Does this Celtic board stand for anything, or is it everything, and so nothing?

It may be a jumbled misquotation, but the old adage that to stand for everything is to stand for nothing contains more than a core of truth.

I guess what it actually comes down to is that you need to have convictions. You need to make choices. You need to stand on one side or another. Because to take a middle-of-the-road position all the time is to render you impotent. Soulless. A moral vacuum.

Last week, Celtic released two separate statements about their own fans. The first one I agreed with wholeheartedly—the one on flares and pyro, and the need to eradicate this stuff from our stadiums. It is illegal. It is unsafe. And it is now endangering the club.

I’ve already written about the SFA’s response, in deciding that they and the SPFL would dock us 500 tickets for our next Hampden appearance in the League Cup. It’s a slap on the wrist. It doesn’t impress me. And if I were one of the pyromaniacs, I don’t think it would scare me at all. But the club is concerned, and I understand why.

My position on this is as well known as any issue I’ve written or spoken about. And I don’t want to keep banging my head against the wall. UEFA has taken robust action and virtually eliminated this from our Champions League games. Had the SPFL taken proper, decisive action, they could have done the same in their competitions. But they failed to.

Celtic knows that serious consequences of some sort are coming, and they have no choice but to take action. They would much prefer that this action had some official teeth backing it up. If Celtic goes to these people and says, “We want this out of our stadiums, or we’re going to start banning people,” without any corresponding punishment waiting in the wings, then it’s just going to get spun against them. And they know that.

It got spun against them last time. It got spun against them last season when the Green Brigade were locked out of their seats for a period. I know the background to that. And Celtic released a detailed statement explaining their decision. It did not stop some of the online brigade from spreading the lie—and that’s what it was—that Celtic were being vengeful over Palestinian flags. That is not what happened.

When this club screws up, I will not hesitate to say so. But when this club is right on the money, when it is acting in its own interests and those of the supporters as a whole, then that’s what I’m going to write too. I’m not going to pursue agendas. I’m not going to paint the board as forever wrong about everything just because I don’t happen to like some of the people who serve on it.

So that’s the first statement—the one reminding fans that the club does not want this stuff in the stands, and that it is now having an impact on Celtic itself and their fellow fans. That message has been sent loud and clear. And even if the SPFL couldn’t get the punishment right, Celtic is saying to these people, “This is what’s coming down the road at us.”

As I’ve said for a long time, the idea that this stuff is here to stay and that you’ll never remove it from football is not even worth debating. If the authorities want this gone, they will get rid of it. And they can do it much more readily than some people seem to think.

The second statement was of an entirely different nature. And I was aghast reading it. Having read it back a couple of times since, I’m still aghast. It’s a remarkable statement—a morally cowardly statement. One whose sentiments I do not agree with in any way, shape, or form.

It was a statement about banners and the club’s concerns about some of the ones that have gone up at Celtic Park lately. I happen to think they’re talking about two in particular.

The first is the anti-Israel banner that flew at the Champions League game. Even UEFA itself has not sanctioned us for that. Because how could they?

If ever a controversial idea had gone mainstream, it’s the idea that Israel’s grotesque policy in Gaza is morally wrong and amounts to a war crime. It may eventually rise to the level of genocide. The leader of Israel and his defence minister have been cited by the International Criminal Court and are, in effect, wanted men who cannot travel to any major European country without the fear of immediate arrest.

I dearly wish our European friends had taken the same attitude toward Tony Blair. I wish he was unable to travel as freely as he does, without fear of arrest. Because if anyone earned it, he did.

As far as I’m concerned, when even UEFA has indicated by its silence that it has no issue with that sentiment or that banner, our club is standing on the wrong side of history by making a song and dance about it. That there have probably been complaints from a small section of the Celtic fanbase is surely not up for debate. I can think of a lot of people in our support who might have a serious issue with a banner like that and would be willing to take it up with the club. They have that right. But so do the guys in the stands.

I suspect the other banner they have an issue with is the one celebrating Bik McFarlane, which was displayed at our last home game against Aberdeen.

McFarlane was the officer commanding in the H-Blocks during the hunger strike.

He was certainly a controversial figure. Even the IRA has been reluctant to discuss, in too much detail, the crime for which he was imprisoned. It came during a period when the Republican movement was retaliating in tit-for-tat attacks after the UVF began indiscriminately murdering Catholics.

All sides in that conflict now recognise it as having been a war. And in war, there are atrocities on both sides. No war has ever been fought where one side had blood on its hands and the other was entirely clean. It’s the nature of war that everyone wades into the same filth. That everyone resorts to horrendous measures. That everyone does things that would otherwise be unthinkable.

McFarlane was also a man of peace. He was a key negotiator during the 1997 ceasefire and all of the peace talks that followed.

Adams and McGuinness may have got their place in the sun, but their political solution would have been impossible without the backing of the men who had been on the sharp end of the war. The men who had dipped their hands in the blood and carried out the military campaign.

