George Galloway on Lennon & sectarian Scotland

Dying of shame: The bigotry which dare not speak its name

by George Galloway on Thursday, 12 May 2011

 

George Galloway- Legend!

 

Galloway is the man.

 

theres times where i hate george galloway.. but hes a strong voice for catholics he ll mention the things most people wont. like the anti catholic stuff. when everyone else has to pussyfoot around it.

 

My hero.Refuses to sit back and let anti-Islamic or anti-Catholic bigotry go unnoticed.

Man of the people,St Galloway.

 

brilliant.

 

Don't have much time for him myself, wasn't he not too complimentary on Lennon about the handbag with sally? But I have to say he is the voice if he can get on camera and defend, and he won't give a * who it offends. Well done.

 

Holy *, he just handed it to them.

 

the man makes sense. not all the time but he does on this occasion.

 

As a Scot, words fail me, but Scotland is a sick joke in front of the onlooking world. All Scotland's problems have been lay out for the world to see this year, yet what have we done nothing, just all talk.
Very few people have ended up in answering for what is happening, * help us all if something really happens.
This can't continue, we need to stand together as a club and support Neil.

 

Wouldn't be surprised if he had a parcel sent through the post now
He's being an awful brave but wise and truthful man, have alot of respect for the guy.

 

Great article.

 

I don't know what he's talking about ! doesn't he know Scotland is the best small country in the world ???

I'm not his biggest fan but hats off to him for being brave enough to say it, if only the rest of them would take notice instead of sweeping it under the carpet

 

Fantastic statement from George Galloway but imo he ruined it somewhat by calling Lennon a republican when Celtic manager,Catholic and courageous would have been better imo but at least he didnt hold back and tells it like it is

 

Neil has described himself as an Irish Republican in the past as i recall. Nothing wrong with being an Irish Republican Celtic fan is there?

 

<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <wunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <wontGrowAutofit/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="156"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} </style> <![endif]--> Neil has said many times he never speaks about politics so I doubt it tbh...

 

I've never read any biographies on him or read any articles where he has declared that.

The only thing I can think of is at one point he said he liked the idea of a united Irish football team, just like Irish rugby has.

For some strange reason some people have never liked the idea of that

 

Great read hes basically saying what wer all thinkingHats off to him

 

well said Gorgeous George

just a * shame he didnt get elected last week

 

Forget that rather facile comment by a legendary manager about football being more important than life or death, to a present-day one it is about just that. Or rather more specifically, death.



Neil Lennon, the manager of Celtic, is a Catholic, a republican and courageously outspoken. It shouldn’t be necessary to append these adjectives to his name but it is because of them that he has received his latest live death threat, a bullet in the post. Prior to that there have been deadly letter bombs and more bullets, his home in Glasgow’s West End is bristling with security devices, his wife has to go to a safe house with their child when Celtic are travelling and Lennon is under police protection, but clearly of the most cursory nature. On Wednesday evening as he stood on the touchline guiding his team to victory over Hearts at Tynecastle a home supporter leaped the wall scampered past what is laughably known as security and landed a blow before being overpowered by Lennon’s coaching assistants. His assailant hasn’t appeared in court yet but you couldn’t get odds anywhere that the man is anything other than a virulent and violent Protestant bigot.



If Neil Lennon decides at the end of this week and the league campaign that he’s chucking it in then no one would blame him. Scotland, however, would die of shame.



The reaction in Scotland has been curiously muted. It’s as if that because we’ve lived with anti-Catholic bigotry for so long it’s not unexpected, if slightly over the top. Some have even turned it onto the victims, that it’s really the Tims’ fault for maintaining separate schools. If those letter-bombers or that attacker had just shared a sandwich with a Catholic at play times if would never have come to this.



Some even went further. George Foulkes, Baron Foulkes of Cumnock, is a former chairman of Hearts, the club the attacker follows. He’s a lickspittle Labour man with a despicable record. In 1993, he was forced to resign as Shadow Defence Minister after being convicted of being drunk and disorderly during in incident in which he struck a Police officer. And in September last year he, along with 54 other public figures, signed an open letter stating their opposition to the Pope’s state visit to the UK. On Sky News on the day after the Lennon attack Foulkes joked that if Celtic moved to the Irish league that would solve the problem.



Bigotry is clearly in the genes too. His son Alex, another Hearts supporter, is a sectarian football hooligan. He was convicted of hurling abuse at Celtic fans – the longest and most sustained police officers had witnessed - and when arrested told the police they’d be in trouble because his father was an MP and his mother was on the police board.



No one would argue that Celtic fans are spotless – one was jailed this week for racial abuse of a Rangers’ player – but they have never been guilty of the sustained, anthemic, sectarian chanting and singing that the Rangers support has disgraced itself over more than a century (Rangers will have to play their next European away game supporterless because of it). Their songs are rebel ones about their heritage, rather than foul abuse at the other half of the Old Firm’s religion. And it was only in the mid-1980s that Rangers signed its first Catholic player. Pele couldn’t have got into the team before then.



It took UEFA, the football authority, to bring the first official sanction on Rangers. Rafts of politicians, councillors and sheriffs could have done it for aeons before, but didn’t. And the police have traditionally stood back and allowed the support to ‘* the Pope’ and bathe in ‘* blood’, despite the flagrant breaches of at least two laws. Only in the last match between the two sides, after what us Scots would call a previous touchline stramash, have the police promised zero tolerance.



Where were they when this crazed numpty, who could have been carrying a knife, jumped over the barrier and launched his attack on Lennon? Given the previous history plod should have been in the dugout with him, or at least hovering in the technical area. And what about the stewards who are meant to stop these incursions? Missing in inaction! Tynecastle, Hearts ground, should now be closed until there are guarantees that such an incident can never re-occur. As should Ibrox, Rangers ground, at the first chirrup of what used to be called a party song but is better described as sectarian bile.



It isn’t just the authorities who have been craven over the decades in the face of this, the left are equally guilty. In the wake of the last letter bomb to Lennon I tried to organise an anti-sectarian rally in Glasgow’s George Square but my erstwhile political colleagues deliberately scuppered it. There had to be a ‘balanced slate’, you see, not just Catholics or Celtic supporters – presumably a Church of Scotland minister and a former ‘Gers player who had recanted! – because it couldn’t just be about the victims. It wasn’t intended to be, but why the * not! If Lennon had been black or Asian, or a Sighthill asylum seeker they’d have been out on the streets at the drop of a leaflet.



Scottish piety about being a tolerant country has been exploded by the sustained sectarian attacks on Lennon. It’s the bigotry which dare not speak its name. To his credit the First Minister Alex Salmond, another Hearts supporter, has condemned the attack. But until there’s drastic action against these sick-making Protestant hate-merchants it’s just so much mouthwash. We all need to stand behind Neil Lennon. Or, perhaps more accurately, in front of him.