Unit 4: Sectarianism and Football

Purposes of the curriculum 3-18

In addition to the key contributions of the whole the course, these activities also contribute toward young people becoming:

successful learners able to make reasoned evaluations
confident individuals able to relate to others and manage themselves
responsible citizens with respect for others
effective contributors able to take the initiative and lead

The aim of this unit is to introduce the pupils to football's relationship with sectarianism.

Football has been seen by some to be a cause of sectarianism. Yet football is a family sport and enjoyed by millions of people across Scotland and the world.

Football attracts its fair share of hooligans. The worst type of hooligans are those who involve themselves in verbal abuse and violence. This abuse can take many forms such as racial abuse or sectarian abuse. In the case of sectarianism, some people go to the game and join in with singing songs and shouting chants that are sectarian yet they would not regard themselves as prejudiced or bigoted. However, by joining in they are contributing to sectarianism.

This type of behaviour provokes and incites religious hatred. This sectarian behaviour gives football and true football supporters a bad name.

Worse than this, these sectarian songs and chants often lead to serious violence during and after the game. Unit 5 looks at the work of Nil By Mouth and refers to the sectarian murder of Mark Scott in 1995. This sectarian violence can end in the tragedy of people being killed: both culprits and innocent.

Football clubs, as well as organisations like the Scottish Football Association are working together to tackle sectarianism. This follows initiatives like Show Racism the Red Card that have been very successful in raising awareness about racism in football, as well as encouraging everyone to challenge racism when they see or hear it.

Rangers and Celtic fans are often perceived as being sectarian. Rangers is perceived as the 'Protestant' club and Celtic the 'Catholic' club. Yet a range of people support the clubs including those with no religion or those who belong to other religions.

The majority of Rangers and Celtic supporters do not get involved in sectarianism, but sometimes the newspapers stereotype them as all being hooligans or bigots.

Rangers and Celtic football are trying to stamp out sectarianism amongst their fans.

Activity 1: Whose responsibility?

Issue Addressed:

Football teams' responsibilities and initiatives in addressing sectarianism.

Aims:

To explore what responsibility football teams have for addressing the issue of sectarianism
To identify the initiatives that the teams have developed or participated in

Football teams, Celtic and Rangers in particular, often get bad publicity, and accused of not doing enough, about sectarianism. But can clubs change attitudes and if so how can they do it?

Task:

Working in groups of 4 - 6 select one of the following and examine the role that each person can play in combating sectarianism and draw up a list of recommendations from each person:

The chairperson of a football club
A football player
A journalist
A football fan
A visiting fan from another team
A stadium security officer

Teacher / facilitator

Bring groups back together and share recommendations with the rest of the class/group. Discuss the feasibility of each suggestion. How much impact would it have? Is there anyone else that could have helped?

Task:

Working in small groups research what the football teams are actually doing to combat sectarianism. You could do this by visiting team websites or doing searches on the Internet.

www.celticfc.net
www.rangers.premiumtv.co.uk

Teachers/facilitators

Projects or initiatives you might want to look out for include:

Bhoys Against Bigotry
Pride Over Prejudice
'Old Firm United' or 'Fans United' workshops
Sense Over Sectarianism
Work with supporters' clubs
Match day visits for schools
Social charters

Note to teachers / facilitators

A good follow-up activity for this session could be the Responsibility Ladder in the Youth worker section of this resource.

The Football Game

Download an A4 size of the game board
Enlarge to A3 size
Pupils could make up their own game cards or use the ones David Gray, Iona Neilson-Bell (student teacher) and pupils of S2 Grange Academy made up
On the gameboard are red dots, if you land on a red dot, pick up a card
Card packs 1, 2 and 3
The cards should be mixed up and the game played. The first person to reach home wins

CATHOLICS AND PROTESTANTS - Different yet same

The sad thing about sectarianism between Protestants and Catholics is that they belong to the same Christian faith.

They believe:

that Jesus is the Son of God
that Jesus had a virgin birth
that Jesus was crucified
that Jesus rose again from the dead
that Jesus is their saviour

Both denominations share common Christian values:

Love
Compassion
Forgiveness
Reconciliation
Justice
Equality

Both are heavily involved in the Scottish Ecumenical movements and within Action for Churches Together in Scotland (ACTS) which addresses many social issues such as racism.

So why does sectarianism continue?

It is important to understand the history. Unit 3 and the Context section of this website provides some of the background.

Sometimes it is because difference is misunderstood and seen as division.

For example, the Protestant and Catholic churches have some slight different interpretations.

Roman Catholics believe that his Holiness the Pope is the leader of the Church and he speaks on behalf of God.

However, Protestants do not believe the Pope speaks on God's behalf and reject him as their leader.

Roman Catholics believe that when they are given the bread at communion it changes - in a spiritual way - into the body of Jesus. However Protestants view the bread as symbolic of the body of Jesus.

These differences should not lead to sectarianism.

Activity: It's only a game - isn't it?

Issues Addressed
Religious identity with particular football teams.

Aims

To identify why young people support a certain football team
To explore how history has affected the identity of teams and their supporters

Teacher/Facilitator

Celtic and Rangers dominate Scottish football and the majority of young people interested in football will tend to declare an allegiance to one or the other even if they support another team. These two teams are also the teams associated in people's minds with the divide between Catholics and Protestants in Scotland and as such will be the focus for this activity. However, this religious divide also plays itself out with other football teams in Scotland and should be taken into account throughout this activity.

Task

Working in groups of 4-6 write down the reasons why you support the football team you support.

Why do you support the team?
What is it about the team that you like?
Who or what influences you to support this team?

Teacher / Facilitator

Bring groups back together and compare reasons. Points to draw out are that whatever team they support they will have similar reasons for doing so:

They think they have the best players
Their family support that team
The first football match they went to, or strip they had, was for that team
They are the best team in the world

One of the major reasons for supporting a particular team is identity with family or other group, e.g. religion or geographical area.

Traditionally Celtic is identified as a Catholic team, Rangers is identified as Protestant and allegiance to one team or the other is linked to religion. Where does this come from?

Task

Working in small groups research the history of the two football teams. Could they do this by visiting websites or libraries for information as well as drawing on their own knowledge of events. Useful places to start:

www.celticfc.net
www.rangers.premiumtv.co.uk
www.scotsman.com
www.theherald.co.uk

Bill Murray The Old Firm - Sectarianism, Sport and Society in Scotland
Bill Murray Bhoys, Bears and Bigotry - The Old Firm in the New Age

Both Bill Murray books might be more suitable for teachers / facilitators to draw information from than for young people to read. Both books can be borrowed from the Centre for Education for Racial Equality in Scotland (CERES) tel: 0131 651 6274 or e-mail on ceres@ed.ac.uk

Teacher / facilitator

In exploring the history of the development of both teams it is important to make the link with the establishment of Celtic as supporting Irish Catholic settlement in Glasgow and link back in to any work previously done on Irish immigration to Scotland. The notion of the Irish Catholic 'incomer' and the suspicions that underpinned this notion helped to develop the Protestant identification with Rangers. History and family identity have played an important part in allegiances in terms of football teams.