Up to our toes in common sense.

No doubt someone will come on here and “educate” us as to Allan Massie’s “real” agenda but, even if all I know about him is he writes the odd book and this piece was taken from a source as dodgy as The Daily Mail, it seems to be one of the more common-sensical opinions I’ve read on the “up to our knees” outcry.

God knows, no-one currently feeding us the debate is interested in something which fails to see the issue in black and white (or orange and green) or which fails to be condemning someone or other in the harshest tones. As always, simply discussing the grey areas which cuase all the trouble in the first place just isn’t on. So, congrats to Mr Massie for getting it into perspective - like myself, he has a healthy suspicion of people who show their support of liberal causes by completely fascistic methods.

The action is always more noteable than the theory, the feeling more noteable than the song - but rarely as well noted. Proclaimed worthy causes are often a smokescreen to actions and mind-sets of the lowest order (I don’t want to get into WOMD versus oil in Iraq, but that’s wee example) - I’d venture that The Rangers support do it the other way around: The songs can be regarded as vile but we’re one huge, tight, very nice happy family behind that screen of bilious smoke:

Anyway, see what ye think yerself of this journo’s angle - I was particulalrly taken with his differentiating between songs of hatred and acts of hatred: A point I’ve been trying to make on this site for years.

Over to Allan Massie:

Most of us must have seen those television shots of Rangers fans in Spain belting out their sectarian songs and expressing their eagerness to be ‘up to their knees in Fenian blood.’

If we haven’t, it’s certainly no fault of the BBC, which has shown the clip time and again over the past few weeks.

No one - not Rangers chairman David Murray or the spokesmen for their supporters’ clubs and no one from Celtic - is going to come forward to defend sectarianism. Probably the group filmed singing in Spain wouldn’t do so either.

We may, most of us, agree with Jack McConnell in calling sectarianism ‘Scotland’s shame’. Sectarianism, like some other ‘isms’ - nationalism, for instance - is to my mind dotty and capable of turning nasty. (To avert protests, I would add nationalism is not the same as loving your country, which you can do without being a nationalist).

But two things struck me in watching the TV clip, as they have struck me often enough when hearing these sectarian songs. First, the singers appeared happy and cheerful, not consumed by hatred; no more desirous of being up their knees in Fenian blood than English rugby fans are of being carried home in a sweet chariot. Second, songs such as The Sash and The Billy Boys are rattling good tunes which anyone might enjoy singing without paying any particular regard to the meaning of the words.

After all, how many Frenchmen and women lustily singing their national anthem, the splendid Marseillaise, are really looking forward to forming battalions and marching against the soldiers of tyranny so that their ‘impure blood’ may water the fair fields of France? Precious few, I would
guess.

Likewise, who, when singing that tremendous American song, Marching Through Georgie - the tune of which has been commandeered for the Billy Boys - remembers it celebrates a campaign of brutal destruction, burning and looting as General Sherman led his Union army through one of the Confederate states?

Does the singing of songs celebrating, even apparently advocating, violence breed or provoke that violence? Or are they rather a form of release? These are at least open questions.

Take the communal singing, popular among students and rugby clubs, of bawdy songs such as The Ball of Kirriemuir and Eskimo Nell. The words may be interpreted as expressing a hatred of women and contempt for women, but we have all known them sung by men who are, or went on to be, loving and gentle husbands.

They have been sung, lustily, if not lustfully, by students who are now surgeons and GPs, headmasters, ministers of religion and bishops, sheriffs and Senators of the College of Justice; even, I dare say, politicians such as Mr McConnell himself. Why, no one ever wrote bawdy verses with more relish and skill than our national bard, Rabbie Burns. But the same man
also wrote the most tender and most beautiful love poems.

I hold no brief for either Rangers or Celtic and I don’t deny that the tribal passions they inspire too often provokes vile acts of violence. But what part the singing of sectarian songs plays in this, I don’t know.

In most cases, quite clearly, the singing leads to nothing, those who have expressed the wish to be knee-deep in blood going home quietly to their tea. No doubt many find the songs grossly offensive, though in this context it surprises me that the attachment of a small part of Celtic’s following to the IRA arouses less in the way of angry condemnation than their rivals’ celebration of a battle more than 300 years ago.

But, for the most part, I would think the songs inspire good feeling and a sense of communal identity among those who sing them, rather than the hatred the words seem to express.

It is true, of course, that many in a crowd buoyed up by that sort of communal feeling will behave worse and act more violently than they would ever would on their own as individuals. So, for example, idealists eager to ’save the planet’ will smash windows, break heads and throw firecrackers at police horses when engaged in demonstrations against globalisation and
capitalism. They get carried away, as football fans often do.

It might be better, of course, if football fans everywhere contented themselves with singing numbers from The Sound of Music and songs in praise of motherhood and apple pie rather than ones with ‘hateful’ lyrics.

Yet it’s easy to exaggerate the influence of such lyrics on behaviour and easy to be far too sensitive about them; in that clip of the Rangers fans in Spain, they all looked cheerful and happy, not angry or aggressive.

They had a good tune to sing and it evidently made them feel good - just like Frenchmen and women singing the Marseillaise or, if it comes to that, rugby and football fans at Murrayfield and Hampden declaring their intention to send proud Edward homeward tae think again.

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Published:
04.19.06 / 7pm
Category:
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