Sectarianism in Glasgow

and Rangers F.C., the two largest Scottish football clubs sometimes referred to as the Old Firm, whose support base is traditionally predominantly Catholic and Protestant respectively.

The 1995 murder of Mark Scott, a Celtic fan, by Jason Campbell resulted in the formation of the anti-sectarianism charity Nil By Mouth.

[30] While the majority of Celtic fans are Catholic, some of the key figures in the club's history (Jock Stein, Kenny Dalglish, and Danny McGrain amongst others) have come from a Protestant background.

This involved publishing the 'Blue Guide', known as the "Wee Blue Book", which contained a list of acceptable songs and was issued to 50,000 supporters in August 2007.

[34][35] Subsequently, Dr John Kelly of University of Edinburgh suggested that "Recent events have buried the myth that anti-Irish Catholic bigotry no longer exists.

"[36] The Orangemen of Glasgow (members of the Protestant Orange Institution), parade in the city around the historic date of the Twelfth (12 July), commemorating the victory of King William of Orange's Williamite army over the deposed King James Stuart's Jacobite army at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 following the Glorious Revolution two years earlier.

[38] A report into orange parades in Glasgow from Strathclyde Police in October 2009 highlighted the increased number of common, serious and racially motivated assaults associated with the marches.

[39] A series of developments during the 2010–2011 football season has led to an intense public debate over the question of the nature and extent of religious sectarianism in Scotland.

The Scottish National Party (SNP) government has responded with a new piece of legislation which has been widely criticised and has prompted some commentators to speculate about a political "own goal".

[40] Steve Bruce, who has studied the decline in religious adherence in Western Europe,[41] says surveys comparing people's ideas about sectarianism with their actual day-to-day personal experience show that the perception of sectarianism is much stronger than its occurrence in reality, and that the city's problems with health, education and social exclusion are of much greater daily concern to most Glaswegians.

[42] Bruce also found that less than a third of one per cent of murders in Scotland over nearly two decades had any sectarian motive, and those that did were the result of football allegiances, not religion or ethnicity.