THE recent problems of violence in Glasgow has placed Glasgow City Council in the limelight, or perhaps dock. However, we must go back a long way to find the roots of such problems. Those investigations invariably focus on Ireland and their history.
It is true that 12 miles of sea have been endlessly crossed for thousands of years, that the populations are thoroughly mixed with many family and cultural links.
We see sectarianism as a religious divide, an understanding that fails when examined from an Irish perspective.
Irish Republicanism is not, and has never been, about religion. As far back as 1798 the rebellion was an all-Irish one. The Irish have always wanted all of Ireland for all of the Irish.
The perception of religious division on that island comes from the fact that 22 British prisoners were hung in the Windmill during the Battle of Vinegar Hill. The culprits have never been discovered but such division that may exist is based upon the fact that they were Protestants while the vast majority of the population of County Wicklow remains Roman Catholic.
The true religious hatred was actually in Scotland where the Covenanters were hounded by the Roman Catholic establishment, such hatred that saw the hanging of an RC Bishop in St Andrews.
That persecution has neither been forgotten or forgiven by our more ardent Protestants.
We seem always to forget those religious tensions between a religious change that was hard won in Scotland, never happened in Ireland, while England moved from Roman to English Catholicism as Henry VIII perused his second divorce.
It is not as simple as just saying "send the marchers back to Ireland". Scotland must be at peace with our own history first.
Brian Kelly, Dunfermline.
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