CELTIC TITLE PARTY: THE S*N’S CYNICAL, BITTER ATTEMPT TO LINK JOYOUS OCCASION WITH HATE PARADE
- BY LIAM CARRIGAN
- May 11
- 3 min read
If ever any outlet can be depended upon to find a negative angle to the best day of the season for Celtic and our supporters, it’s The S*n.
Yet again, they try to stir up needless agitation and anger with a piece linking Celtic fans celebrating a title win with an Orange Order march: an event built entirely upon hatred and intolerance
Orange Order March Scheduled to Clash with Celtic Title Party
Celtic will receive the Premier League trophy next Saturday at the conclusion of our final home game of the season against St. Mirren.
As in previous years (well every year apart from 2021), Celtic fans will gather in the Trongate and Merchant City areas to celebrate the team’s title win. The Celtic Title Party has been known about for some time, yet the Council and the Club have done little to prepare.
There is a planned Orange Order march, involving some 2,500 participants planned for that day, with Merchant City and Trongate featuring in the route the bigots will take.
Now, the excuse being peddled by Glasgow City Council and reprinted without question by The S*n (of course), is that the march was planned several months ago. Long before the circumstances of Celtic’s title celebrations were known.
However, it is a Saturday. More often than not, either Celtic or Rangers have a game that day.
So, had the City Council and The Orange Order applied even the power of the communal braincell they share, they should have known there was probably a 50/50 chance this would clash with a Celtic home game.
Also, The Merchant City and Trongate, including most of the pubs in the area are traditional meeting points for Celtic fans before and after games on regular matchdays too.
So, why the hell was an Orange Walk allowed to select such a needlessly inflammatory route in the first place?
The S*n states, again without the slightest hint of questioning, that the parade needs to happen on this date because its “To commemorate the 80th anniversary of VE Day”.
VE Day was on May 8th. Much like the team they support, the Orange Order, it seems, aren’t great with numbers.
Now, unlike Billy and his mates, with their flutes and their sense of entitlement, my late grandfather actually fought in World War II, his brother, my great uncle, died in the war.
It is an embarrassment to them, and to the thousands of other dearly departed veterans who gave their lives so that we may be free of hate, fear and fascism, that a group so deeply-rooted in these very traits like the Orange Order has been allowed to seize some kind of militaristic high-ground when it comes to these commemorations.
My grandfather’s generation fought to destroy groups like this, not empower them.
The uncomfortable reality, which rags like The S*n dare not utter, for fear of losing the few readers they have left, is that groups like the Orange Order would feel far more at home in a world where Germany had won World War II.
Their world view, and that of followers of National Socialism align in many ways.
Thankfully, the good guys won back then. And the good guys continue to win today too.
If these bigots must have their hate parade, then fine, so be it.
But confine it to their own areas, where such “culture” is embraced. The Celtic support and the wider Scottish public deserve to be allowed to go about their daily business without being subjected to this anachronistic, hate-fueled filth.
