"A ROSE by any other name would smell as sweet,” as Shakespeare said. A bunch of racists and bigots smell just as bad when they turn their attention to Catholics as when they turn it on immigrants and Muslim people. Well, you would think so, would you not? However, over the last six weeks or so it seems that many people on the left and in the trades union movement don’t agree. I don’t say that lightly because I have—for 40 plus years—been on the left and an active trade unionist.
Like many of you, I was in George Square on September 7 (above), when the campaign, Stand Up To Racism, organised a counter-protest to a planned rally by what they described as the ‘far right.’ This was an event supported by the STUC and by my own union UCU—I was there speaking as the President of UCU Scotland.
While I was waiting to speak from the platform—which was situated on the side of the Square facing the City Chambers—I looked across and I could see the organisers and supporters of the anti-immigration rally. Lo and behold, to my surprise (!) it turns out that they were largely members of the Orange Order, members of the Apprentice Boys of Derry, Rangers ultras and Rangers casuals.
At the same time, members of the multi-generational Irish community—specifically two sets of Celtic ultras—who had come to the Square to join the anti-racist protest were kettled by the police for more than two hours in the sun. They were marched by the police past the protesters who were filmed gleefully singing about being ‘up to their knees in Fenian blood’ with no reaction whatsoever from the police. There were efforts by the event organisers to intervene with the police to allow them to join the counter-protest, but to no avail.
When I got to the platform, I brought solidarity from my union to the counter-protest and pledged my union’s backing to any demonstrations against the far right. I also pointed across the Square and told the assembled crowd who the organisers of the original rally where. I reminded them that they march the streets on a weekly basis, intimidating and disturbing Catholic/Irish Catholic communities across the city and, indeed, across Scotland.
Abuse and attacks
For the great crime of telling the truth—and nobody to date has disputed what I said—I was then inundated with abuse on social media, there was an organised and racist campaign to write to my employers, and stories were leaked to the lower echelons of the British media.
Now, most of you will probably know that none of that is particularly new, and all of it has happened to me and others numerous times over the past 40 years in various forms. What was new, and what has really opened up a hitherto scabbed over wound in the Scottish psyche, was that the most senior official in the GMB union in Scotland, Louise Gilmour, took it upon her very unwise self to write to her members—who were foolish enough to complain to one union about a member of another union—and point out that I had not lived up to GMB standards and had made ‘sectarian’ remarks. Now, if any of you are GMB members, I really don’t want to offend you, but the idea of GMB ‘standards’ of conduct is laughable to me—you know your own history so I will say no more.
Within minutes of this badly-written missive hitting the press—I wonder how that happened—the social media account of none other than the Grand Orange Lodge of Scotland congratulated the GMB and called on other unions to do the same. Imagine being a trade union in Scotland and having your social media output applauded by representatives of the ‘far right’—for that is who all the TUS and the left now knew had organised the original protest!
So my union talked to her union and it was all agreed that this would not happen again and no more would be said. However, given that the comments were not retracted, naming her here seems fair enough.
What of the other trades unions or the organisers of the counter-protest? What had they to say about all this? Well, I imagine you already know that they had absolutely nothing to say—not in any public way at least. What does that tell us about the standing of our community who have long supported and built the trades union movement in Scotland? And what of the political parties? What had they to say? Oh enough... you know they said, and largely did, nothing.
Same old story
Not long after all this, the Apprentice Boys of Derry notified Glasgow City Council that they intended to parade past St Alphonsus Church on London Road on the way to a ‘Remembrance Day Service’—you know the ones I mean, the ones they cancel when they get stopped from going past a Catholic church. They intended to do their return journey—because they are the only organisation in Scotland that has a return procession—down Abercromby Street and past St Mary’s, another Catholic church which is in a joint parish with St Alphonsus. One suspects they were testing the water given that Canon Tom White has now moved on, in the hope that they will be able to reclaim this route—one that has been denied to them for some years.
Call it Out, the organisation which I chair, asked all progressive forces, including the trades union movement and political parties, to come out in opposition to these marches. On the eve of the processions, some honourable individuals have said they will come out, but nothing from the organised trades union movement and the so-called anti-racist left.
The recent review of the UK—including the Scottish—Government by the United Nations Committee for the Elimination or Racial Discrimination which explicitly recommended ‘that the State party, particularly the government of Scotland, engage with relevant stakeholders, in particular members of the Irish community, to develop measures to effectively address ethnic and religious prejudice in Scotland.’
This month, in an event organised by BEMIS and attended by a representative of the Scottish Commission for Human Rights, the Minister for Equalities, Kaukab Stewart, assured the assembled groups—including Call it Out—that the Scottish Government fully intended to act on the recommendations of UNCERD and that specifically they looked forward to ‘engaging’ with the Irish Community in Scotland.
Readers of The Irish Voice know how often Ms Stewart’s predecessors have promised us something similar, so we must hope that this time, with the backing of the UN Committee, that genuine and meaningful engagement will take place.
The fact that the minister was unable, when asked, to spell out how that engagement would take place, given that the much-vaunted Anti-Racist Observatory which will be a key plank of anti-racist activity in Scotland, has already excluded the Irish community and other communities such as the Polish community and Gypsy Travellers and will focus solely on skin colour. Skin colour is important, but it is only one of the characteristics which the Scottish Government is obliged to consider in carrying out this policy work.
She had literally no answer to give when asked how the Scottish Government intended to address the recommendations of the committee in relation to the activities of other tiers of government such as local government. This is in the context of the consistent failure of local authorities to lawfully curtail the freedom of anti-Catholic marches past Catholic churches.
And so it goes on. We have asked the trades unions, we have asked the progressive anti-racist left, and we have asked the Scottish Government to stop this assault on our community—let’s see what they do. Solidarity forever!
Jeanette Findlay is the Chair of Call It Out: The Campaign Against Anti-Catholic Bigotry and Anti-Irish Racism
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