Posted on 09/16/2008 1:02:30 AM PDT by Stoat
Sep 16 2008 By Paul Drury
AN IRISH diplomat has raised a complaint with the Scottish government over a song sung by Rangers fans at an Old Firm game.
They were heard singing "The Famine Song" during the match at Ibrox a fortnight ago.
It includes the line: "The famine is over, why don't you go home?", and refers to the Irish potato famine of 1845-49, in which more than a million people died.
A Celtic fan protested to the Irish Embassy in London and Consul General Cliona Manahan raised the issue with Holyrood.
Last night, a Rangers FC spokesman said they had asked fans to stop singing the song.
He said the club had also approached the police, asking them to issue a statement saying anyone caught singing it would be arrested.
The spokesman said: "The club were made aware that a substantial number of complaints had been made regarding the singing of the chorus of a song known as The Famine Song by our supporters at this match.
"Rangers FC approached Strathclyde Police for guidance on this matter, with a view to issuing a joint statement indicating that persons singing this song in future may face the possibility of arrest.
"Strathclyde Police were not able to commit to this until they had carried out further investigation."
He said the club had a long-established policy of encouraging sporting behaviour and discouraging songs other fans find offensive.
He added: "Clearly, The Famine Song has provoked such a response in certain quarters.
"It is the club's view that the interest of our supporters and the club will be best served by supporters refraining from singing The Famine Song."
The government confirmed they had been advised of the fan's complaint by Ireland's consul general in Edinburgh.
They declined to comment on the discussions but said initiatives against bigotry were beginning to show results.
A spokesman added: "The Scottish government is totally committed to combating sectarianism and bigotry, which is why we have expanded on the work of the previous administration."
BBC NEWS Scotland Glasgow, Lanarkshire and West Concerns raised over famine song
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Hibernian FC - How does one complaint lead to this
Irish alarm over new sectarian song - Scotsman.com News
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Great Famine (Ireland) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
!["Ireland's Holocaust" mural on the Ballymurphy Road [2], Belfast. "An Gorta Mór, Britain's genocide by starvation, Ireland's holocaust 1845-1849."](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Ireland's_Holocaust_mural_in_The_Falls,_Belfast.jpg)
.....the famine is still a controversial event in Irish history. Debate and discussion on the British government's response to the failure of the potato crop in Ireland and the subsequent large-scale starvation, and whether or not this constituted what would now be called genocide, remains a historically and politically-charged issue.
"The famine was a defining event in the history of Ireland and Britain. It has left deep scars. That one million people should have died in what was then part of the richest and most powerful nation in the world is something that still causes pain as we reflect on it today. Those who governed in London at the time failed their people." Mr Blair's words were welcomed by John Bruton, the Irish Prime Minister, who said: "While the statement confronts the past honestly, it does so in a way that heals for the future." Kathy Marks
Thank you for that essential link.
Sadly, it appears that some soccer fans do not feel quite the same way as Mr. Blair.
If they’re that wimpy they probably shouldn’t be playing soccer. Someone might get kicked in the shin.
Ireland ping! This is like the Irish version of singing “Dixie” at a game?
Rangers vs Celtic football has always been tied up with Ireland. In the 19th and 20th centuries, Glasgow filled up with Irish Immigrants of both Catholic and Ulster Protestant extraction, and they formed seperate football teams on sectarian lines. Throughout the Northern Irish troubles, Celtic has taken the republican side and Rangers the Loyalist side.
The rivalry has traditionally been the most violent in British football history. Even today, wandering into the wrong pub wearing the other team’s colours is a good way of getting yourself a bloody good hiding, if you’re lucky. Although things have calmed down quite a bit from how they were....
Oh for Pete’s sakes.
It was 163 years ago...can’t they find something else to be “oh-fended” about?
The only good thing to result from it is that many of those great-hearted, productive, and disputatious people came here to America and helped build this great nation.
