Written by a user of vanguardbears.com
Silence is not Green, White and Golden
In December 1915, when I was seventeen and a half, I ran away from home to join the 4th Battalion East Surreys. I was under age so I had to lie to the recruitment sergeant. I said I was eighteen years old and my name was Sydney Harrison. I told the truth later though, because if I’d been killed as Harrison, nobody would ever have known what happened to me.
Arras was the first time I went over the top. We played football together as we went over. That was the tradition in the East Surreys. I remember the ball dropping at my feet and I passed it to Captain Maxwell. ‘That was a good pass you made young Withers!’ he shouted before he thumped it towards the German lines.
I got wounded at the end of that battle. I was temporarily blinded in one eye but it could have been worse. At the end of the battle, I lay bleeding in a trench. There was blood coming out of my eye, pouring out all over my face. My head looked blown in. They thought I was dead and they were going to bury me. I was in a half-conscious state and I can remember a soldier getting hold of me and saying “Here – this blokes alive!’ That man saved my life, by calling that out. I’d have been buried alive in Arras, if it hadn’t been for him.
Above, the words of Cecil Withers from the book “Last Post – The Final Word From Our First World War Soldiers”. Cecil recounts his time on the Western Front as a teenager fighting for our country.
Last weekend 65 senior football matches were played in Great Britain. Prior to kick-off at 64 of them, fans of opposing clubs put aside their rivalries and stood silent in tribute to those brave men and women who gave their lives in service of our country. In the 65th senior game the mould was broken. Celtic Football Club spat in the face of common decency by instead hosting a minute’s applause in recognition of those who made the ultimate sacrifice.
Think about it. Applause. For 20 million lives destroyed.
Those of a Celtic persuasion couldn’t even bring themselves to admit who they were honouring. The Celtic Park Master of Ceremonies told the 55,000 crowd the minute’s applause was to remember “the Celtic players who died in both World Wars”. He further stated that the clapping of hands to show respect for the dead is “the Celtic way”. It most certainly is.
Of course the increasingly incompetent Lex Gold of the SPL must shoulder part of the blame for the shame that this has heaped upon Scottish football. The option of a minute’s applause as an alternative to the traditional silence should never have entered his distorted mind. In the name of decency it simply shouldn’t have been an option. Let’s not mince words here. This option was devised to save Celtic Football Club acute embarrassment.
In decrying Gold, let’s not lose sight of who the real culprits are in this blackest of days for Scottish football. Celtic Football Club. Their directors and Chief Executive could and should have insisted they follow protocol. Their Chairman is a former Secretary for Defence for God’s sake. They could and should have shown they cared and turned their backs on the hate-filled cretins amongst their support who intended disrupting proceedings. They could and should have requested police eject anyone breaking the silence from their stadium or arrest them for breach of the peace. But damage limitation, not decency and decorum, was order of the day and foremost in the minds of John Reid, Peter Lawwell and Co.
“Keep the name of Celtic clean at all costs” the mantra once again. Thus they opted to shame themselves and their football club in the most contemptible way imaginable.
Predictably the Celtic-minded apologists were at their pre and post-match best, deflecting and rewriting as only they can. On Saturday morning the Daily Record told us the minutes applause was introduced in Scotland after Hearts fans disrupted a silence for the Pope. Lies. The first minutes applause in Scotland took place at Ceptic Park in honour of the late great George Best. The reason? Best had made some derogatory remarks about Gerry Adams and the IRA in his Mail on Sunday column a year earlier, propmting outrage in Republican circles. The Celtic heirarchy knew any silence would be disrupted.
At pains to propagate the increasingly risible “tiny-minority” line, the media once again did Peter Lawwell’s bidding for him. Numbers for those who walked out of Celtic Park in protest against “British Imperialism” ranged from a few hundred to Hugh Keevins’ ridiculous 20 figure. Mark Guidi in the Sunday Mail clawed hopelessly as he stated “a maximum of 80 Celtic fans left the stadium”. How bloody desperate.
Celtic of course refused to speak out, their work done for them. “Not worthy of comment” said a Celtic spokesman, just as 3500 of their fans singing loudly in tribute to their IRA heroes at Tynecastle the previous weekend had similarly been “not worthy of comment”. Are we really to believe that these same morons would have respected a silence one week on? The same Celtic supporters who had verbally abused poppy-sellers outside the Hearts stadium? The same Hearts who lost a whole first team in the fields of France during the Great War? Of course they would. We know exactly what would have happened, and Celtic knew too. Thousands of their clubs fans would have been shown up for exactly what they are – hate-filled, shameless anti-British fascists and racists.
