How do you negotiate with people who talk like this?

"Following the club statement on Friday, we take this opportunity to accept full responsibility for both the pyrotechnics display to celebrate the achievements of the Lisbon Lions at the Hearts match in May and our 'Brendan's Undefeated Army' tifo during the match against Linfield on Wednesday evening. While we are disappointed to hear of the impending two match ban that we face, we know that in the sanitised world of Scottish football the actions of an Ultra group like ours may have consequences for our members. We do however completely oppose collective punishment and a blanket ban on all fans in our block is disproportionate and unjust therefore we call on the board to revise this decision.

"As a group we are defined by our style of support and our politics, both of which the club are happy to benefit from when it suits their agenda. Almost a year ago, after much immediate criticism, we brought worldwide adulation on the club for our show of solidarity with the people of Palestine and the subsequent charity fundraising which was endorsed by the Celtic support. What isn't common knowledge is if it had not been for this incredible response, we would have faced the same punishment as we currently face. In light of this, and of the condemnation of banners and songs from Wednesday, we refuse to allow a discredited and corrupt organisation like UEFA or a board which has welcomed Tory Lords to dictate our moral compass.

"Our decision to mark the achievements of 1967 by using pyrotechnics was not taken lightly. We took the required steps to ensure that this was carried out as safely as possible and in the knowledge that we as a group may face potential consequences as a result of it. We believe the scenes that day and the response from the Celtic support proved it to be worthwhile. We have engaged in regular dialogue with the club over this matter throughout the summer and believed to be reaching an amicable outcome, however it seems as if events outside of our control on Wednesday have impacted upon the decision which has now been reached.

"The Green Brigade exists to support Celtic in a positive manner and we believe that this current confrontation is unnecessary and avoidable. We welcome Peter Lawwell's call for dialogue as we have been waiting on his availability for some time. One of our first talking points will be the unnecessary and unsafe policing operation carried out during Wednesday night's match, which we believe must be the source of one of UEFA's charges (blocked stairwells) and could only have been designed to antagonise fans in the area. As the evidence below proves, it is bizarre and shameful that the club have not only blamed the fans for this charge but have cited it as a reason for the ban.

"Other pertinent issues to be addressed are the club's response to the biggest cheating scandal to shame Scottish sport; the insulting of the Celtic support over the Linfield away debacle and negligence of the safety of those they knew would travel; and the silence over the racial and sectarian hatred directed at our player of the year and manager. Typically, the club are quick to bite the hand that feeds them yet reluctant to unite against common detractions.

"We have built a positive relationship with the Celtic SLO however we are concerned that his position is nearly untenable due to the manner in which he is continually undermined by Celtic security staff. The SLO is required to "collaborate with the security officer on safety and security-related matters" however has been deliberately excluded from discussions of this nature which is in breach of the UEFA SLO Guidelines, as per article 35. His exclusion is a deliberate tactic adopted by the police and Celtic security to facilitate the targeting of our members.

"For over 10 years now the Green Brigade has withstood attacks from Police Scotland and sadly this will always continue. This also will not be our first ban or forced absence from Celtic Park. The Green Brigade has not only survived through the years but we have thrived - we are currently as large and strong as we have ever been. We can assure all that we will be back in Celtic Park soon enough and that we will never allow our style nor our politics to ever be diluted."

 

My two bob's worth:

They are beginning to sound like Club 1872 and that's not a compliment. As I have said on numerous occasions, they seem to think they have some sort of God-given right to do as they please and damn the consequences. No one, not the board, nor the manager, other fans or the Police will tell them what to do.

Seriously, where's the wriggle room in that statement? There is none, they've boxed themselves into a corner where there is a real possibility that they will unveil some more banners at a CL game and really drop the club into the mire. UEFA have shown they won't hesitate, the Celtic Board have now told them the same thing, but does that matter? Not really, "we're bringing flares and doing whatever we want" is the answer...again.

Honest to God what is wrong with them?

 

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What do you mean they are beginning to talk like club 1872? I have seen you post this in GC as well. Total bollocks actually but hey ho.

What the actually "sound like" is ... the Green Brigade. That **** you posted is typical rhetoric from that bunch of ****pigs. They have been very consistent over the years actually. Pure unadulterated deluded ****e. They actually think they themselves are some kind of paramilitary outfit, fighting the good fight, standing up for what is right. This means in their eyes every **** else is wrong. We have been banging on about their stupidity for years so the only surprising thing about their latest arsehole behaviour is that any **** is surprised by it.

I said after their Bloostained poppy banner that Celtic were making a rod for their own back by enabling these ****s and that they weren't interested in football. That statement up there just proves the point. They are the plasticy of Paddies trying to keep a cause going that even the Irish aren't interested in and it's ****ing embarrassing.

When they flow that poppy banner Celtic said they would root them out. Instead they gave them there very own standing section so they could get extra ****ified. Celtic only have themselves to blame. Banning them for two games will make not one but of a difference. **** them out permanently is the only option that will stop them.using your club as a soapbox for their toddler politics.

Jist saying like.

 

They don't speak for me. I was attending CP long before the GB, and I'll be there long after they are gone. Shame it's come to this, they do a helluva lot of good, but may be outweighing it all with their attitude toward what they do inside CP. Flares, for a start, are ****ing dangerous!

Having said that, I can't get an 8" bottle of water into CP, but the GB can get an 8' banner in(along with 2 massive poles) without it being checked by Celtic security?

Again, something stinks here!

 

GB banners are stored in CP before games, no? Mmmmmm!!!!