Just as the unionist politicians needed the support of their prisoners, Sinn Féin’s leaders needed to ensure their own foot soldiers were on board.

If McFarlane is seen as having been part of the problem, then he was also part of the solution. And our club has never been shy about advertising its Irishness and its Irish roots. Some of those roots are found in the struggle against Britain, British imperialism, and the colonisation and subjugation of Ireland.

When Celtic Park opened, the first sod of turf was laid by Michael Davitt.

A lot of modern articles about him don’t go out of their way to discuss his Republicanism or mention that he was a long-term member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood—the forerunner of the Irish Republican Army—which fought the Revolutionary War against the British.

But he served seven years in prison for arms smuggling on behalf of the IRB and the Republican movement.

To commemorate one and not the other—isn’t that a crazy double standard?

If this club embraces its Irishness and celebrates its background, then surely that’s part of it. This is all legitimate sentiment because you can’t have one without the other. And the idea of leaving politics at the door—how many times must we discuss this? How many times must we say how ridiculous that concept is?

Our club hails from a proud Irish heritage. Tens of thousands of our supporters come from families steeped in the Republican tradition.

Celtic Park is one of the few places where they feel surrounded by like minds, where they feel safe and welcome in expressing that tradition. Some of the songs we play over the tannoy reflect it. So if it’s okay for the club to openly embrace this heritage, then they have no business telling fans not to.

I mean, what exactly do they think the song Grace is about? Who is Grace? And why do we sing about her? Well, she’s Grace Giford, and the song is about her marriage to Joseph Plunkett, one of the 1916 rebels and a signatory of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic. The song literally starts:

“As we gather in the chapel here at Old Kilmainham Gaol…”

And why was he in gaol? Because he was a rebel, and the British were going to shoot him the following day.

That song is a party piece for half of Celtic’s celebrity fans. Rod Stewart loves it. If you’ve ever heard Lewis Capaldi being interviewed, it’s one of his favourite songs. I’d bet there have been official club functions where a band has blasted that song out, and everyone in the room has been on their feet.

Yet we have a board full of moral cowards and hypocrites. I can’t believe the statement they released. And you’ll notice it was ambiguous—it didn’t even specifically single out the banner they had the most issue with. Was it the one condemning Israel? Or the one supporting a former Republican prisoner? They left just enough grey area for people to draw their own conclusions. That is cowardly as well as hypocritical.

Because if you’re going to criticise the McFarlane banner, then someone’s going to come back at you with Michael Davitt. If you’re going to criticise the Israeli banner, then I’m afraid you’re standing on the wrong side of history—amidst a pile of corpses.

There are nuances to all of this. I myself object to efforts to use Celtic Park and Celtic Football Club as political weapons, and I’ve landed myself in trouble more than once for writing that. I care not one bit. But when the Israeli government is accused of war crimes by the International Criminal Court, that matter is all but decided. Some of the nuance has been stripped away.

And as for Irish Republicanism, no one has to convince me of its justifications—either moral or political. The war for independence, in any of its guises or whatever the Republican side was calling itself at the time, was justified. And that is by no means a minority sentiment at Celtic Park.

I’ll tell you who three of my heroes are—Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, and Yasser Arafat.

They all won the Nobel Prize for their role in negotiating the Oslo Accords in 1993.

Arafat himself once used the now-infamous phrase “from the river to the sea” to describe the goals of the PLO. But on 15 November 1988, he stood in the well of the United Nations and declared the independent State of Palestine—and in the same speech, recognised the right of the State of Israel to exist.

The world doesn’t have men like that anymore. Men who are brave enough to stand up, recognise another man’s right, and see another man’s point of view. Arafat and Peres went on to be recognised as international statesmen. Rabin was assassinated—not by a Palestinian or an Arab, but by an Israeli citizen, Yigal Amir, because he dared to sign those accords.

As far as I’m concerned, much of the current Israeli government is very much a carbon copy of that kind of malice and hatred.

McFarlane, like Arafat and others, was a man of war who became a man of peace.

So I have to ask—what is Celtic’s problem with those banners?

Are they standing behind the complaints of a handful of fans?

Or are they simply too concerned with what people outside our community think of us?

Let me tell you—the world knows who we are. The world knows what our club represents through the actions of our supporters. And if the board thinks stripping away those elements will make us more beloved on the world stage, they are very, very wrong.

Because sometimes, you have to make a stand. Sometimes, you need to make a statement. Sometimes, it is simply the right thing to do, wherever it happens and however it comes about.

There is no moral justification for standing in the middle of the road and trying to please everyone.

You can’t reasonably stand for everything. Because to stand for everything is to stand for nothing.

We live in a world of great, big dividing lines. And I am proud that our supporters are willing to stand up for something. Because more often than not, their choices are morally right. Their causes are just.

And what matters more than that?

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