the Scottish premier league champions for the first time in 10 years after Celtic drew with Dundee United today. (Big smile) Here’s Stephen Watson.”
Cue huge crowds roaring and waving flares on the Shankill, blocking the road and singing songs. The songs that were being chanted all over social media footage, including ‘We are, We are, We are the Billy Boys, We’re up to our knees in Fenian blood surrender or you’ll die, for we are the Billy Billy Boys’, were not used on the BBC’s clips, but sure it was all a bit of harmless fun anyway.
To be fair, and in the interest of ‘balance’ there was one brief mention of a thing called Covid-19 (“some fans flouted the guidelines to celebrate the success”) but only a Roman Catholic bigot would object to the celebrations. The presenter gushed: “It was a 55th domestic league title for Rangers, a world record. It’s been a remarkable journey by the Glasgow football club,” etc etc.
Gary came on, a local Rangers supporter. “I don’t think any other club in the world could have come through what Rangers came through and live to survive, and indeed go right back to the top of Scottish football.” I thought there only were two teams in Scotland. As Billy Connolly said once, “I was an adult before I realised that they were not called Hamilton Academicals Nil.”
The piece ended with the words, “The celebrations by Rangers supporters will be long.” Before handing back to the presenter who smiled again and that was that.
There were of course, no arrests. It would be churlish indeed if the PSNI were to spoil the party because of a few thousand bad apples. Indeed, the only surprise was that they didn’t join in, throwing their hats in the air and letting off a flare or two to celebrate the defeat of those pesky fenians.
PSNI Superintendent Nigel Henry said the next day that “officers received reports of a street party and flares and fireworks being set off on the Shankill Road, as well as fireworks in the Ballysillan Road area.” Which he said was “disappointing”.
Nigel, I have a question. On a scale of one to 10, how disappointed are you? As disappointed as you were when your officers arrested Mark Sykes last month for a breach of Covid advice as he laid flowers along with four other relatives to commemorate the 29th anniversary of the Seán Graham Massacre? A video taken by a neighbour shows Mark holding flowers as the PSNI cuff and arrest him. Mark’s brother-in-law Peter Magee was one of five people murdered in the 1992 massacre. Peter was only 18-years-old. Mark himself was shot seven times and miraculously survived. He still has a bullet lodged beside his heart that was too dangerous to remove. But hey. He was breaching Covid advice and the PSNI take that very seriously. As Sykes said after his release last month, “I am the only person ever arrested in relation to the Seán Graham massacre.”
Also, Nigel, I like the “officers received reports” bit, as if this was happening covertly in some boy’s back yard, rather than a Belfast city centre street thronged in the manner of the Bull Run at Pamplona.
Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon called the scenes in Belfast “infuriating and disgraceful.”
Meanwhile, Northern Ireland’s First Minister Arlene Foster said in Stormont on Monday: “Deeply concerned about the images from yesterday. Covid-19 is no respecter of victories. Other events are being responsible. Sport and health will be the losers. The authorities need to address this. Serious questions arising from the footage.”
Only joking. In fact, that is what Mrs Foster said about the 50 or so Dungannon Clarkes supporters who invaded the pitch after they won the Tyrone Roman Catholic Garlic Association Football Championship last September.
What Mrs Foster actually said about the thousands crowding the streets of the Shankill was: “Unfortunately we have seen yesterday in parts of Belfast, people who were rightly jubilant about Rangers’ success in the Scottish Premiership and I send them my absolute good wishes it’s wonderful to see Steven Gerrard and our own Steven Davis at the top.”
Before turning to the Fenian benches, giving them the middle finger and shouting “Up yours Motherf*****s.” Well, she didn’t do that, but you get my drift.
As comedian Tommy Tiernan put it in the course of the Tommy, Hector and Laurita podcast last week, “A stately blind eye is turned.”
I have no problem with Rangers winning the league. They won by a wide margin, so they must be a good team and fully deserve their success. Their many fans in the North are genuinely delighted and I am glad they are experiencing that joy. We have had little enough to celebrate here over the past while and it was a very important moment for supporters who have had a most uncertain journey with their club over the last decade.
But you get my point here. It has always been a dispiriting business being a Northerner and nothing has changed. It is a deeply dysfunctional, non-viable entity, triumphalist, institutionally racist, sectarian, homophobic and almost completely segregated. Brexit is an unfolding disaster for us but that middle finger to the Fenians was worth it.
A few weeks ago, senior DUP MP Gregory Campbell casually made racist remarks about the number of black people on the BBC’s Gospel Singer of the Year. He tweeted that the number of black people on the show was the BBC “at its Black Lives Matter worst.”
He said: “The singers were all very good but can you imagine an all white jury and presented by a white person? No, I can’t either.” Naturally, he refused to apologise, saying, “Why would I apologise for saying something that is correct and accurate? No, I do not apologise.”
The point is that it wouldn’t occur to him to apologise and it wouldn’t occur to anyone else in his party that he ought to.
Things are not going to change, so a united Ireland is the only viable solution. After we get our Covid vaccines, of course.
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