Community control in Scottish football?

Another August and another interesting, if turbulent new season for Scottish football has kicked off. Last year saw The Rangers, aka Sevco, take their place in the fourth tier of Scottish clubs. The club having been re-animated, Pet Sematary style, from the club formerly known as Glasgow Rangers. They're knee deep in shit, again, with some of their ane directors predicting another bout of administration while an early exit from the League Cup at the hands of Forfar has added to the ever-simmering fury or their fans.

This year also sees Scotland's third biggest club, in recent times at least, in administration and with a minus 15 point start to the league. Liquidation is a possibility though fan ownership will probably win the day. If it does and a CVA is agreed with creditors, it will leave Hearts in a much better place than they've been in for some time. They might be in the 1st Division but with no debt, a sensible signing/ spending policy and increased participation and ownership from the fans, a more stable and eventually successful future beckons.

Other clubs may follow suit. In Edinburgh, Hibs' fans have understandably revelled in the plight of Hearts. Is Hibernian FC though in a better place? Owned by an aging millionaire with no love of football, Hibs themselves are in debt - somewhere between £6 and 9million depending on what you read - and made a loss of £1m last year. Years of bottom six finishes in the SPL combined with woeful and embarrassing performances in important games have seen the enlarged Easter Road awash with empty seats at most home games. Kilmarnock and Aberdeen are also labouring on under heavy debt.

Community ownership of Scottish land is growing. The crofters' buy out in Asainte was deemed unlikely or unworkable before the event but it happened nevertheless and some 17 similar community purchases have happened since then. Crofting estates, islands and other tracts of Scottish land have too long been bought and sold at a whim. Rich owners with little or no clue about local culture or traditions have seen them merely as another toy or status symbol. Are football clubs any different?

Is it too much to expect for government - national or local  - to support of our football clubs or other significant sporting institutions? Scottish football enjoys larger crowds, per head of population, than any other nation in Europe attending games. Local government surely has a vested interest in both the success and survival of their clubs. The benefits to the local economies are significant and the good publicity from even an extended cup run adds to it. When clubs work with local schools the benefits for education, health and crime prevention increase the value further.

Needless to say perhaps that this is also an issue of independence and self-determination. On the political front, a 'yes' vote will bring independence to our government. Community ownership and participation brings it to our neighbourhoods and communities.

Local people also have a duty to support their local club. It's a sickener to go to places such as Greenock, Kilmarnock, Paisley, Falkirk, Stirling, Perth or even Inverness and see busloads of glory-hunters heading for Celtic Park or Ibrox. For all the Celtic fans' talk of being 'rebels', the truth is they are the 'establishment' in Scottish football. Celtic are the McDonalds to Rangers' Walmart.

Hearts may not escape relegation this year but if community ownership is achieved and a young, mostly Scottish, squad built up then the future will be a  bright one. I also hope that the locals in Stirling and Dunfermline can turn out in numbers to support their own community-owned clubs.

The Foundation of Hearts

Pars Supporters Trust 

Stirling Albion Supporters Trust

Auld Songs for the new Scotland #2

Even under the first feeble Labour-Lib Dem administrations, the Scottish Parliament took the important step of enabling crofting communities to buy the land they and their ancestors have lived and worked on for generations. Asainte and the Isle of Eigg were the first to throw off the unwanted ownership of uncaring, oppressive or just bizarre rich owners. Who could forget the antics of Keith Schellenberg - the man who let Eigg's houses fall into ruin while he dressed up as a Nazi to impress his rich German friends?

Schellenberg eventually left after islanders began opposing his autocratic rule and a mysterious fire left his Rolls Royce burned out. Schellenberg has since returned to his native Yorkshire and become a kerb-crawler. The island was sold to another bampot though - an 'artist of fire energy' by the name of Maruma. He though only visited the island twice and no further investment to improve the island's homes or infrastructure was forthcoming.

Currently, the crofters of the Pàirc estate in Lochs, Isle of Lewis are engaged in an attempt to forcibly return the ownership of the estate to the people who live on it. The laird is resisting though and therefore the 'hostile takeover' is awaiting approval from the Scottish Government. Here's hoping that permission is granted soon.

Oi Polloi's 'Take Back the Land' from their Fuaim Catha LP is a more than suitable soundtrack for the 'new' Scotland where hopefully more land will be taken from the hands of the rich and given over to community control. Its got anger. Its got humour. And arguably, its got the spirit of those who fought to reclaim their land from the rich - be it the crofters of Aignis and Pàirc, the Battle of the Braes in Skye or the Seven Men of Knoydart who resisted their laird Lord Brocket, a friend of Hitler, only to be sold down Loch Nevis by the then Labour government.

