A Support That Shames Scotland

Tonight, at Starks Park, the sewers opened and the dregs of humanity came out.

I’m on the record as supporting unrestricted free speech. It’s caused a lot of arguments with people who think displays like tonight ought to be punishable.

Tonight hurts me, and sickens me, because it makes something I believe in passionately awfully goddamned hard to defend.

I can’t stomach the idea of jailing people because of the songs they sing.

It’s unacceptable when it happens to Celtic fans, and although there is zero moral equivalence between songs about a political and military struggle and what we’ve had to listen to tonight, the legal ground is dodgy and the slippery slope only goes one way.

This really crushes me you know, because I can feel my rationale sheer away under my feet, and I feel a need to apologise to people although I wasn’t there singing those filthy songs.

I feel sick because Collymore shouldn’t have to listen to that. Catholics shouldn’t have to listen to it. No-one should. The country these people live in should not need to be shamed this way.

Laws against those chants exist. It’s not like one has to be created to deal with this. It’s there already, on the statute books.

If it’s used, you know what? I will have no sympathy for those who end up jailed or banned from a football ground this evening.

I might not like the idea, or agree with it, but for once, tonight, as I feel this way, I won’t complain too bitterly. I am just tired of it.

Likewise with the SPFL. Their cowardly decision last week – and I made it quite clear that I agreed with it but not the motive behind it, which was to cover their own backsides – is most definitely what invited tonight, that and BT Sport’s corrupt decision to silence Stan Collymore, who used his own right to free speech to ask hard questions about this issue.

BT Sport’s commentary tonight – which I watched online; there is no question of me giving these people money, now or in the future – was utterly bereft of criticism or condemnation, even if their staff had wanted to offer some, which I very much doubt.

What’s happened to their colleague has made it abundantly clear where the organisation they work for stands.

Sectarian and racist abuse is acceptable. Commenting on it is not.

You can’t help but feel an opportunity was missed here, that they could have given Stan Collymore his platform and let him say what he had to.

See, I tend to believe that this does more good than any law ever could. If his suggestions had been taken seriously, and acted on, that BT Sport would refuse to show games involving the club until they confronted this matter, the fans they gave full license to this evening would have been singing to themselves.

BT Sport, like every other satellite channel, operates on an economic model that is built on two things; advertising revenues and subscriptions.

I strongly suspect that subscriptions will tank on the back of their treatment of Collymore, and they should.

But tonight, advertisers need to ask themselves serious questions too.

Laws aren’t needed here, when it comes down to it. Hard, financial consequences can change this instead. If the TV companies are content to show this stuff then advertisers should tell them they’ll not be associated with it.

Likewise the SPFL, who have expressed their own lack of interest in even condemning this behaviour far less following the law of the land.

The media has a role to play in this too, of course, but already they are indulging in their own favourite sport, the whatabouttery we’ve come to expect, with Jackson and others already tweeting about “both sets of fans.” It’s shameful.

Tonight was down to the fans of one club, and only one club, and it’s about time our hacks grew a set and reported what’s in front of them instead of attempting to hide behind the same old tired cobblers.

I really do feel crap tonight. That was a 90 minute hate fest, and although it shames one club, they’ve proved, long ago, that as long as the world remains silent about it they’ll carry on as if it never happened.

The problem is that they’ve never been properly held to account for displays like tonight and that is what has to change.

I say again, I am opposed to laws which criminalise free expression, but there are other ways to deal with this.

If our media did its job and reported the facts and nothing more – that tonight’s display was right out of the gutter – without fear, if they showed these people up for the dregs of humanity and for once confronted this as it exists, then I think we’d see changes.

If not, then yes, let’s go and look and what’s on the statute books … much as it makes my skin crawl to write those words.

Likewise, the SPFL. What are they going to do about it? That tonight … that was absolutely unconscionable. That went way beyond a few off-colour songs.

If sponsors decided, tomorrow, to withdraw their money because they don’t want to be associated with that – and if I were one of those sponsors I would do it without hesitation – what then?

For me, tonight I’m having a great deal of difficulty with the bedrock of everything I believe in. There are people living in my country and in my city who have no respect for the very rights I care about, because I realise that those rights come with responsibilities and those people have no sense of that.

I don’t want them criminalised, but what they did tonight is criminal, whether I agree with it or not. I don’t want rules created and bent to discipline them for that display, but those rules already exist, whether I like them, or even agree with them.

BT Sport would rather discipline one of its own staff for daring to call these people out.

The Scottish Government would rather criminalise political expression than tackle the real issues.

The SFA and the SPFL would rather it just went away on its own … but tonight that strategy exploded like an atom bomb.

Confront it or it’ll kill you … how can we interest people in our game when our game looks and sounds and stinks like this?

Tonight I can’t defend them. Tonight I won’t. If that makes me a hypocrite so be it. There are worse things to be tonight.

The gutters need cleaning out. Pure and simple.