Sadly, I wasn’t among the 260 souls who watched Stranraer FC narrowly defeat Berwick Rangers a couple of weeks back.
Sadly, I wasn’t among the 260 souls who watched Stranraer FC narrowly defeat Berwick Rangers a couple of weeks back. I’ve only been to Stranraer once, in 1975, when I watched my father stand by the docks and spit in the direction of Ireland, which loomed just beyond the edge of our eyesight. We were on holiday in this rather lovely and underrated neck of the Scottish woods and had ventured into Stranraer to buy provisions for the forthcoming evening meal in our camper van: a ‘salad’ — tomato cut in half, iceberg lettuce and processed ham sliced the width of a muon. And salad cream.
Anyway, I don’t think there was any fighting at the Stranraer-Berwick fixture. There weren’t really enough people, I suppose. But there was trouble, of a kind. Stranraer FC became retrospectively incensed by a repellent emblem sported by some of the Berwick fans — a red cross on a white background. This excrescence is henceforth banned from their ground and anybody seen with it will have it confiscated. The Scottish police have also said that the same emblem may well be confiscated when Berwick play at the Glasgow clubs Clyde and Queens Park, because it might provoke disorder. It would seem that this design is viewed, in some parts north of the border, on a par with the swastika. The flags of no other nation are banned at any Scottish ground. Just the cross of St George.
Berwick Rangers play their home games in England and their club scarf carries both the Saltire and this disgusting and inflammatory cross of St George. Plenty of Scottish football fans display the Saltire and are of course welcome to do so at Berwick Rangers, which is the only English-based club in the Scottish league. But the Berwick fans have been told that the cross of St George is unacceptable because they are ‘playing in a Scottish league’. This point of principle will come as a shock to the supporters of Cardiff City and Swansea City, two Welsh clubs playing in the English leagues, and some of whose fans cheerfully wave the Welsh Dragon both home and away — and are never prevented from so doing. Indeed their nationalistic pride is commended by English commentators, even when they get stuffed four-nil by Manchester City.
So we have that familiar thing, a case of the double standards. I suppose that if any of the Berwick supporters were feeling in a particularly whiney frame of mind they might have a case for pleading ‘racism’. All other nationalities are allowed to proclaim their identities and are, indeed, encouraged to do so. But not the ghastly English. It’s hard to blame the Scots alone for this discrepancy; not so long ago the international football authorities censured (and threatened with expulsion) Glasgow Rangers for singing their bone-headed sectarian hate songs (which are broadly in support of the union), but exculpated Glasgow Celtic for singing their bone-headed sectarian hate songs (which are broadly not terribly in favour of the union) because they were deemed to exist in a place beyond sectarian hatred and were worthy of the term ‘folk art’.
But what has any of this got to do with the Notting Hill Carnival? Only the double standards, once again. At this year’s vibrant expression of folk art, which everybody insisted had to go ahead despite the riots because it was a vibrant expression of folk art and would draw communities together and make all people of all races incredibly happy and in any case, more importantly, also expressed the unbounded joy of the black community at not being slaves any more, the following occurred. There were 245 arrests, including one for the stabbing of a man. Almost 700 people were injured in some way, including almost 100 who were taken to hospital. The police were bottled and attacked by a mob.
If this sort of stuff had happened at my local football ground, the club would have been kicked out of the league and we’d be seeing headlines in our morning newspapers saying ‘England’s shame’, statements in the House of Commons and so on, earnest debates of Newsnight about what to do with these violent right-of-centre white-trash scumbags. But in fact, because it was the Notting Hill Carnival, everybody has to tread with inconceivable delicacy, tiptoeing over the broken glass from the front window of Curry’s, anxious not to offend, giving the sort of leeway which you suspect, in their hearts, they do not feel should really be afforded.
The filth — the Old Bill, the rozzers — pronounce the event a great success, even though there were many more arrests than on the first night of those riots that took place four or five miles to the north-east and from which they were, to be fair, largely absent. An event that required the attendance of 6,500 police officers which, one way or another, you will pay for (£6 million minimum, incidentally). At most big scheduled events — such as football matches — the participants stump up towards the cost of the police. Not with Carnival, not a hope. And so instead we see pictures of the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, gettin’ down with the locals (it used to be footage of policemen in those old-fashioned helmets gingerly embracing some very fat and happy black lady, if you remember; these days it’s Boris) and Johnson’s deputy Kit Malthouse saying that ‘people knew they were on their best behaviour’. Well, no one was killed, I suppose. Some things are acceptable, some aren’t, and there’s no logic to the demarcation.
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