14/05/08 UEFA CUP FINAL.ZENIT ST PETERSBURG v RANGERS (2-0).CITY OF MANCHESTER STADIUM - ENGLAND.Rangers chairman Sir David Murray (left) alongside chief executive Martin Bain. (Photo by Steve WelshSNS Group via Getty Images)
Last night I sat and listened to Graham Spiers’ podcast on David Murray.
McGowan and Grant were both on it, and although none of them was in a particularly complimentary mood when it came to Murray, they all repeated stuff that forms part of the Murray legend. And that’s all the book is intended to do—reframe the Murray legend and make people believers all over again.
There are people the world was fortunate to have in it, even some of the oligarchs and robber barons of their time. People like Carnegie, for example, who left behind him a Hell of a lot of good for all the wealth and power he amassed.
Even today, there’s a network of millionaires in this country who campaign for reform of the tax system because they believe they should pay more. I was reading about those guys the other day.
I read about one of the Disney heiresses who has given away almost every penny she inherited and intends to give away almost everything she has left before she dies. I know all about the Gates Foundation and its commitment to tackling global problems.
Not only is it dedicated to donating almost everything to charity, but Gates also works with other philanthropists like Warren Buffett to encourage their fellow billionaires to do the same.
I don’t know how you feel about these guys even existing in the first place. Personally, I think it’s a bad and screwed-up world where people can amass that kind of wealth in a single lifetime. But some of them are determined to give it back. Those are people we’re lucky to have. Those are examples of how it could be, how it should be. These aren’t the Jeff Bezos’s or the Elon Musk’s. They see the world differently.
This world was not fortunate to have David Murray in it.
He is not a philanthropist. He is not a shining example of how we should aspire to live our lives. He amassed a vast fortune in a way very common to a lot of people in the modern world: through leverage, debt, and the restructuring of debt. He was the beneficiary of a very understanding bank. And as I’ve pointed out before on this blog, he left the taxpayer holding over a billion pounds in toxic assets.
That’s you. That’s me. That’s schools, that’s hospitals. That’s fire stations and police officers on the beat. All denied to our society because of him.
There is very little positive to say about that man. He’s egotistical, greedy, selfish, and self-interested—even now.
If he hadn’t bought the West of Scotland football club, if he hadn’t boasted about it being the second-biggest institution in the country after the Church, if he hadn’t made it a vehicle for his own ego, there would be near-unanimity about who he was and what he did. No one would be hailing him. Few would even know his name. And those who did would consider him a scourge—to the taxpayer, to the country, to everything.
He didn’t want to make a contribution to the country. He tried everything he could to evade his responsibilities. The whole tax thing? That started with his executives, for his own businesses. Then he expanded it to include the football club. This was a man with no interest in making the country better. The legacy he leaves behind is ruin.
There was nothing virtuous about him. The same guy who broke the sectarian signing taboo was the same guy who introduced orange shirts en masse to the Ibrox crowd. Even the signing of Johnston wasn’t an act designed to shatter a cultural norm.
Murray was comfortable with those cultural norms. He was happy with them, as he told Fergus McCann explicitly, when McCann launched the “Bhoys Against Bigotry” campaign and tried to make it a joint Glasgow clubs affair—something many have forgotten, and some would rather not remember.
Murray broke the signing taboo for two reasons. First, because his manager, Graeme Souness, wanted it broken; he believed it limited the pool of players available to him. And they were very fortunate that in Mo Johnston, they had a player they could sign who would also embarrass Celtic, because we thought we’d done the deal.
The second reason is even more revealing—UEFA was all over it. They wanted answers as to whether the policy was as described, and they made it clear they would no longer tolerate it. He had no choice.
One of the debates that constantly circles among their support is whether Murray can be forgiven in light of the “glory years”—the top signings, the spending, the success. But what they don’t understand is that those towering monuments to Murray’s greatness were all part of a superstructure that was broken from the start. They weren’t building an empire. They were building a Jenga tower.
That success, those big-money signings, the silverware—all of it led directly to the collapse. When you celebrate them, you’re not celebrating triumph. You’re celebrating the disease that led to the death. That led to the funeral. That led to everything that’s followed.
David Murray wasn’t a genius.
He was Brooks Mileson with a bigger line of credit. And the reason this isn’t properly understood by so many, including in the media, is that there never really was a reckoning. Yes, the new club had to start at the bottom—but the media spent every day since telling us it was a relegation, not a liquidation. That the rest of Scottish football had acted unfairly and finished the job Craig Whyte started.
On the podcast the other night, I had a bit of a rant.
