Celtic football fans and why the cause of Palestine matters
The conventional wisdom that politics should be kept out of sport, that sport and politics do not mix, is a myth propagated by an establishment for whom any form of political engagement except that which involves passively entering a voting booth to put your ‘X’ in the appropriate box, is deemed a threat to the status quo.
In truth sport and politics are two sides of the same coin and always have been.
When it comes to football there is no more political an institution than Celtic Football Club in Glasgow. Formed in 1888 by Brother Walfrid, an Irish Catholic cleric, to raise money to feed and minister to the material needs of poverty-stricken Irish immigrants in the West of Scotland — Celtic Football Club existed back then does now as a sanctuary as much a sporting institution.
Back when the club was established, the assimilation into mainstream Scottish society of Scotland’s Irish immigrant community was blocked, thus forcing it to create parallel social structures and cultural organisations of its own for the purposes of survival. Celtic FC came into being as part of this process.
Out of this history derived a concrete identity and set of values that generations of Celtic fans have embraced, upheld, represented and carried with pride. Aligned with the republican…
