Ban on sectarian football chants ‘deepens divisions’

A PROMINENT free-speech campaigner has claimed that recent legislation intended to stamp out football-related religious abuse has created a new sectarian divide in Scotland, writes Brian Morton.

Sociologist Dr Stuart Waiton, of Abertay University, author of  Snobs’ Law: Criminalising football fans in an age of intolerance, said that criminalising sectarian chants had institutionalised a culture of offence-taking and created new tension between the “Old Firm” teams in Glasgow, Rangers and Celtic FC, which are strongly associated with the Protestant and Catholic communities respectively, and with loyalist and Irish republican politics.

“The divide has less to do with ‘ancient’ religious or political rivalries than with the new victim-based framework of taking offence,” he argued.

His research has focused on the Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications (Scotland) Act 2012. “Rather than sectarianism itself being the key basis for animosity, it is Celtic’s apparent support for new laws that target Rangers songs that ignites most anger today,” he said.