I have nothing against The Green Brigade’s latest call for the Celtic fans to sing Grace to show solidarity for the people of Palestine, although what an Irish rebel love song has to do with the Middle East, I’ll leave to the armchair revolutionaries to explain. Support for Palestine is just fine by me, especially as the Israeli war machine moves into new areas in Gaza.
But something about it leaves me decidedly cold just the same. Because it’s another example of a Celtic fan group focussed on events far away instead of closer to home.
Changing things means bringing pressure to bear.
All the marches and demos and protests which have gone on across the world for Palestine … very little of it has come with any kind of impact or put the pressure on where it matters. It’s hard to make that pressure effective even when you are willing to take drastic action.
Climate activists are willing to go to jail for their cause. What’s that led to? Real change? No, and the right-wing media has made them into them wreckers and the government has passed laws handing down heavier sentences for it.
Alexei Navalny is dead. He quite literally put his neck on the block to oppose Putin and even when the Russian state poisoned him he refused to leave the country. His death, today, in the Polar Wolf prison where he was serving a lengthy jail term on trumped up charges, has been heralded as a political murder. His life barely moved the needle against the corrupt monster who rules from the Kremlin. His death won’t either.
Even when you’re willing to get your hands dirty and put yourself on the line, real activism is like pushing a boulder up a hill. Most of the time you’re getting nowhere.
Don’t get me wrong; symbolic gestures can have an impact.
But I find it hard to believe that anything we do, as a support, is going to matter to the outside world when a group of arrogant, egotistical old white men sit atop our club, running it like their own little corner shop without feeling the cold wind of revolt down their own backs. If we’re not making life uncomfortable for these people, right on our doorstep, far-right Israeli politicians sending in the tanks won’t be quaking in their boots.
The summer transfer window was a bad joke. The winter window was an open insult. It’s not the first time the people running the club have failed to back the manager, nor the first time they have openly spurned his calls for quality.
They have imperilled our quest to win this title. They have acted as though deliberately trying to hamstring the manager and the team. Even if it’s not self-sabotage, as some would contend, the roots of it are not hard to see, when the board engages in nepotism and cronyism instead of hiring the best people to work within its walls.
These people are a clear and present danger to our club. They are pursuing a policy which will leave us further behind in Europe, will eat into the co-efficient, will condemn us to watching a decreasing level of quality until even the trading strategy is on its knees and virtually hand trophies and titles to an Ibrox club which will always put its money on the pitch.
This title race is now a real one in no small part because these people have elevated their family members and cronies to positions of real authority inside of our walls. They have no clear plan for the future except that it will involve the names Lawwell and Desmond. They see Celtic as their club, not our club, and believe themselves to be beyond reproach.
Are we really going to let these people take their seats on Saturday without them feeling a little fire on their backsides? Is our most vocal fan organisation really going to do their piece for Palestine and then spend the rest of the game singing about the Irish War of Independence? No wonder Desmond, Lawwell & Sons think they can do whatever they want.
We’ve left this late in the day already.
There should have been action from the stands when Lawwell Jnr was appointed, or when Daddy returned to the club after he’d misled shareholders, appointed a manager in the shower, fumbled over sacking him and then presided over a shambolic search for his successor. What’s it going to take for these people to feel a little uncomfortable?
Are we really just glory hunters? Is that what we’ve become? Is it really going to take watching the Ibrox Tribute Band win multiple titles before people get roused to do something about all this? If we act now part of our credibility comes from doing so at a time when the club is top of the table. Their best weapon against us is the idea that any pressure, when it comes, will arise from a bunch of malcontents who think we have a divine right to win things.
Our concerns actually have very little to do with what happens on the pitch.
Some of us have been writing about these people for the better part of a decade. Some of us did sound the alarm bell when Lawwell Jnr got his gig. Some of us did say not to trust a word that came out of Celtic about him being brought in as part of the Ange Postecoglou “dream team.” Some of us lamented the return of Lawwell Snr. Some of us wrote about how we wanted the Desmond’s run out of town on a rail even when this team was winning trebles.
Some of these folks have been at Celtic for nearly twenty years and it’s our contention that we’re pursuing a self-defeating, self-limiting policy of staying just one step ahead of a domestic rival which couldn’t help falling over its own feet. That strategy is dead in the water they minute they stop doing that, and history has shown us this board has no Plan B.
