Kevin McKenna’s piece in The Herald romanticizes public disorder as justified if your ancestors were prejudiced against and is the latest plea of innocence from the Celtic-minded section of the Scottish media, but if fails to meet the outrage aimed at Rangers supporters in 2021.
It is romantic ethnography wrapped around public disorder. It is a column that reads less like reporting and more like a misty-eyed pilgrimage through Celtic and Scottish/Irish-Catholic mythology, written in an attempt to intellectualise football-based hooliganism that he ends up excusing behaviour the same newspaper has previously condemned similar behaviour when Rangers supporters were involved.
The double standard are not subtle and we at Read Rangers see through it.
The Old Firm double standard exposed
When Rangers fans gathered in George Square in 2021, The Herald’s coverage, particularly from columnist Martin Williams, was drenched in moral panic that Stanley Cohen would be proud of, painting Rangers fans as “folk devils” in a way McKenna failed to replicate with his fellow Hoops fans.
“Disgraceful scenes,” “Rampaged through the city,” “Damaged the image and reputation of Glasgow,” were all used to describe those celebrations.
Elsewhere they were branded “selfish beyond belief.”
The paper amplified every condemnation from politicians, police, civic leaders and public health officials.
Nicola Sturgeon’s outrage was splashed everywhere. Rangers fans were framed not merely as rowdy football supporters celebrating their first victory in a decade after years of ridicule and failure but as social pariahs who were violent, irresponsible, sectarian embarrassments dragging the city backwards.
And yet, when Celtic supporters descend on the Trongate for the fifth consecutive year, attacking police officers, injuring members of the public, with alleged stabbing, storming the Parkhead pitch, trashing the city centre and forcing terrified residents to flee their homes, suddenly McKenna discovers nuance, poetry and historical grievance.
The change in Old Firm narrative
Apparently, this is no longer mob disorder.
Now it is an expression of an oppressed people’s cultural journey.
McKenna’s column is breathtaking in its indulgence.
Bottles and flares disappear behind lyrical nonsense about “green and white tributaries feeding the main bacchanal.”
Drunken men carrying crates of lager suddenly become picturesque working-class symbols.
A city centre taken over by thousands of people is reimagined as a sacred annual rite comparable to celebrations in “all of Europe’s big football cities.”
This is the kind of patronising, self-important prose that turns anti-social behaviour into mystical, historical poetry.
The comparison to St John Ogilvie is laughable
Most astonishingly, McKenna invokes Irish poverty, Catholic discrimination and the execution of St John Ogilvie to contextualise a modern football gathering that ended with riot police being pelted with missiles while officers tried to reach a medical emergency.
Think about that for a second. A police officer suffers a significant facial injury after being attacked with bottles, but the columnist wants readers contemplating 17th-century martyrdom and intergenerational trauma.
“Generations of their impoverished Irish kinsfolk lived amidst squalor in the little wynds that once ran off this place,” he wrote.
I’m sorry, but what does the living standards of 300-years ago have to do with modern ethnic Scots wrecking historical buildings?
Does the plight of their ancestors give them immunity from the laws of our modern society? That appears to be what is suggested.
It is moral laundering through identity politics.
The facts McKenna tiptoes around are grotesque. Police described an “unacceptable level of violence.” Officers were attacked with bottles, cans and street furniture. Three members of the public were injured.
Detectives are reviewing footage that allegedly appears to show a stabbing. Residents described “serious civil disorder.” Businesses shut early. Streets were left covered in wreckage. Taxpayers again footed a massive clean-up bill.
Yet McKenna’s overriding concern appears to be that Police Scotland’s messaging was too “hostile” when asking Celtic to prepare for this likely outcome.
Hostile?
Police officers, Scottish citizens doing their job were being assaulted, just as they were last year.
Rangers crucified, Celtic praised
Imagine, for one second, if Rangers supporters had done precisely the same thing this weekend. Does anyone seriously believe The Herald would have commissioned a wistful column about Protestant migration, shipyard labour and cultural affirmation?
Would there be solemn reflections on community identity while riot police dragged bleeding officers away from George Square?
Of course not.
The editorial line would have resembled a state emergency bulletin.
That is the core issue here.
Not football tribalism, but institutional cowardice and selective outrage.
They want the moral authority that comes from condemning disorder, but only when it is politically and culturally fashionable to do so.
When Rangers fans left George Square littered with bottles and rubbish during Covid restrictions, the language was furious, prosecutorial and relentless.
When Celtic fans disgrace Glasgow Cross, suddenly we are told these scenes carry profound historical symbolism and should be viewed through the lens of Irish Catholic experience.
It is embarrassing.
Ignorance of the facts
McKenna even claims the celebrations were “happy rather than rapturous,” as though readers should ignore the actual evidence of violence because the atmosphere felt agreeable to him personally – while he himself ignored council pleas to vacate the area.
That alone captures the narcissism of the piece, lived experience trumping observable reality. The columnist saw dancing and hugging; therefore criticism must be exaggerated.
I seen the same in 2021 – does that negate the negative actions of Rangers-minded disruptors that day?
I would implore him to tell that to the officer injured and his family.
Tell that to residents who abandoned their homes for the weekend because they knew exactly what was coming, spending money on hotels and travel to get away from the green hoard.
Tell that to the businesses forced to shutter premises while the city centre became a drunken free-for-all yet again.
And spare everyone the sanctimony about supporters being “entitled to celebrate in public.”
Nobody disputes that. Fans absolutely have the right to celebrate success.
What they do not have is the right to terrorise city centres, assault police, vandalise property and repeatedly cost the public enormous sums of money. Rights come with responsibilities, a principle the same outlet understood perfectly well in 2021 when Rangers supporters were in the dock.
There is another grotesque omission too. Last year, a 15-year-old girl was sexually assaulted during Celtic title celebrations.
That reality sits awkwardly beside the romanticised vision of communal joy and cultural solidarity. These gatherings are not harmless folk festivals.
They repeatedly descend into violence, intimidation, criminality and chaos because authorities, clubs and sympathetic media figures continually excuse them until the next inevitable disaster occurs.
Read Rangers analysis
What makes the column especially insulting is its smug certainty. McKenna writes as though anyone criticising these scenes simply fails to understand Celtic’s cultural significance.
No. People understand perfectly well. What they reject is the idea that historical identity grants immunity from scrutiny.
Football tribalism does not become noble because it is wrapped in Irish iconography.
Disorder is disorder. Violence is violence.
And if Scotland’s so-called national newspaper cannot apply the same standards to both halves of the Old Firm, then it forfeits any claim to seriousness or credibility.
