The Celtic story does not begin with the building of a stadium, the sounding of a whistle, or the kicking of a ball. The very roots of the club’s existence can be traced back to Ireland’s Great Hunger; over 40 years before Celtic Football Club were even formed.
“The bulk of the indigenous population relied on the potato as a staple food,” explained An Gorta Mór’s Jeanette Findlay when describing Ireland’s plight during The Great Famine of 1845-1849. “The potato blight was something that extended right across Europe and into America. God brought the blight, but the English brought the famine. In Scotland, the landowners effectively paid all of the people who were affected by it to emigrate. While that was horrendous for people, there were no recorded deaths in relation to the potato blight at that time in Scotland.
“In Ireland, they took a completely different approach. Remember, the whole of Ireland was under British rule at this time. It’s really interesting how they initially approached it because there was still the concept of a relief effort to some extent by the State but also by other religious groups. The Quakers, I would have to say, must have saved thousands of lives. They were in there right at the start, engaging in the relief effort and providing food for people. Then you got people from all over the world, including Indian princes, who were sending relief to Ireland because people knew what was happening. Even Queen Victoria wished to give more aid to Ireland, but Charles Trevelyan refused. Trevelyan was essentially what we would now know as a Senior Civil Servant – he’s called ‘The Father of the British Civil Service,’ and a bust of him is in the Treasury in London.
“Trevelyan had a couple of things that were influencing him. First of all, he believed very strongly that they had to modernise the agricultural system, and he may well have been right in his belief that small holdings were not going to be sufficient to feed the population, which was about eight million at that point. The famine almost came as a happy circumstance for him, because essentially it would be clearing the land, therefore allowing for the small holdings to be joined up to make them into larger agricultural holdings. But he also had racist views towards the Irish, and religious views about it being “God’s ordinance,” and it wasn’t for them to interfere in what God was trying to do.”
The outbreak of phytophthora infestans destroyed Ireland’s potato crops, leaving over a million dead through starvation. “There is lots of credible evidence,” continued Jeanette Findlay. “Journalists travelled from London and witnessed people dying in the ditches with grass stains dribbling down their mouths because they had been trying to eat grass in their final agonies. What the landlords did when people were unable to pay their rent, is they came and took the roofs off their houses and made them uninhabitable, because that meant they no longer had to pay a tax on the housing. This caused some to die of the cold, alongside those who died of starvation, and there were also those who fled the famine by making their way out of the country. About a quarter of the population was decimated, and I don’t know that there’s been a famine that has affected that proportion of any population before or since. If you read what Trevelyan was saying and arguing for at the time, it was clearly genocidal. He believed it would be generally a good thing and “God’s will” if these people died.
“Britain laid claim to the whole of Ireland; These were British citizens. This was no different to this happening in Birmingham or Glasgow or London or anywhere else, but there was heavily, deeply-ingrained anti-Irish racism among the British population. Around 100,000 Irish immigrants travelled to various parts of Scotland, but mainly to Glasgow, to escape the famine. They were sometimes referred to as ‘The Penny Irish’ because they only had enough money to get to Glasgow. If they had more money, they would have gone to America. They were basically treated in the way that refugee communities are treated now. Somebody moves in and makes some money from the fact that there has been a disaster and they take money off the people and say they are going to take them to a safer place. They maybe told them they were taking them to America, but they actually took them to Glasgow. They were looking to take tremendous risks. Many of those ships – sometimes referred to as coffin ships – went down in the Atlantic on the way to America. These were dangerous, rickety things. They were taking enormous risks because the only other alternative was certain death from starvation.”
But the Irish in Scotland were not welcomed with open arms by the local population. They felt like strangers in a strange land, as Jeanette Findlay underlined, “The very interesting statistic is that the Irish who went to America achieved occupational parity by 1900, so they were basically in the same types of jobs and in the same proportions as the indigenous population by that time. It took us until 2001 in Scotland to get occupational parity. There was a period of these people arriving in very large numbers, and they were squeezed into the worst, most horrendous slum housing. That went on for some time.”
The Marist Brother Walfrid had left Ireland in the 1870s and, by the end of 1887, was teaching in Glasgow’s East End. Dismayed by the continued poverty of the Irish immigrants in Glasgow, and inspired by Edinburgh’s Hibernian Football Club, Brother Walfrid decided to establish a football team to raise money for the ‘penny dinner’ scheme he had already set up to feed the “needy children in the missions of St Mary’s, Sacred Heart and St Michael’s.” The Celtic Football and Athletic Club was formally constituted in St Mary’s Hall, Calton, on 6 November 1887.
