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Politicians May Have Voted For Repeal, But Celtic Fans Won The OBAF War.

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When it comes to politics I’m a “big picture thinking” kind of guy.

You know who convinced me that voting and other political action was like that? Tony Blair; a man who’s funeral I would attend with a smile and on who’s grave I’d cheerfully tramp the dirt down. I felt that way about only one other political figure in my life; Margaret Thatcher.

Blair was the guy who broke the link between Labour and people like me. His illegal war, his disdain for the public sector – his “scars on my back” speech was loathsome – his cosying up to the rich, his friendships with the neo-cons of the Bush Government … New Labour itself. Those were the bones of contention. That’s where I got off the bus.

Blair convinced me that as the parties saw voters as “customers” – a word I first heard used to describe us back in 1994, courtesy of Peter Mandelson – that we could treat political parties the same way, and pick and choose and mix and match.

I am not a single issue voter. Just because I support independence, it doesn’t mean that I will automatically vote SNP. When I turned away from Labour I chose them because they had the best policies and the most admirable leaders. I voted for them in spite of the Offensive Behaviour at Football Act. It’s Jeremy Corbyn, not James Kelly, who looks like changing that.

What I’m trying to say is that the SNP didn’t have a change of heart here and Labour didn’t do this to get our votes. The SNP was dragged kicking and screaming every step of the way towards repeal. James Kelly deserves credit for not giving up on this, but he was never the architect of the repeal campaign, he was just the politician who supported it.

The real war was fought by Fans Against Criminalisation and the people, like the Celtic Trust, who gave them their support. The victory belongs to them. The most appalling law in the history of this land is in the bin today, and I credit that to the people who were on the sharp end of it. Those guys stood in the courtrooms and called out the police and the judges. They called the law of the land a sham. They suffered. They were stressed.

And they endured. They kept their heads up. Can you imagine what it took?

These were people who would never have crossed paths with the criminal justice system in their lives. They would never have had records. They would never have gone head to head with lawyers or judges or police. They did not go looking for this conflict. It came to them.

Way back when this all began, I said that public opinion would turn this. But in fact, I was wrong because poll after poll revealed that the public were actually broadly supportive of the Offensive Behaviour Bill. What these guys did right, what they did better than I had ever anticipated, was they targeted the real people with their campaign.

They were the ones who rallied certain elements of the media behind them. They got free speech advocates on the case.

That moved some of the chattering classes, and that, as it always does, moved some of the politicians. Labour claims to have opposed OBAF from the outset; yes, it was certainly party policy for them, but it was never certain that they would actually proceed with a repeal campaign. But FAC kept that pressure on and brought to bear academics, legal minds and other public figures, and they also made sure this went the distance.

Special congratulations to Jeanette Findlay of the Celtic Trust. She has been one of the biggest and most consistent supporters of FAC and this is a major win for her.

It’s a major win for all of us, and a resounding defeat for the SNP. They cannot afford to continue pushing such a reactionary agenda in their justice policies. There is much to criticise about the way they have behaved in this area, and with Labour in Scotland having swung left with the election of Richard Leonard as leader the arrogance they displayed in not repealing this act themselves when Kelly put forward his initial vote against it could haunt them for years.

The fans who stood together and those who supported them … this is their day, this is their victory, and I hope they are all raising a glass tonight. The next thing that the Scottish Parliament should do is raise an amnesty for everyone convicted under this law up to the day of the repeal. They are a stain on our society. Those convictions were unjust and illiberal and no young person should ever have to carry with them a criminal record because of a sectarian, discriminatory and manifestly disgraceful law such as this.

Then, and only then, should this matter be considered at a close.

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