Oi Polloi - Take Back the Land
Tore the people from the land
Torched their houses with bloodied hands
Thousands starved or died at sea
A sickening toll of human misery
Broke the old clan system where land was there for all
And once the people had their backs against the wall
The connivance of the church cleared them off the land
"Remember it's God's will so don't try to make a stand"
They made a desert where trees once stood
Squeezing from the land every penny that they could
Ethnic cleaning of the glens for farming sheep
'Cos that way there's more profit for the rich scum to reap (rape)

"Beautiful bleak moorland?"- I don't think so
This is a place where great forests used to grow
Laid waste by a rich man's greed
Reclaim the land and plant the seed
Yet still every year, seeking their roots
They come from overseas to lick the boots
Of the clan chief and kiss the hand
Of the very people who threw their families off the land
This is nothing more than a sick farce
paying homage to the ruling class
Who, without hesitation, do it all again
Those who forget history to repeat it are condemned

"Gee, Scotland-It's so quaint
All this scenery makes me feel quite
faint
Clan chief looks so good in his kilt
We never think of the blood his family spilt"

"I'm the clan chief o.k. yah
I support Scotland when they play rugger
But an independent country? there I'd draw the line
I own this land it's mine all mine

FUCK YOU, You arrogant prick
You inbred rich bastard, YOU MAKE ME FUCKING SICK
You own fuck all-except in your head
One day the land will be ours-and you'll be dead

I won't beg permission to walk the land they claim to "own"
And I won't pay no fucker to gain access to THE STONES
The rich have stolen and buy and sell our earth
But it belongs to NO ONE-or to all by right of birth

Politics, mortality and architecture

Earlier this week, one of the last great tradition bearers of Gaelic culture in Wester Ross died. Donnchadh 'Stalker' MacMhathain - Duncan Matheson - was many things. A thatcher, stonemason, craftsman and font of knowledge on the old way of life - including illicit whisky distilling. He was reputed to be an excellent poacher too. Stories on all of these subjects were often regaled in the idiomatic local Gaelic of Kintail to film crews, academics, Gaelic students and most importantly of all, local schoolkids such as the tale of local outlaw and illicit distiller Ailidh Mal.

A man of the soil certainly, but I doubt if he had time for the well-bred poshos of the Countryside Alliance, a group of people whose accents, if not politics, hark back to the lairds who drove our people from the land, replaced them with sheep and left their houses to fall into ruin.

Aye, death is natural. We all go the way of Duncan Stalker. But can natural death in old age be equated to institutionalised repression or official neglect that sees native indigenous languages beaten out of school-kids, local people unable to live in their own community and rich lairds dictating to local communities on matters that affect their lives and livelihoods?

Whatever conservatives and revisionists may say, people did not 'choose' to leave the Highlands during the clearances, unless escaping famine and forced 'relocation' constitutes freedom of choice. Equally, can it be argued that Gaelic simply 'died' when most native Gaels over the age of 50 are likely to have been punished or rebuked somewhere in their educational life for speaking their mother tongue?

Anyone can just go with the flow. Others don't. Some people form bands and produce challenging music. Some learn and use minority languages. Some bring up their children bilingual. Some people get involved with credit unions or charities. Some people learn their grandparents' language and design houses of the kind their grandparents may have lived in.

While searching for info on the late Duncan Stalker, I came across an interesting article written  by one of the architects involved in Skye-based company Dualchas. If you ever thought that architecture could not be revolutionary, read it:

On Skye we met homeless and dispossessed people who were living in conditions worse than what had probably been endured for over a hundred years.  An old shepherd who kept his clothes in a plastic bag to stop them getting damp in his dilapidated caravan.  He had been kicked out of his tied cottage when he retired from the estate where he had worked most of his life.  There was a young woman whose child was in care but who would not get her child back until she got decent accommodation.  She too lived in a caravan. In Skye there was a feeling of a community on the slide.  By contrast in Ireland the pubs were packed, the communities thriving.  But even then, back in the early 90s,  the beautiful landscape was being despoiled by inappropriate housing – alien to the landscape. However, at least Donegal had people. It was obvious that poorly designed kit houses was not the issue facing rural Scotland and Ireland as many architects seemed to think. It was the economy, the land, the people, the culture.  Politics.

The full article can be read here:

http://www.dualchas.com/Lecture.html

Donnchadh MacMhathain - clach air a chàrn