Almost 132 years later, and the club’s social mission statement points out that Brother Walfrid also, “saw the need for social integration and his vision was a football club that Scottish and Irish, Protestants and Catholics alike could support. A new football club would be a vehicle to bring communities together and this was the second aim. The Marist brother sought for the club to have both a Scottish and Irish identity and hence, the club’s name “Celtic” came about, representing a bridge of cultures across the Irish Sea… Celtic Football Club is a Scottish football club with proud Irish links… It is run on a professional business basis with no political agenda… The club always has been and always will simply aim to be the team of the people.”
The club rightly continues to maintain an allegiance to its heritage and birthright. Every year, they mark the Great Hunger by wearing jerseys embroidered with the National Famine Memorial Day logo. One emblem that is no longer embroidered on Celtic jerseys every year, however, is the Remembrance Day poppy. This followed fan protests in November 2010, when Celtic ultra-group ‘The Green Brigade’ described the remembrance motif as a “blood-stained poppy” on a series of banners during a league match with Aberdeen. Such atrocities of the British Army in Ireland as the executions of 14 unarmed protesters on ‘Bloody Sunday’ in 1972 were cited as reasons for their refusal to accept the appearance of poppies on to the Celtic jerseys. The club later decided not to wear the symbol on their shirts and instead make a substantial annual donation to Poppy Scotland.
As a Scottish club with Irish roots, Celtic would always find it difficult (if not impossible) to avoid the politics and symbolism associated with Ireland: the songs, the tricolour, and the shamrock.
The songs…
Celtic’s origins have been told in story and in song and passed down to legions of new supporters for generations. Many of the Irish rebel songs that were once commonplace within Celtic Park have been all but stamped out by the authorities, who even introduced a new Act of the Scottish Parliament aimed at eradicating what they deemed to be sectarian behaviour at football matches. The Offensive Behaviour at Football Act (OFBA) was an unmitigated failure and lasted from 2012 until it was repealed in 2018. In the modern day, any reference to the Irish Republican Army will still not be tolerated by the authorities or the club themselves, but other traditional Irish chants have also come under unnecessary scrutiny when being proudly bellowed out at Celtic Park over the years.
One such song, ‘The Fields of Athenry’, was a famous example. Prominent Scottish football broadcaster, Gerry McNee made the preposterous claim in the 1990s that Celtic supporters sang the song for sectarian reasons. McNee was shot down by Celtic owner, Fergus McCann, who confirmed that the ballad would not be banned from Celtic Park, but instead it would be sung with pride.
Although ‘The Fields’ was written in 1979 by Pete St John, it wasn’t heard at Parkhead until the late eighties. But how did this song about Ireland’s potato famine seep into the Celtic supporters’ consciousness and terrace songbook? This unlikely tale involved an Englishman (Chris Morris), Scotsman (Peter Grant) and an Irishman (Niall Quinn)…
After twenty years at the club, Danny McGrain – an ex-team-mate of Billy McNeill’s – had unthinkably left Celtic Park. McNeill replaced the seemingly irreplaceable with an unknown Cornishman from Sheffield Wednesday, as Chris Morris was plucked from Hillsborough’s reserves as part of the club’s much-needed centenary rebuilding operation. The image of an overlapping Morris, with his highlighted blonde locks complementing the splendorous green-and-white hoops, became an iconic snapshot of what was an unforgettable season. There is no doubt that the right-back left a lasting impression as an ever-present during the glorious double-winning campaign, but he also left his mark in another unexpected way.
“I remember that Billy McNeill used to come in with a folder, filed full of player requests,” recalled Chris. “We were expected to go out amongst Celtic Supporters’ Clubs almost every weekend. This was something that I’d never come across – that kind of connection between player, club and supporter. One thing that always struck me was the expectation that, at the end of the dinner dance, they would want you to say a few words as a player, and then have a sing-song. I didn’t have a clue what to sing, but Peter Grant said to me, ‘All you need to do is sing the first line of ‘Hail! Hail!’ and the room will start bouncing around you and you won’t have to sing another note.’ That’s what I did for the first few events.
