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.
Another 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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