Keevins described the actions of the assembled throng of IRA sympathisers as “a serious embarrassment for us as a country”. Wrong Mr. Keevins. They are a serious embarrassment to Ireland as a country, for these creatures are not Scottish or British, they are Irish. Ask them for yourself.
On Saturday night I watched the Festival of Remembrance on BBC1. I sat in awe as Lance Corporal Mathew Croucher of 40 Commando Royal Marines was piped in carrying the Book of Remembrance, by Scottish soldiers. Lance Corporal Croucher had thrown his body across a live hand-grenade to save the lives of two of his comrades. Only his backpack saved him from being blown to pieces. He was awarded the George Cross for his bravery. I was reminded of Sergeant Michael Willets of 3rd Battalion Parachute Regiment, husband and father, who threw himself on top of a hand-grenade tossed into Springfield Road Police Station Belfast by the IRA in 1971. Sergeant Willets gave his own life to save the lives of Catholic/Nationalist/Republican women and children sheltering in the station. He was posthumously awarded the George Cross.
I continued to watch as British soldiers of all races, creeds and colours paid tribute to fallen comrades. I listened intently as Lt. Col. Joe O’Sullivan 2nd Battalion Parachute Regiment lamented the loss of three of his men in Iraq. The Lt. Col. could I’m sure trace his roots back to Ireland should he so choose. This set me thinking. Why are people like Joe O’Sullivan, and thousands of others like him, fully assimilated and proud of the adopted country of their ancestors, yet we in West-Central Scotland have the continual embarrassment and perpetual shame of those of Irish ancestry who despise us?
The answer is Celtic Football Club. An organisation diseased to its core. In the beginning we had Marist Brother Walfrid introducing bigotry to football when founding the club “prompted by a fear that Protestant soup kitchens might tempt young Catholics into apostasy” and “worried about the dangers of young Catholics meeting Protestants in their place of employment or leisure” (Football historian Bill Murray from his book “The Old Firm”). Walfrid's co-recruitment agent for Celtic was a Fenian, Pat Welsh, on the run from Ireland suspected of murder. Choice company for a man of the cloth. This would of course be the same Walfrid that Celtic history books clearly document as leading the singing of Irish rebel songs in St Mary's Parish Hall, Glasgow, in November 1887.
On to the opening ceremony for Celtic Park when the convicted Fenian gun-runner and “embittered Irish Nationalist who was anti-British to the backbone” Michael Davitt laid the first piece of turf. Fast-forward to September 17th 1941, when the SFA closed Parkhead for a month because of Celtic fans’ “serious misbehaviour and pro-German chants”. To the Falklands conflict when Ce ltic fans chanted “Argentina, Argentina” and “Malvinas, Malvinas” in support of Galtieri’s fascist military dictatorship. Not forgetting 30 years of Provisional IRA support and the Celtic Board of Directors’ insistence on P.A. broadcasts of dewy-eyed ballads “rebelling against the Crown” and featuring “let the people sing” Irish Republican lyrics. I could add the Irish Republican vocalist at Jackie MacNamara’s testimonial, the disruption of a minutes silence for a member of the Royal Family, Republican flute bands playing at testimonial matches, Celtic players singing IRA songs………..
I would also mention the dozens of “Celtic pubs” that are little more than meeting places and breeding grounds for terrorist sympathisers and what former Celtic chairman Fergus McCann so deftly described as “Celtic-minded Catholic bigots”. Witness the IRA theme park that the Barrowlands ghetto of Glasgow has become with its Sinn Fein shops and public houses festooned in Irish Republican symbology. Shame on Glasgow City Council who seem happy to allow this area to expand.
Swathes of Liverpool and Everton fans can trace their Irish heritage back to when their ancestors sailed to England. Likewise the Arsenal fans of Kilburn and other areas of London heavily populated by descendents of Irish settlers, but they don’t embarrass their club in the way Celtic fans do. That’s because their board of directors don’t actively encourage them to. History has shown us that Celtic Football Club and its fans have used anything at their disposal to express their pro-Irish Republican anti British stance. On Saturday, even by their own standards, they reached a new all time low. The scandalous events show us nothing has changed in over 100 years. Celtic fans espouse a brand of puss-filled Irish Republicanism that brings with it a hatred unrivalled anywhere in European football. This is Scotland’s REAL secret shame.
‘When you go home, tell them of us and say, for their tomorrow, we gave our today’
Cecil Withers passed away on 17th April 2005, at the ripe old age of 106. May he rest in peace. Were he were alive to witness Saturdays events, one wonders if he’d still believe the sacrifice of his fellow soldiers made was worth it.
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