“I used to room with Niall Quinn when I went on international duty with the Republic of Ireland, who I qualified to play for through my mother’s side of the family. Niall was really passionate about his Irish folk songs, and he was always going to these folk concerts, so I told him about the sing-songs at the supporters’ functions. Niall wanted to know what I sang, and I explained that I would sing the first line of ‘Hail! Hail!’ to get the crowd going, but then he said, ‘I’ve got a song for you.’ That was when Niall taught me a song called The Fields of Athenry. When I came back from international duty, every single time that I went to a Celtic Supporters’ dance, which was pretty much every Saturday, I used to sing The Fields of Athenry, and that became my trademark.
“Many years later, long after I had left Celtic, I came back to Hampden to watch a Scottish Cup final. As I walked along the road to the stadium, a few Celtic supporters shouted, ‘Hey, there’s Chris Morris – the man who gave us The Fields of Athenry. It was only then that I realised that the song had become their anthem.”
The Pete St John-penned ballad did indeed strike a chord with Celtic fans in the late eighties and early nineties, and it quickly became a staple part of the Celtic Park repertoire. There are many players who have inspired the ever-creative Celtic fans to fashion songs about them, but it would appear that Chris Morris went one better and actually introduced a timeless classic to the Paradise songbook himself.
The troublesome behaviour by some fans at the traditional New Year’s Day encounter in 1952 between Celtic and Rangers resulted in fighting, bottle-throwing and pitch invasions. If the result wasn’t bad enough (Celtic lost 4-1), the aftermath had the potential to be even more damaging. Included in a number of recommendations that Glasgow Magistrates made to the SFA following these shameful scenes was, “That the two clubs should avoid displaying flags which might incite feeling among the spectators.” Cheerled and undoubtedly influenced by SFA Secretary, George Graham (who had a deep-rooted derision for Celtic and all that the club stood for) and Hibs’ Chairman, Harry Swan (who was then the acting SFA President), the Referee Committee of the SFA thereafter voted 26-7 to prevent Celtic from flying any, “flag or emblem which had no association with football or Scotland.” Ultimately, Celtic were ordered to remove the tricolour which had been displayed for 30 years, and which had been replaced when Taoiseach Eamon De Valera (Prime Minister of Ireland) gifted them a new one in homage to the club’s very foundation.
Celtic’s punishment for refusing to remove the flag? Expulsion from the league.
Chairman, Robert Kelly, knowing that Celtic had not broken any SFA rules, refused to stop flying the flag and he was supported by the Rangers Chairman, John F Wilson, whose vote was the decisive one when the matter progressed to a ballot involving member clubs. The fact that Rangers voted in favour of their city rivals may seem unusual, but they knew even then that this fierce and often grisly ‘Old Firm’ rivalry was good for business.
Tenacious and stubborn, often to a fault, the autocratic Robert Kelly stood his ground and protected the very heritage of Celtic Football Club, who continued to celebrate the Irish roots from which the club had flourished. In ‘The Celtic Story’ by James Handley, which was commissioned by Robert Kelly and published in 1960, Handley commented on the flag furore, “It might have been the flag of Siam for all the attention that any spectator, supporting home or visiting team, gave to it, and if it had been the flag of Siam the SFA would have paid no attention to it, either. What ruffled the feelings of that body was the fact that it was the flag of Ireland. It would seem that an official of long-standing in the SFA was the prime agitator for its removal.”
It was a battle won, but the anti-Irish war raged on, and it reared its ugly head again when terrace hooliganism became the focus of the SFA’s chagrin some 20 years later…
Sir Robert Kelly (who had been knighted for his services to football in 1969, the first Scottish football Chairman to be bestowed with such an accolade) was replaced as Chairman by long-time director, Desmond White, who once said of the aforementioned SFA Secretary, George Graham, “He’ll roast in hell for what he tried to do to Celtic.” Little over a year after being named as Chairman, White was himself faced with opposition from the authorities over Celtic’s flying of the Irish tricolour.
In the Celtic View of 30 August 1972, White felt prompted to reproduce a letter he had sent to Glasgow Magistrates, following their request that Celtic removed the Éire flag from Celtic Park in order to combat hooliganism. Celtic’s decision to keep the tricolour flying at Parkhead was met with further controversy and criticism:
“The Directors and management of the Celtic Football Club were summoned in the company of others, to the City Chambers to take part in the discussion with the Magistrates, firstly to analyse the causes of hooliganism at football matches and thereafter to work out together, measures to combat hooliganism in all its forms. The Magistrates thereafter made a request to Celtic Football Club to remove the tricolour from the enclosure at Celtic Park.
