The cover of today’s Manchester Evening News exhorted us to be greatful for £25 million the “Tartan Army” is to pump into the city’s economy: wealth is generated, according to the mythology of consumerism, not by those who put in the work, but by those who consume it in the form of beer or ice-cream. For the record, though, this army wasn’t clad in Tartan so much as Union Jacks, with and without various Ulster loyalist frills.
In any event, they weren’t quite up to their knees in fenian blood, but singing about it isn’t exactly harmless fun in my book. That legion of flag-draped stomping chanters creates an atmosphere, a positively noxious atmosphere, more than a little scary, and I say that as a white Englishman with no particularly visible Irish Catholic heritage. My darker-hued friends have mainly avoided town today, and I daresay Canal Street saw a lot of its regulars stay at home too.
Last week, apparently, there was even an Orange march, and what with Richard Barnbrooke and all it’s not surprising that the local Nazis have been coming out of the woodwork lately. It won’t last - not if we don’t let it, which we won’t - but it’s not exactly pleasant.
And then there’s the police, who violently broke up a street party late on Saturday night with all their usual subtlety and, well, racism. At least one partygoer got his arm broken by the jaws of a police dog, and “bear” people ended up in hospital. No doubt they’ve been holding a grudge against the student population ever since the occupation of the Arthur Lewis building; fortunately, their chance for revenge came when I was away in London (‘cos otherwise, y’know, I’m totally the party type, whenever there’s a shindig goin down I’m there, life and soul thereof more often than not, ask anyone, etc). Anyway, the sousveillance footage of the event has been taken offline lest it jeapordize any future prosecution of the coppers responsible, but the Channel M report is probably kosher:
Good times.
On the upside, we just held one of our biggest meetings of the whole year, and a really good discussion about May 1968 and the whole ‘55-’75 global period of radicalism. After two decades of historically low levels of class struggle, especially in this country, things have been on the up again since 1999 - the anticapitalist movement, the antiwar movement, and now the building strike wave (depending how the Unison ballots go, we could soon be looking at the biggest strike since the ’20s), as well as the rise of the Latin American left and other developments around the world - and I really have found May 2008 (well, mostly April to be honest) to embody more hope than fear, more hope than I have felt for a long time.
This week, we’ve been reminded that the forces of reaction never really went away. Now let’s remind them about us. Oh, and Rangers lost by the way.
*affects football results announcer voice*
global proletariat-2. forces of reaction- Nil
yeah just found out that rangers have banned the billy boys song on the terraces. apparently its ok to sing it in manchester, that old home of irish immigrants. fricking disgrace
hmm i swear i made a post before, and im pretty sure it wasnt censured eh void? im guessing complex is having some kindve problems then
Haha but are Zenit Petrograd really that progressive a team? One of them did get stabbed, but that doesn’t make up for their history of racist antics.
And you’re not banned or anything but you were kind of moderated. There was just one thread on which I effectively closed all comments, it was getting a little nasty/boring. Most of the protagonists reproduced their comments on their own blogs/facebook/ednet anyway, with a “SWP blogger closes down free speech!” introduction. How they squared this assault on their freedom of speech with the fact that they were freely speaking on their own blogs I don’t know. Anyway it’s over now, generally I don’t plan to moderate things more than I have to.
The MEN have changed their tune, RE the economic impact. Local businesses are the real losers now, apparently: far from doing a load of shopping that they could just as easily do in Scotland, the Rangers lot just got scared normal shoppers away.
oh yeah im not say zenit are brilliant but coming from a british point of view, any team whose supporters are proud of being unionist and supports the udf, waves the northern irish flag, sings fascist chants, and has the biggest bnp branch out of all the uk football teams, deserves more enmity.
Oh totally. On that note: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORifieiZiP4
I always get really confused by talk of the UDF, y’know. Before remembering the Ulster Defense Force, I think of the Union pour la Democratie Francaise, Francois Bayrou’s French Lib Dems, and in most contexts that makes for a pretty dissonant juxtaposition.
A Scottish tory -Murdo something- (showing the reality of the Conservative & Unionist Party to give it the full name) started out by criticisng the police, how dare they impugn such god fearing loyalists. Then when it became clear the saintly plod got themselves a kicking not just scumbag Mancunian ‘civilians’ he had to retreat and admit the fans were right out of order, to be fair even a Rangers fan organisation is condemning it. Maybe they mistook a copper for the Pope or something. And maybe it’s also cos generally I would say Manchester is pretty Celtic friendly.
-Thus ends one of the few occasion I even think about football, boring, boring, boring.
Well I didn’t know that!
Oh yeah, plenty of local branches (UK wide) have nameplates with it on. Nationally in the media they almost never mention it though -particularly with shiny modern Cameron- as y’know makes the whole NI issue a bit of a con-job (pun intended) when tories are involved.
not that you have done this here but i am fed up with celtic and rangers being lumped together as a single entity. a tired old ‘bad as each other’ mantra tends to come out
can i point out that the celtic fans have won the awards for best supporters in europe several times recently and that a screen broke in seville in 2003 when celtic were in the final (and there 80,000 celtic fans there from around the world). 0 arrests, 0 incidents.
http://img246.imageshack.us/img246/4552/scotlandsshameaq3ji8.jpg
Yeah that’s the impression I generally get. When Rangers came to town a lot of the local fascists came out of the woodwork, some of the songs were really offensive and all. Whereas I have heard stories about Celtic Against Fascism having a big presence when their lot came to town.
I’m hesitant to read too much politics into football, but I guess the difference between Celtic and Rangers is the difference between the nationalism of the oppressed and the nationalism of the oppressor. That said, we did get a few Rangers people signing our SW petition to stop the BNP.