One of the posters had needled me about the Boyne celebrations, and I reminded him of a few facts he clearly doesn’t know—and obviously doesn’t want to know. That the Battle of the Boyne was actually one of the great geostrategic victories of the Catholic Church. That Rome partially funded William of Orange’s army and held a celebratory Mass for him afterwards.
That the whole thing was a manoeuvre to counter Louis XIV and the power of the French throne, which had allied itself with James II—and which posed a vastly greater threat to the Papacy than William ever did or ever wanted to.
They don’t know that. Because they’re thick. And they’ve surrounded themselves with myths and lies.
This is another one of those myths.
They’ve convinced themselves that what happened to their club was the result of a conspiracy. That the glory years are something to be cherished separately from the collapse. As if those weren’t just steps on the road to the abyss. But they were. We all know they were.
That is the David Murray legacy. The wreckage of Rangers. The damage he did to that institution. He wasn’t a benign force who simply made some mistakes. He was the malignancy that destroyed Rangers.
The good times? They were not good times. It’s only in hindsight that you realise they were the disaster. That they created the conditions for the collapse.
In Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh writes about how one of the characters—female—never looked so good as when she was on heroin, at the start anyway. And in summing up her transformation, and the transformation of everyone that drug touches, he adds the line: “It gives before it takes away.”
Anyone who has been an addict, or known one, will testify to that truth. That first hit, that first high—it seems like the greatest thing in the world. But all the consequences flow from that moment. From that point of ecstasy, it’s all downhill.
There’s a great political aphorism: “The greatest enemy of the truth is not the lie—it’s the myth.”
And that’s what Murray has always been. The Wizard of Oz. The man behind the curtain, pulling levers and creating special effects. Presenting an illusion of power and control. But all the while, building his Jenga tower ever higher.
Until it all came crashing down.
And the saddest part? We paid the bill for it.
So I don’t want to hear any revisionist nonsense. Because almost everything that’s been said and written about that guy is revisionist nonsense. This idea that he “gave the fans the glory years” is wrong on so many levels. But at the most fundamental level, it ignores what the enormous cost of those glory years was.
“I am Ozymandias. Look upon my works ye mighty and despair.”
The pride that came before the fall.
Well said James, he was an egotistical selfish fucker and all of the other criticism that you have levelled at him. If he could have buried Celtic during those supremacist years he would gladly have done so. His statement that for every fiver Celtic spent, that they would spend a Tenner was all part of the arrogance shown then, when in fact he was actually spending other peoples money, not Ranger’s and certainly not his own. God forbid.
And…..the hun hordes loved it, relished it and wallowed in their false success. I remember well going to Ibrox on my supporters bus and that venomous mob in their own buses waving handfuls of Tenners at us to underline their so called superior wealth, I don’t forget those things, those slights and the accumulative result of all that is that it stokes my hatred and bitterness towards them to this day, and for all my remaining days.
Fk them all, the long and the short and the tall.
Find a more up to date image, James.
Murray now looks like a jakey.
A very well put angle, on what is basically another attempt by an ibrox connection to twist and invent his own history, as we so very often see over there. We also remember, how murray enticed media arse lickers intae his pocket, like traynor, with ‘succulent lamb’ dinners at top restaurants. As far as the ‘boyne’ celebrations are concerned. It would amaze most people just how many of its followers don’t know, or don’t want tae know, the historical facts. And ahm talkin through personal experience in dealin with some of these ignoramus’. Apart from the political power motives, which was the main objective. The actual battle itself, was won by Williams army mainly due to having far superior and modern weaponry. They had also, an army which out numbered James 2nd’s by around 2-3 to one, albeit a lot of them on both sides, never took part until they managed to cross. The crossing itself took most of the day which was repulsed time and again by James cavalry, and only when Williams army was split when trying to cross into separate divisions and stretched James inferior numbers was it possible to succeed. William himself, had to be carried over by one of his aids, due to his asthmatic condition. Hardly the stuff of noble, white charger, arm outstretched with sword in hand tripe. That’s just fanciful garbage. Once Williams forces were over, the superior numbers and weaponry were the end. Although historians will say, James forces deserved far more credit under the circumstances than they received and James their king, wasn’t worthy of their bravery. Paints a very different picture of what we see being celebrated. The ‘celebrators’ just don’t want tae know these historical facts. Although religion was a part player, it’s been grossly twisted through the decades by bigots who’ve manipulated and created this ‘glorious’ image tae suit their own idealisms. Sorry about the history lesson. Couldnae help myself.
A penny for George Burley’s thoughts
James ,Extremely well written
Your portrayal of Murray is spot on…both on describing the odious character and his ‘glorious achievements’ which were as you rightly point out funded by every taxpayer in the UK.
