Queen's University Professor of Political History Graham Walker – who co-edited the new book It's Rangers For Me? – asks why it is that the numerous attacks by Celtic fans on Rangers players in public over the last few years have been deemed less newsworthy than attacks on Celtic players?

ABUSE
There is a clear double standard in operation for Rangers fans, he argues: "Celtic fans mouthing abuse such as 'Orange b******s' is regarded as acceptably political or 'a bit of craic' while Rangers fans supposedly deal in a repertoire of straightforward bigotry and racism."

The book has chapters written by some 20 contributors including academics, intellectuals, journalists, politicians, players and fans.
Internationally acclaimed Belfast playwright Gary Mitchell also writes a chapter, as does Ulsterman Gordon Smith.


A Scotsman and lifelong Rangers supporter, Professor Walker's book, co-edited with Ronnie Esplin, is understood to be the first serious analysis of Rangers Football Club and its place in society.

And it will undoubtedly be seen as a response to the similarly provocative Celtic Minded, two pro-Celtic FC volumes from numerous contributors, edited by Joe Bradley.


Professor Walker writes extensively about the contributors to these pro-Celtic FC volumes in the new book, arguing that they have wrongly made out that sectarianism in Scotland is a mainly Protestant problem.

STEREOTYPE
And he also challenges the authors on their stereotyping of Irish Protestants in Scotland as racist, violent and homophobic, citing examples of such behaviour as clearly existing within Irish Catholic culture.

"For many Rangers fans it is their club and the popular associations it has historically held which are increasingly marginalised and traduced in contemporary Scotland," he writes. "A sense of Scottishness which draws on Protestant religious identity is now decidedly at a discount, and anyone attempting to advertise such an identity is likely to be dismissed as a bigot."


Celtic FC apologists are still caricaturing almost extinct Protestant culture of the "Wee Frees" on television and "are quite simply not interested in the realities of Protestantism as a faith", he says. "They wish to collapse these varieties and the whole range of Protestant opinion from fundamentalist to liberal into a usable stereotype."

The Celtic Minded line of argument about Celtic fans having "to keep their heads down" on account of their "unacceptable" identity is "bewildering" he holds. "When has a support as raucous and 'in yer face' as Celtic's ever kept its head down?"


VICTIMS
Many Celtic Minded authors display both ignorance and sectarianism in their insistence that it is only Celtic fans have been the victims of Old Firm-related violence, he holds, and many of them seem unperturbed about songs and chants which celebrate IRA atrocities at Enniskillen, Teebane, Kingsmills, the Shankill Road, La Mon, and Darkley.

Writer Patricia Ferns in particular, he says, defends the IRA slogan 'Tiocfaidh ar la' ( 'Our Day Will Come' ) on the grounds that it refers to footballing success.


"So, if Rangers fans argue that the use of 'No Surrender' is simply an injunction to the team not to give up, we should expect to be taken at face value by the media and our opponents? Aye right!" he responds. Such authors make it clear the Irishness which they are most concerned to celebrate "is in fact that of the Republican armed struggle."

Any segregation between Protestants and Catholics that does exist in Scotland, he says, has largely been at the behest of the Catholic Church with its rigid stance on schooling; Celtic FC apologists are either unaware or choose to ignore the fact that half the marriages involving under 35 Catholics in Scotland are mixed.

(See next article down - Celtic FC apologists 'need to look at themselves').

Readers can order the book, Its Rangers for me, from the News Letter bookshop on 028 38 39 55 04.