Rodgers was the best card they could come up with in the summer. When he’s no longer in the dugout, do you really want to trust these people with what comes next, or even just with another cursed summer to an incoherent transfer policy because they have decided to hire guys with the right last names instead of the proper credentials?
Even if we were a shoe-in for this title, even if we were odds on for another treble next season … this isn’t good enough. This isn’t how our club should be run. But because it is run this way, we’re risking not just this season but the next one and probably the next few after that.
Don’t look for any sudden change in the policy or those implementing it either; as I’ll write later, that’s the most forlorn hope of all, that’s believing in fairies at the bottom of the garden.
it’s time these leeches made way for some fresh thinking and new ideas. Instead, some of them think Celtic is their own property, to be handed down to their kids. That can’t happen.
Tomorrow is the first game back at home since the transfer window slammed shut. If we’re going to put these people under the white hot spotlight this is when it’s going to need to be done.
So sing Grace and support Palestine, it’s the right thing to do … but there’s business to attend to closer to hand, right here at home, and if we don’t at least make a start on it we’re storing up a lot of trouble for another time, and there will be plenty of pain on the road to getting there.
Sorry I will go back and read the rest of the article later. However, the first couple of paragraphs made me skip to the comments.
” for those who are oppressed, in song we must protest. So liberate your mind and give your soul expression, and open up your heart ”
Let our people sing
Sorry I’ll have to read again tomorrow to understand you asking for a vocal protest against tyranny of an oppressed nation ( the celtic support in a championship winning team with some player’s who have not lived up to the expectations of others ) or the green brigades song of of hope for everyone.
The Internet is awash with opinions from many voices.
True intent come from the soul. Dispatched through our vocal chords.
So liberate your mind and give your soul expression
Atb
Sentimentality true james .
Yes, that’s a bit strange.
Tomorrow should be 100% focused on supporting the team,
– and giving DD, PL and the Board rousing renditions of assorted chants,
to convey our displeasure, mistrust, etc. – very clearly and very loudly!
The singing of ‘Grace’ could have been held for the next home game on the 28th?
[Separately, the weekly, pro-Palestinian protests in Glasgow typically have
a good turnout of CFC fans – so there is ongoing support away from the stadium.]
Agree
Spot on James.
The board need to be delivered a strong message. A message that even they can’t ignore.
Agree with every word
TBH James unless you and the rest of the Celtic support are prepared to do what’s necessary nothing will change.
Only a coordinated full scale boycott of season tickets, cup tie tickets or merchandise will bring about change.
The only thing this board care about is money.
@ ML. Absolutely. Can sing all the songs we want at them and they’ll just show the same arrogant indifference. This lot won’t budge until we hit them where it really hurts and that’s in their cash flow.
You are right there Mark,it’s the only thing this board understands,shut of their money supply, because all the placards and banners and tifos don’t matter,this board of bastards only care about money but I think Celtic fans are too faithful through and through to boycott STs merchandise etc and this shower of charlatans on our board know this.
You can organise a protest against the club
GB against Israel isolating and pushing out a valuable player , then next match for Russia then Ukraine
Or how about we all support Celtic? Mad idea I know but ….
I’ve read your pieces for a long time now and have found them to be bang on almost all the time with some exceptions. Today’s piece is absolutely spot on. As a pro Palestine supporter it is right to keep a light shining on the genocide in Gaza but at the minute it is more important to send the board a message that it’s our club and we will be heard and heeded. Evolve or be replaced as lack of ambition is not an option any longer, we’ve had enough.
Sorry to comment on another completely different matter which was STV news tonight at 6pm .It done a a report on a hit and run that led to a young man’s death which in it self is so sad .But the thing that really annoyed me was the reporting of the driver who was an ex Celtic youth player and they had a picture of him in his Celtic Top playing for Celtic but what they forgot to mention was the young lad also played for Rangers but they would mention this .Its way beyond time that thus Celtic Board stepped up and started sticking up for our club .
