Chanting Voltaire at Ibrox

Following extraordinary events in the Old Firm last year—including bomb scares at Celtic—Scotland’s first minister Alex Salmond called an emergency summit on the supposed “scourge of sectarianism” in football. The outcome, of course, was always going to be more rules and regulations. The Scottish Parliament made a contemptuous and anti-democratic attempt to pass the newly-drafted Offensive Behaviour at Football Bill in the space of two weeks, in order to catch the upcoming football season.

The Bill was, rightly, delayed because of pressure from opponents, and is still being discussed and debated now. If passed, it could mean up to five years in prison for supporters convicted of singing offensive songs, or songs which “incite violence in others” (whatever that means). Its reach would extend beyond the football ground: similar sentences could be handed out for football-related online offences.

Take a Liberty (Scotland), an organisation I founded, has launched a campaign against the Bill. We have started a petition, which has nearly 3,500 signatures to date, to combat the criminalisation of fans and to argue for free speech in football.

The opposition campaign gathered steam in September, when supporters groups Union Bears and the Blue Order for Rangers and the Green Brigade for Celtic protested at their grounds. Glasgow South MP Tom Harris and Michael Kelly, the ex-Lord provost of Glasgow publicly gave us their backing when we subsequently leafleted Rangers’ home ground Ibrox.

The Blue Order also invited me into the ground to see how the police treated Rangers fans when they protested. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the police did not disappoint and a number of young men were ejected from the ground.

Yet, despite all the outrage, the “rise of sectarianism” in Scotland is grossly exaggerated. Violence has declined in and around the grounds and, according to Steve Bruce’s study Sectarianism in Scotland, indicators (such as social mixing and intermarriage) suggest that Catholics and Protestants have, for a long time, lived together harmoniously. Religious identity has less significance now than it did 20 years ago, and the issue of Northern Ireland is no longer the political battleground it once was. In this context, “sectarian” or IRA chants are not so different from songs claiming Arsène Wenger is a paedophile or other such ditties.

As I write, the Labour party and the Roman Catholic Bishop of Paisley have come out in opposition to the Bill. However, it looks as though the government will continue its attempts to regulate fans, now that even the First Minister has joined a bandwagon, which, as Michael Kelly puts it, “has quickly become a runaway train.”

We are a long way off a truly tolerant society, one which affirms Voltaire’s maxim: “I may hate what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” If those words were chanted at a football match, one suspects the Scottish authorities would have several new clauses to add to their Bill.

Stuart Waiton is speaking at the debate "Silencing sectarianism: football's free speech wars" at the Battle of Ideas festival on Sunday 30th October