A week ago yesterday, I emailed Show Racism The Red Card to ask them about the Ibrox incident where a St Johnstone player was the victim of a racist and sectarian slur by someone with a broad Scottish accent who appeared to be affiliated with Ibrox.
The incident was captured on video and was widely available on the internet for the preceding 24 hours.
It was a major story coming shortly after the Ibrox club had announced, with great fanfare, that they would be boycotting social media as a stance against racism.
One week on from sending that email I have yet to receive even a perfunctory response from them.
Nothing to even say “we have received your email and we’re looking into it.”
Nothing that even reaffirms their stated mission.
Not a word.
Not a thank you, not an acknowledgment and of course no action on the issue whatsoever.
When it comes to something like this I always give the recipients the benefit of seven full days to get back to me, because I understand these are busy people and they can’t respond straight away to every single inquiry, although in this case such inquiries aren’t just part of the job description, they are the job itself.
I have to say, more than a week on, if this is how they treat incidents which are reported to them then that organisation is a sham. All its campaigning slogans are nothing but that.
This blog has a history – and not a good history – with Show Racism The Red Card Scotland.
When they invited Phil Mac Giolla Bhain’s “critics” for tea and biscuits in 2018 after Sevco social media had gone tonto at the news he’d been invited there to give a talk on anti-Irish racism, I couldn’t believe it.
Here were the very bigots Phil had talked about, being given legitimacy by the very organisation which exists to drive them out of the game.
For a while, as a result of that, I christened them Show Racism The Red Carpet.
I wrote a scathing piece about them, which showed how they’d taken money from an organisation linked to both David Murray and Brian Souter.
So I can understand if they don’t like me very much, but it’s just too damned bad.
As a member of the public I wrote them an email raising a very serious issue and they didn’t give me even the courtesy of a response.
So today I’ve emailed the big bosses in England, to see if we can get anywhere with them.
I want to ask them a couple of questions, and it will be interesting to see if I get any answers.