“Celtic is neither a sectarian, political or religious organisation… The club has long and deliberately pursued a policy of resistance to sectarian activities. We choose our employees at all levels on merit alone and we will continue to do so… Celtic is primarily a Scottish club. We are proud of our Scottish heritage. We have brought, we believe, great distinction to Scotland, particularly in the last seven years through our performances in Europe.
“The flying of the tricolour is, as you are aware, part of our ceremonial display of flags of many nations… It is indeed a sad comment on the bigotry which still appears to exist in the West of Scotland that this should be looked upon as an act of provocation… Furthermore, it should be remembered that we in Britain are supposed to be living in a democracy. We are all entitled to our views, sentiments and sympathies and surely the Celtic Football Club is not to be forced to show ingratitude to those who were their friends when the club was first founded.
“One aspect of the flying of the flag does, however, seriously perturb the board. It has been suggested to us that the flag is in some ways a focal or rallying point for a certain unruly element within our support. We genuinely do not believe this to be the case… We cannot, however, consider lowering the tricolour at this moment in time. Indeed, the precipitate action of the Magistrates since our meeting has rendered it impossible for the Celtic board to accede to their demand… By refusing to haul down the colours, Celtic in no sense regard their stance as a victory over the city’s magistrates or anyone else… By continuing to exercise their right to fly the flag at Celtic Park the directors are satisfied that they are acting in the best interests of the club and its support.”
The belief that the flying of an Irish tricolour could somehow antagonise a crowd of Scottish football fans into acts of hooliganism said as much about the attitudes of the authorities as it did about their perception of a large proportion of Scottish society. Having refused on two occasions to abandon an integral emblem of the club’s very fabric, Celtic astonishingly faced further opposition to the flying of the flag as recently as 1994. Having saved the club from financial ruin, Fergus McCann set out to redevelop Celtic Park, which had been deemed unfit for purpose. This meant that Celtic played their home games at Hampden Park for the entirety of 1994/95, as McCann recalled in an open letter to the Herald newspaper in 2017, “In charge of Celtic, and having to rent the stadium for the 94/95 season, I had to tolerate the mean-spirited behaviour of Queens Park officials throughout that period. This began with a clause in the lease – a ‘deal breaker’ as their attorney made clear – that forbade ‘the display of any foreign flag’. Shades of SFA 1952.” There is no doubt that the “foreign flag” referenced by McCann was the same tricolour that caused the authorities such distress in 1952 and 1972.
The oppressive, anti-Irish attitudes faced by Robert Kelly, Desmond White and Fergus McCann have sadly not been banished to the depths of time. During a league encounter between Celtic and Dundee at Dens Park on 17 March 2019, a Celtic supporter’s tricolour was unceremoniously snatched from display by a steward. Despite initial claims by the club that it was due to it being draped over an advertising board, it was interesting that no other flag positioned in a similar way around the stadium was given such prompt and aggressive treatment. Dundee later apologised for the manner in which the flag was seized, which they admitted was, “not acceptable”.
The shamrock…
The shamrock is generally regarded world-wide as a harmless symbol, but it has occasionally been looked upon with some distaste in parts of Scotland. For much of Celtic’s history no adornment appeared on the famous hooped jerseys, and for much of that period there was little need for Celtic to change their strip (apart from fixtures against Kilmarnock and Greenock Morton). On those rare occasions, Celtic’s frequent choice was a white jersey (with green sleeves from the mid-fifties onwards) and a large shamrock on the breast. This option first appeared during the 1925/26 season, re-surfaced in some games throughout 1931 and then more frequently from 1948 to 1965. Interestingly, the shamrock did appear far earlier in an ‘unofficial’ jersey that was worn by goalkeeper, John Mulrooney, throughout the club’s Scandinavian tour of 1912. This shirt was a gift, given to legendary striker Jimmy Quinn and handed to the goalie, who wore it with pride throughout the trip. The round-neck jersey looked as though it had been knitted, and it had green hoops made up of shamrocks. An image of this early fashion statement has only recently surfaced, much to the joy and amusement of Celtic’s special band of club historians.
From then on, with the commercial possibilities in the sale of replica shirts, such change strips became less traditional and more suited for leisure wear. However, the shamrock has been a recurring motif throughout the club’s history.