It continues to astonish me to this day why not one single mainstream journalist in the country has had the balls to tell the full true and the wider EBT related story on what to me is the biggest sporting scandal ever perpetrated anywhere …making the Lance Armstrong doping scandal brilliantly exposed by David Walsh of the Times…look mickey mouse by comparison .
Your assertions on what the Battle of the Boyne was really all about are of course also historically accurate ( i would expect no less ) ..This battle outcome was a monumental victory for Pope Innocent X1 over Louis X1V of France ..All architected by the league of Augsburg set up in 1686 to counter French aggression .A French Anglo Catholic based alliance would have been a monster threat to the papacy and other States in Europe therefore the need for the ‘Grand Alliance’ with William as its key player. It is accepted that the Pope significantly funded Williams armies .
Whilst not the primary objective of the battle the collateral damage /consequences of William’s victory were a disaster locally in Ireland for Catholicism and as we know continue to haunt our wider society to this day given the complete delusional myths that underpin the ‘Orange’ cultural belief system and all that sadly flows from it
AND back to your main theme …the Murray analysis of the trophy laden 90s highlights that crowd of ‘believers’ are world class when it comes to delusional myths particularly of the supremacist kind .
Yes Pope Innocent X1 may have avoided losing his papacy or having it and the Curia dragooned back again to Avignon but boy did he leave a horrible divisive legacy behind for Ireland and later Scotland which we all have to live with to this day..and it will probably continue to breed more Murrays given the manifest role that football club plays in that belief system .
Great post Charlie.
For every £5 they spend, we will spend £10 Famous Liquidation words from an Ego Maniac.
Apart from the standard debt that was never paid, Murray was rumoured to have transferred £70 million of debt from Rangers to Mimtec, a rumour that went round 6 months or more before Rangers Liquidation.
Rangers fans think the tax case was the one that finished them, the actual tax case that was part of the overall debt was PAYE that neither Murray or Whyte paid.
The big tax case was dropped once the club was liquidated, that case had no bearing on the Liquidation.
Murray started the rot, Whyte finished it off, along with the ticketus money that went where?
What you have now is Rangers ll, but anyone associated with the impersonators will try to claim its the same club.
From directors to fans all are in denial that there was every any debt, then there are those who are so foolish and say its the same club as only the financial part went bust.
Not the brightest peepl.
Murray has had some personal tragedies to deal with, the most specific of them being the loss of his wife Louise at 38 years of age due to cancer (she was the mother of his two children after all as well and one would need a heart of cold stone not to feel empathy of sorts with the family during that episode)…
He also did sanction the signing of the first Catholic for ‘Rangers’ as they were in 1989 – Though I suspect as you say James that he may well have known UEFA were gonna be looking into the truly outdated and disgusting policy that really only hurt themselves (The deceased club would simply never have done their dead 9-in-a-row without all their Catholic players for sure)…
I think a lot of it was also to make himself look ‘good’ to those not of a Liebrox persuasion and that certainly worked for sure and in fairness he did take a helluva flak for signing Judas and there is no doubt that it hurt Celtic very badly and that’d have been a massive motivation as well for his action…
But there endith the plaudits for this Pathological Liar and mental egotistical individual !
His ‘fiver / tenner’ boast will haunt the fucker to the grave and so it fuckin should as well… His sales of the book are going to erskine – Finally a guilt trip for his tax dodging that deprived Brit military personnel of vital kit and probably landed more than a few in erskine – Will he care, will he fuck, his type never, it’s just to make him look good…
The murder of Airdrieonians FC largely down to him is another stain on his character, but my goodness the murder of Rangers FC is altogether another notch on his CV for sure… The thing is they truly DETEST him, thank goodness for that at least, certainly fans of every other clubs detest him but that Sevco fans utterly do tells you all you need to know about him – His book has backfired and they really wanna smash him in the face…
Perhaps – Fortunately for him – They canny boot him in the legs !!!
They can boot him in the baws though, without even raising their foot. 🙂
Ha Ha – Very good Johnny !
Excellent article James..one point I will make, and it’s a small one, “Anyone who has been an addict, or known one, will testify to that truth. That first hit, that first high—it seems like the greatest thing in the world. But all the consequences flow from that moment. From that point of ecstasy, it’s all downhill.” Having known and lost a good friend to heroin, when I asked him what it was like ( I was curious but not enough to try it myself) he said that the first hit made him physically sick but didn’t deter him from trying it again..it was the second hit that showed him a high like he’d never experienced before and, he believed, hooked him…sadly all downhill from there.