Yes indeed Micheal very true…
Our old grey men in drab suits simply NEVER WILL stick up for Celtic or her supporters against injustices of all sorts and whatever hue – especially with the media situation –
Honestly Bennett and Bisgrove might be Sevco Huns and as a Celtic supporter it pains me dearly to say this but as men that see injustice in their eyes (and most of the time it simply isn’t) but it doesn’t stop them fighting vociferously on behalf of The Sevco support and in a weird way I commend them for it to be honest…
Huns they might be but who would one rather in the trenches with them – That pair or Lawwell, Nicholson, Allison Or Brian ‘Butchers Apron Labour Lover’ Wilson far less the absentee landlord Desmond –
Mind you – He Said “Rangers (his word and not mine to be clear) are a great football club” so ‘nuff said !
(PS – RIP to the late victim of your subject matter)…
Excellent article, perhaps you could also look at the latest Var report and name the refs and var referees made the mistakes in the games that were named
You know what? Tomorrow at 3pm I will give zero fucks about Palestine. And neither should the GB. Self important pricks.
Tomorrow the people we can have an impact on are the ones who will be to blame for costing us the title should this all go belly up.
We can do our bit to help prevent that. And it won’t be by singing some hokey Irish folk song that has nothing to do with what’s going on today in the Middle East.
‘Self important pricks’, lol
Spot on roonsa!!!
Some of my family come from Cork, bandit country as they refer to it. Their view of Scottish Celtic fans and Scots in general is that we’re a bunch of petty soft conformists. They point to our independence cause and the way in which we fight for it. Or rather they way in which we don’t, that fight apparently died with the fall of the highlanders and their clans submission and amalgamation to their English masters and their armies.
To feart to stand up we have apparently accepted our lot and our place as a nation and as a fan base. Many of them in years gone by used to fly in to our games but no more and while it’s a harsh assessment I’m afraid I gave up arguing against it.
However that doesn’t mean I don’t agree that we as a support need to offer up our extreme displeasure with the board’s inaction.
However like Navalny, the human rights campaigners, impoverished peoples of Russia, the Palestinians that have been blasted into pieces or bombed regularly and daily too we Celtic fans’ ability to overcome those board members with the power requires more than we are prepared to give to the fight. That would incur consequences we’re unwilling to face in our modern day life of acceptance.
In politics it’s understood as giving us just enough to stop the peasants revolting.
So we’ll just have to shout about our concerns, take it out on Killie and score enough goals to keep us above the English Unionist supporters across the city or we’ll be the ones getting the abuse. HH
Flash backs to the Kelly’s and the White days
Will we never learn the Desmond and the
Lawwell’s dynasty will destroy everything the wee man built (Fergus) we had a chance to trample the biggest sectarian and racist club in the country (uk) into the ground and bottled it
because neither Lawwell (Senior) or Dermot Desmond had a pair of gonads between them.
In the 70s and 80s ‘d watch Danny pass a curler down the wing to Davie who’d beat a man then fire it into the area box, high or low . Great days, happy days.The world was being ravaged, living conditions were appalling, the rich got richer. Everything has changed . The world is being utterly ravaged, living conditions are even worse and the rich get even richer. Great days, happy days. My point is , The more things change, the more they stay the same. Waste your breath and enjoy yourself. Great days happy days ahead. Hail Hail
Two words come to mind…..farting and thunder.
All very well and true, but once again ,why conflate these two things. I love your stand on the board thing, and the fans action, or lack of it, but there’s been 15 years at least to protest at the board, the wider fan base aren’t interested in anything other than beating the huns, and have proved it repeatedly over the years.
But on the other hand, the genocide is now, so when and where would you deign it necessary or appropriate to carry out this tiny gesture?, I am willing to bet the GB will sing Grace, and for the rest of the game (90 mins as opposed to 2 mins singing grace) be on the boards backs, and further more, they’ll be among the few.
I’m all for getting after the board but right now is certainly not the right time! The opportunity was there before the winter break. Right now we are in a dog fight and we need to be right behind the team 100% because this team really needs help. The chance to give the board their comeuppance will come again soon enough but right now more than ever ” we need to make some noise, for the Bhoys!”
Back the team.
Sack the board.
F**k the Green Brigade.
This shower should have been chased years ago.
Cheer the bhoys on today,hopefully a good win.
Get this title won.Regardless,this board must be ousted this summer.?