Alex Massie Alex Massie

Stephen Birrell’s Conviction Shames Scotland

Sectarianism, we are often told, is “Scotland’s Shame” though there’s also ample evidence it’s actually “Scotland’s Pleasure”. For some at least. The prosecution and conviction of Stephen Birrell for comments he posted on a Facebook page entitled “Neil Lennon should be Banned” marks a new low. Not because of anything Mr Birrell wrote – his fevered outpourings being merely the ravings of a disturbed mind – but because Scotland now imprisons people for the crime of disliking other people and making that dislike apparent in any kind of public forum. This is a shameful moment that demeans the country far more plainly than anything said, sung or written at or about any damn football match.

Mr Birrell is going to prison for eight months because of a number of posts he made to this silly, if scarcely atypical, Facebook group. They included:

“Hope they [ie, Celtic supporters] all die. Simple. Catholic scumbags ha ha.” “Proud to hate Fenian tattie farmers.” “They’re all ploughing the fields the dirty scumbags. FTP [Fuck the Pope] and the ‘Tic. WATP [We Are The People]. No Surrender.” “Fuck the Fenian bastards who have fuck all else to do than talk shit.”

This is hardly edifying stuff or evidence of a cultured mind. Nor is Mr Birrell’s lengthy criminal record. But we need not like, far less admire, Mr Birrell to observe that he issued no threats here. Nor did he encourage anyone else to threaten anyone else or commit an act of violence. All he has done is express distaste for Celtic supporters in general and Roman Catholics in particular. We might well, indeed should, think less of him for this but even if these postings may be said to be religiously and racially motivated they are still, in the end, only opinions. And expressing these kinds of opinions in Scotland now risks a spell in prison.

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