Hate-filled bigot walks
BY FERN LANE
On Saturday night, whilst Donald Findlay, now ex-Vice Chairman of Rangers
FC, was relishing the prospect of being up to his knees in Fenian blood,
the blood of a 16-year old Celtic supporter, stabbed to death after being
chased by a gang of Rangers supporters after the Scottish Cup Final, was
being mopped up from Bankhall Street in Glasgow just a few hundred yards
from his home. Ironically, Thomas McFadden's mother had not allowed him to
attend the match because of her fears of violence; instead he had watched
the game on television.
other Celtic supporter, 20-year-old Karl McGroarty was hit in the chest
by a crossbow bolt as he returned home after the match. He had been bought
a ticket for the game as a birthday present, never having attended the
fixture, and was given a Celtic top at the ground which he was wearing at
the time of the attack. He is presently in the intensive care unit in the
Victoria Infirmary in Glasgow.
The attacks were the violent corollory of the mindset which informs antics
such as Findlay's at The Edmiston Club during a celebration for Rangers'
cup victory - a celebration, incidentally, at which most of the players
were present and at which many of them joined in enthusiastically with
Findlay's karaoke rendition of Follow, Follow, The Sash, Derry's Walls and
Billy Boys.
However, Findlay was secretly filmed singing some of the most horribly
sectarian songs in the Loyalist repertoire and the video tape was
subsequently passed on to the Scottish paper, The Daily Record. Amidst the
uproar and condemnation which followed the images of his drunken display,
Findlay resigned from the Rangers board, pleading that his behaviour had
been ``an error of judgement''.
Findlay has been notorious for years as a rampant bigot but has always
managed, just, to stay on the right side of the law whilst those in
authority turned a blind eye to a sectarianism which bordered on the
psychotic. One of his milder comments was that he had never forgiven his
mother for giving birth to him on St. Patrick's Day; he chose instead to
celebrate his birthday on 12 July.
During his professional career as a QC, he defended Jason Campbell, who was
convicted of murdering 16-year-old Celtic supporter Mark Wright and who was
claimed by the UVF as one of theirs before an outcry forced them to disown
him. He also defended Campbell's close friend, Thomas Longstaff, convicted
last year of attempted murder when he cut the throat of another Celtic
supporter, 19-year old Sean O'Connor. Away from the courtroom, Findlay also
vigorously defended Paul Gascoigne's notorious flute-playing mime and was
savagely critical of those who exposed Rangers' goalkeeper Andy Goram as a
loyalist fanatic.
The Daily Record, in exposing Findlay, issued a harsh condemnation, saying:
`` ...he has been caught, condemned out of his own foul mouth among his
toadies, where, no doubt, he arrogantly assumed he was safe...''
Findlay with his courtroom skills, sharp intelligence and brilliant mind is
not stupid. Except that that mind appears to be a closed mind, a narrow
mind, pickled and distorted by his innate bigotry. He was knee-deep in it.
He wallowed in it. He gloried in it. If he was simply stupid, it might just
be understandable. But Findlay always knew exactly what he was doing. That
is what makes everything so much worse.
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