OK, I admit it. I’m from Edinburgh. And I’m not sorry, all right? I know all the jokes about having had your tea and icy winds and fur coats with no undergarments, and it’s all very funny, but I happen to think Edinburgh’s a rather fine city.
However, I do acknowledge that my origins make it harder for me to get involved in debates about Glasgow, specifically its problem with sectarianism. After all, religion played such a nonexistent role in my upbringing that the first time anybody asked me whether I was Catholic or Protestant was when I met a little girl from Coatbridge on a family holiday to Majorca. And I didn’t even know the answer.
Regardless of that, I’ve now lived in Glasgow for very nearly half my life, so I think I’m allowed to have an opinion. Don’t be too shocked: but I don’t actually think Glasgow is as bigoted as people make out. In the seventeen years I’ve lived here, I can barely remember any unpleasant incidents that could be put down to sectarianism.
To read the recent media descriptions of the city, following the decision of an unidentified idiothole to send parcel bombs to Celtic fans, you’d think it was impossible to poke your nose out of your front door without having it headbutted by some slow-witted thug still acting out the prejudices of his grandparents. People often speak about sectarianism as Scotland’s secret shame: actually, it’s anything but.
It’s certainly not a secret, and although many in the West of Scotland refuse to believe it, it’s not a Scotland-wide problem either. It’s a ridiculous piece of nonsense that is confined to a mule-headed minority in the West. The rest of us genuinely couldn’t give a toss. But ever since Jack McConnell decided to make confronting sectarianism a central plank of his First Meenistership, it’s become impossible to say so. Any suggestion that communities up and down the country are not all riven with religious hatred is taken as a blinkered refusal to accept responsibility and take action.
The minority who hate others because of some minute difference between their religious beliefs cause grief and inconvenience that is totally disproportionate to their numbers. And we absolutely should work to put an end to their violence and bigotry. But do we have to paint a picture of Glasgow as a seething mass of violent neckless blue-and-green shirted tattooed barbarians? It’s actually a perfectly pleasant place to live, work and socialise.
Of course, it hasn’t got a castle…