I was a naïve 18-year-old when I arrived at Glasgow University in 1993, never having been to Scotland's biggest city before for more than a couple of hours. I’d grown up in Aberdeen, disliking Celtic and Rangers purely because they were big teams who got in the way of my team’s hopes of winning trophies; I had only the vaguest awareness of their sectarian affiliations. The last 16 years have been an education, and I still haven’t got my head round the warped logic of Old Firm allegiance.
It’s been thoroughly depressing to see pea-brained bigots trying to twist Remembrance Sunday and Armistice Day to their own agenda. Depressing to hear a band of Celtic fans singing in protest outside the Falkirk Stadium during a minute’s silence on Sunday. But equally depressing to read about the indignant ravings of those Rangers fans who hijack the poppy for their own anti-Catholic agenda. Depressing to hear the editor of fanzine Not the Celtic View saying that he “neither condemns not condones” the incident at Falkirk, depressing to see the moral high ground subsequently claimed by internet ranters who would blithely sing about being “up to our knees in Fenian blood”.
Armistice Day is not about the glorification of the British military, as the above would have us believe. Most of all, it is for sombre reflection on how close the world came to cataclysm in the 20th century. How depressing to see the poppy sucked into the poisonous little vortex of Old Firm squabbling.