The Irish patriot Michael Davitt (an Irish nationalist and founder of the National Land League) visited Celtic Park several times as ‘a patron of the club’. He was invited to attend Glasgow in 1892 to mark the opening of the new Celtic Park by performing a significant ceremony: “Mr. Davitt after laying the sod which came from Donegal this morning, and which contained a splendid bunch of shamrocks growing in the centre, said that he was delighted to have the honour of laying the centre sod of the new park which belonged to the Celtic club.He could assure them that the prowess of the Celts was well known and appreciated by their countrymen beyond the sea, who were proud to witness the efforts of an Irish team in Scotland…”
The events seemed to have provoked an outbreak of poetry among the Celtic support,
“On alien soil like yourself I am here,
I’ll take root and flourish, of that never fear;
And though I’ll be crossed sore and oft by foes,
You’ll find me as hardy as Thistle or Rose…”
Shortly after Davitt had laid the hallowed turf with a silver ornamental spade, it was stolen, again to inspire poetry but this time the thief was memorably reviled:
“Again I say, ‘May heaven blight
That envious, soulless knave;
May all his sunshine be like night,
And the sod rest heavy on his grave…”
During those early days in Scottish football many clubs, unfortunately short-lived, named themselves with Irish connotations: ‘Shamrock’ was a more popular one, along with ‘Harp’ and Hibernian’.
After the tragic, accidental death of John Thomson in September 1931, Celtic were presented with a handsome mirror in Waterford glass and etched with an image of the young goalkeeper. Thomson may have been a Scottish internationalist (and had been born in Kirkcaldy) but the memorial had an emphatic shamrock design, and was a feature of the foyer at Celtic Park for many years.
Similarly, the corner flags were emblazoned with shamrocks and a famous photograph shows Jock Stein congratulating Danny McGrain leaving the pitch after his home debut in 1970. A ball-boy in close attendance is seen holding such a flag. Shortly afterwards the SFA, in compliance with UEFA instructions, ordered their withdrawal. The corner flags are now owned by Rod Stewart and are a permanent fixture of his full-sized football pitch in the back garden of his luxurious Essex home.
Perhaps the earliest soccer fanzine was ‘published’ by the Shamrock Celtic Supporters Club in Edinburgh and was sold for sixpence (2.5 p) on the streets outside Celtic Park on Saturdays for a number of years in the early 1960s. This was at a notable period of failure for Celtic and the Board were far from happy at the criticism expressed by contributors totally frustrated since the League Cup triumph of 1957.
The contents were hard-hitting; the targets an unambitious and stagnant directorate, an autocratic chairman, an SFA considered anti-Celtic, anti-Catholic, and anti-Irish, a refereeing fraternity hell-bent on frustrating Celtic players on the pitch, and every edition imbued with a pathological hatred of a highly successful Rangers.
The rabble-rousing content had a certain appeal for many supporters in despair at the failure of the board to modernize. Unfortunately, much of the vitriol levelled was of a personal nature with the chairman (Bob Kelly) and a young player (John Hughes) being frequent targets. However primitive it looked, it was the first fanzine and, before ‘Hotlines’ and the internet, it did offer the supporters the opportunity to vent their frustrations. It was also frequently perceptive, and justified in its views. A common question was,“Where has all the money gone?” In 1963 Celtic Park (and its environs) was dilapidated: “Is it not time that Celtic did something about their terracing and get it concreted the same as a lot of clubs, some of them with a lot less money than us? The terracing in the Jungle is especially bad, so hurry up and get cracking… The outside and inside of Celtic Park should be improved as in parts you are up to your ankles in mud on a wet day… If this is Paradise then we could do with a touch of the other place to warm it up a bit.”
But what infuriated The Shamrock most of all was the supine acceptance of the directors of the perceived injustices apparently regularly inflicted upon Celtic by the SFA and its referees. What caused The Shamrock to decline (and eventually fold) was Celtic’s success under their new manager, a dynamic and fearless Jock Stein. In a memorable phrase, “He largely cowed them into fairness.”
The Celtic shamrock change-strip (which bore a white collar for the reserves and a green one for the first-team) was referred to as ‘The Political Jersey’ and was met with a mixed reception from supporters at the time. There was a knee-jerk reaction in approval because of the colours and the shamrock but from the point of view of design it may be classified as ‘unsatisfactory’. Many felt that there was too much white in the strip and criticized the design, comparing it unfavourably with Arsenal and Hibernian (where the white was the secondary colour). As time has passed, however, the shamrock jersey has become an iconic shirt and many supporters yearn for its return.
Paul John Dykes
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