ARMED Forces Day tomorrow at Ibrox, home of Rangers FC, will see the usual militaristic celebrations, which in the past have included British soldiers abseiling from the stand with the match ball, parade drilling on the pitch and gun salutes being fired from the centre circle. But as another round of unionist fury erupts in the local media – this time over a Bik McFarlane tribute at Celtic Park and an abusive Rangers’ fans banner response presented as ‘hitting back’ – Robin Livingstone has questions. Will SS banners paying tribute to the Nazi elite force that slaughtered captive British soldiers be displayed by Rangers fans again? Or will they be kept diplomatically folded? Will tributes to Catholic-slashers from history be displayed on banners again, or just merely sung? And, perhaps most intriguingly, if there are any such displays, will the Loyal Ulster media’s new-found indignation about Scottish football banners be extended to Ibrox...?
BANNERS at Celtic Park on Tuesday evening paying tribute to the late republican Bik McFarlane, who was buried earlier that day, provoked a predictable round of fury among unionist politicians and commentators.
They were manna from heaven for the usual suspects in political unionism and the media, allowing them to squeeze a few extra days out of a round of fury that began as soon as the first expression of sympathy had been extended to the family of Mr McFarlane on his death last Friday.
Unionist politicians queued up to express their righteous indignation at the Parkhead banners, variously demanding action from Celtic FC, Police Scotland and the Scottish Football Association. And the decks were cleared in newspapers, on the airwaves and online to give the story the prominence it surely demanded.
Into the mix on Wednesday night came two banners held up by Rangers fans in an away game at Kilmarnock, describing Mr McFarlane as ‘a coward’ and continuing with ‘Rot in hell Brendan McFarlane’. Unionist media outlets generously described the banners as the Rangers fans ‘hitting back’ at Celtic fans. And a report this morning (Friday) that Police Scotland are ‘probing’ the Celtic banner means the story has run for a full week. (In reality, all Police Scotland said is that they are “assessing” a complaint; if Police Scotland received a complaint about me hiding Lord Lucan in my garden shed it too would be “assessed”.)
Given that the unionist politicians who lashed out over the Bik McFarlane banner are either full-throated Rangers supporters, or at the very least Rangers-leaning when it comes to the rivalry once known as the Old Firm, it might have been expected that they would be aware of the history of Rangers fans and controversial banners. And given that unionist media outlets were so quick to jump on the Celtic display and the subsequent ‘hitting back’ at Ibrox, it might also have been expected that those newspapers and broadcast and social media outlets would have exhibited a similar aversion to controversial recent messaging not involving a former IRA man or Celtic.
But no. While controversies have raged in newspaper pages, on the airwaves and on social media in Scotland over racist and sectarian banners at Ibrox, the indignation didn’t make it across the Irish Sea to the newsrooms of unionist media outlets or to the constituency offices of unionist politicians.
Here's a rundown from just the past 18 months of banners that appeared at Ibrox to a cacophony of protest and fury in Scotland, and to a shrug of indifference from those here who have suddenly developed an interest in banners at Scottish football matches.
BILL THE BUTCHER
On August 22, 2023, Rangers hosted PSV Eindhoven at Ibrox in a European Champions League qualifier. Behind one of the goals, in the Broomloan Stand, home to Rangers Ultras outfit the Union Bears, a massive ‘tifo’ – a choreographed visual display by football fans – was revealed featuring a picture of acclaimed actor Daniel Day-Lewis. Or to be more accurate, Day-Lewis in his Oscar-nominated role as Bill ‘the Butcher’ Cutting in the 2002 film, Gangs of New York. Bill the Butcher was head of the violently anti-Irish Bowery Boys gang and gained a bone-chilling reputation in 19th-century New York as a ruthless slasher and killer of Irish Catholics. In case there was any confusion about the intention of the Bill the Butcher Rangers tifo – in case anyone might have taken it as a tribute to the actor or the movie – the Bill the Butcher image was accompanied by the words ‘Surrender or you’ll die’. That’s a line from the anti-Catholic Rangers anthem the Billy Boys, which itself is a tribute to a gang led by another Catholic-hating slasher, Billy Fullerton, who in 1920s Glasgow developed a fearsome reputation for razor attacks on Irish Catholics.
Hello, hello, we are the Billy Boys,
Hello, hello, you’ll know us by our noise.
We’re up to our necks in Fenian blood,
Surrender or you’ll die,
For we are the Bridgeton Billy Boys.
THE BILLY BOYS
The words of the Billy Boys received another outing just last month, when at the New Year Ibrox fixture between Rangers and Celtic a tifo paying tribute to a former player featured at its base the words ‘You’ll know us by our noise’. Despite the fact that the Billy Boys has been banned from Scottish stadia since 2011 because of its flagrant sectarianism, and despite the fact that the game was being played against a team associated with the Irish Catholic community, no action was taken to stop any of the tifos containing the words of the Billy Boys from being displayed. Fullerton's Billy Boys were featured in season 5 of the hit BBC series Peaky Blinders, when the Protestant razor gang comes up against the Irish Catholic/Traveller gang, the Shelbys.
SS DEATH'S HEAD 1
At a match against Aberdeen at Ibrox on September 30, 2023, Rangers fans displayed a banner featuring the ‘Totenkopf’ or ‘Death’s Head’ symbol of Adolf Hitler’s murderous Schutzstaffel, or SS, the elite Nazi unit responsible for some of the most revolting atrocities of World War II. The banner also contained a reference to the Rangers football hooligan gang Rangers Active Unit, as well as the numbers 936, thought to be an alphabetical reference to the fearsome and now defunct group of Rangers sectarian hooligans the ICF (Inter City Firm). The appearance of the SS banner at Ibrox caused confusion as well as revulsion.
NAZI TRIBUTE: The SS Totenkopf/Death's Head banner at Ibrox
Rangers FC has a close relationship with the British armed forces, and soldiers are often seen at Ibrox parading, abseiling from the roof of the stadium or firing big-gun salutes on notable occasions. And yet the SS was responsible for notorious atrocities against British soldiers during the war. In the Wormhout Massacre of May 1940, for instance, around 100 stranded and starving British soldiers captured in northern France during the retreat to Dunkirk were herded into a barn and had grenades thrown among them. Waffen SS troops dispatched wounded survivors with gunfire. 97 men were killed, a few escaped or were left for dead and survived.
SS DEATH'S HEAD 2
At an away match against Aberdeen on August 3, 2023, another SS Totenkopf banner was produced by Rangers fans. The blue and white banner again featured the Death’s Head SS symbol, but this time it was accompanied by a notorious quote from the Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini: ‘Expand or die’.
CHERRY ON TOP: This Nazi SS banner included a quote from fascist dictator Benito Mussolini 
If the sectarian-slash-slasher banners are put away because of the presence of the British army, air force and navy personnel, that could disappoint those in uniform on the pitch as much as it does the hard-core Rangers fans in the Broomloan Stand. Back in 2013, Armed Forces Day at Ibrox turned into an on-pitch carnival of sectarian hate as the servicemen in uniform danced in front of fans to a grotesque selection of banned loyalist ‘party tunes’ threatening violence against Catholics, singing the praises of the UVF and directing abuse at the hunger striker Bobby Sands. The scenes were described by Channel 4 correspondent Alex Thomson as “a PR disaster for all three services” and “a corporate car crash for HM Forces”. To be fair to the Loyal Ulster media outlets who failed to report on that incident, the Scottish media in its entirety managed to miss it too.