Gallagher
Ironic that it was the fanatical adherence to free-market capitalism that led to the disaster in the first place....
Rangers and Celtic, the Bigot Brothers, make so much money out of promoting sectarianism that nothing will be done. You only have to see the stuff they come out orange tops and t-shirts about terrorists.
Considering how many Scots went to Northern Ireland and never left, they’ve got a lot of nerve telling anyone else to go home.
Europe’s a pain. The people with sense came here.
Hmmm. So you're saying that phytopthora infestans was spontaneously created by an open market in goods and services - or, more succinctly, you're telling us that you're a complete idiot.
No, but the refusal to ‘intefere’ with the markets when the disaster happened and hoping that the simple expedient of abolishing the corn laws would drive down food prices and negate the effects of the shortage was woefully flawed. The government was more concerned with the consequences of artificially adjusting the price of food by purchasing and distributing aid than it was about ensuring that adequate supplies to ensure the survival of the distressed population.
This is to say nothing of the lack of decisive intervention in the years before the famine to wean the Irish off their over-reliance on the potato as a subsistence crop...
Tanks fer the ping.
Refusal to interefe?
The markets were completely and utterly interefered with - the Corn Law tariffs were in full effect as the famine got underway: the famine began in an atmosphere of coercive government intervention in food prices.
and hoping that the simple expedient of abolishing the corn laws would drive down food prices and negate the effects of the shortage was woefully flawed.
Abolishing the Corn laws was a necessary first step - but your fellow anti-capitalist market interventionists refused to allow them to be abolished outright, and demanded that there be only a gradual reduction in tariffs over time. Why? Because Disraeli argued that repeal would favor "commercial interests" to the detriment of the landed aristocracy.
People were dying, but the opponents of free markets didn't care.
You prove my point. Government intervention in the market created an enormous and deadly inefficiency in the allocation of resources.
This is to say nothing of the lack of decisive intervention in the years before the famine to wean the Irish off their over-reliance on the potato as a subsistence crop...
Why were the Irish dependent upon the potato in the first place? Do you even know?
Because of the English laws that restricted the market in land to Protestants only, forcing the Irish to work as tenant farmers on tiny patches of subdivided land - patches where the potato was the only crop that could be grown economically. Moreover, the protectionist Corn laws kept the price of grain far too high for the average Irishman to afford.
Government intervention in the land market that made cultivation of grain impracticable as a product created the potato monoculture in the first place.
Government intervention in the grain market ensured that grain would be unattainable as a food.
And you are now claiming that yet a third government intervention would have saved the Irish from the first two?
Unreal.
The free market forced the Irish to become dependent on the potato in the first place.
Ireland was a very densely populated country by the standards of the day, and should have been as urbanised as England was. However, with the act of Union in 1801, Irish industry was forced to compete with the far more efficient industry of England. It couldn’t do this, because for various reasons (not least the fact that Ireland did not have large deposits of coal) Irish industry could not compete with English industry on an equal footing. Which meant that the Irish could no longer depend on worker’s wages fulfil their needs, and instead had to grow potatos to subsist on.
Without subsidies, intervention and protectionism. Over-populated Ireland, so dependent on the potato, was heading for disaster, and Trevelyan’s insistance on applying the principles of the free market to solve the problems of the famine, ignoring the fact that even IF non-intervention and repealing the corn laws would drive food prices down, the Irish labouring classes had no spare income to buy food anyway, being almost totally dependent on potatos they had grown themselves on the land available, and therefore it didn’t matter HOW cheap food was, they still couldn’t afford it...
One million starved to death, two million forced to flee to other nations, as the population of Ireland went from 8 milion to 5 million. It was essentially genocide, because while the Brit Queen and her loyal subjects did extremely little to help, they increased their military presence in Ireland to ensure that their grain exports weren't tampered with. The Irish couldn't eat the food they farmed. What was more important, after all, money for the Crown or the lives of these miserable "papists"?
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