I really hope to **** the board aren't using this as a convenient squirrel to the issues the fans would really like to see them tackle. If they are attempting to do a Stewart Milne, it will cause irreparable damage. They have had 6years to do this, have they?...they have the proof!

Personally, my future participation in fotball depends on it. Not willing to watch a rigged game anymore.

 

Sorry but they are your typical Celtic fans and are the actual Club.

They sang 'the Rebs' for 90 mins on Weds and not one peep from the SMSM and Spiers and English completely silent.

They are a law undo themselves because no **** in Scotland pulls them as they are too busy hating Rangers and promoting an anti-Rangers narrative that guys like the OP lap up like the kow-towing protestant that he is.

Reap what you saw.

 

A typical Hun?

Is that...

A. A man?

B. A woman?

Or

C. Other?

 

I have no idea if that person is Protestant.

 

He's one of your own

 

If you think Club 1872 are any better then you are ****ing deluded, two cheeks of the same scabrous arse imho, you only have to read their last statement to see that.

As for my views on the GB they have been categorical from the outset, my views have not altered that they are not beyond criticism just because they are Celtic "Fans" and no one, least of all me, is surprised.

 

Agreed.

 

And you know my views on Club 1872 and any other fan groups. The Green brigade don't sound like any other fan group though. While the other have great big chips on their shoulders about things mostly pertaining to football and mostly imagined slights there in the Green brigade think they are sodjers. Ffs after the were kettled yon time they released a statement saying their officers were discussing the matter.

Those ****s are a speshull kind of ****nuggets is awe am saying.

 

I can see them eventually costing Celtic millions via non-entry to the CL. EUFA will eventually close the stadium for some qualifier. It might even happen at the end of the week when the case is up. It's pretty obvious that's why the strongly worded statements came out from Celtic as a means of avoiding it. Brendan Rogers and anyone else who grew up there back in the day must think they are complete arseholes. What puzzles me is why don't the stewards or the police simply ask them to take them down? BAD made a comment about water bottles that I thought was quite pertinent why are they getting in with these daft banners.

I do find it funny that they see themselves as some sort of political activists. As I said back in the day they totally betrayed the principles that Celtic were built on the day they did the stupid banner which mocked all the innocent folk that lost their jobs (cleaners, catering staff, clerical staff) because of the carry on at Rangers. That's a shame as I actually did admire Celtic for all that brother Walfrid stuff . The irony for me was that despite the jibes that we were not the same club anymore neither were their own one because of their own deluded antics.

 

As are Club 1872, if you've not read their last statement I suggest you do then you will know they are "special" too.

 

From what I've read on various Celtic forums support for them is starting to disappear like snow off a dyke. Me personally, I would have slapped these fannies down long ago and told them that Celtic will not be dictated to by anyone, least of all some band of teenagers who think they are Che Guevara and Malcom X rolled into one.

 

If you don’t live in Scotland, you may have missed the unholy row that has broken out after a section of Celtic fans displayed pro-IRA banners at a recent Celtic-Linfield game. In a nod to our new manager Brendan Rodgers’ undefeated season in the Scottish league, the words ‘Brendan’s Undefeated Army’ sat above two iconic images from the IRA’s war for independence.

One played with an image made famous in republican South Armagh, an area of the north of Ireland so treacherous for British soldiers that it was known as Bandit Country. In the original poster, road-safety signs warned of ‘Snipers at Work’. In the Celtic Park version, the snipers were not IRA gunmen, but the much-loved new manager, who has led the team to many great victories in the past season. I can’t help thinking that if these banners were hung in a trendy art gallery in West Belfast or Derry they would be hailed by art critics. After all, the IRA ceasefire was declared 23 years ago and ‘paramilitary’ murals and images from both sides of the divide are now cultural artefacts that feature in exhibitions demanding ‘parity of esteem’.

But this respect for cultural identity does not seem to have reached the terraces of Celtic Park. Instead, the media in Scotland has been ablaze with condemnation of the banners and the supporters who displayed them. The group of fans in question is called the Green Brigade – a boisterous, independent, self-organising group of about 800 mostly young Celtic fans who are well known for their innovative and audacious displays of support for the team.

It was hard to find any commentators in Scotland prepared to defend these supporters, though some conceded that they have at times embodied the passion and devotion that have made Celtic supporters famous around the world. Faced with widespread vitriol and a punitive two-game ban, the Green Brigade has remained defiant, pointing to the hypocrisy of the management and the types of fans now denouncing it. ‘As a group we are defined by our style of support and our politics, both of which the club are happy to benefit from when it suits their agenda’, it said in a statement.

Clearly, the Green Brigade’s behaviour no longer suits Celtic’s corporate agenda, which is now focused on getting the team into the Champions League and shedding any associations with politics, which could fall foul of UEFA’s strictures. The club’s statement was clear: ‘Any support for a paramilitary or proscribed terrorist organisation has no place at Celtic Park.’ Commentators then piled in. Writing in the Sunday Mail, Gordon Waddell described the Green Brigade’s statement as ‘750 words of pompous guff’, adding that this ‘self-aggrandising pocket of fans think they’re bigger than the club and their rights are inalienable, no matter how offensive’.

Writing in the Scottish Sun, former player Frank McAvennie labelled them a ‘group of self-important boneheads’. ‘Celtic Football Club survived for more than 100 years before you came along and it will continue to flourish once you’re all pushing up the daisies’, he wrote. But the Green Brigade’s sympathy for Irish republicanism is not some aberration. Celtic was founded in 1888 by Brother Walfrid, a Catholic priest. The club was originally set up to fund soup kitchens for the impoverished Irish who had fled post-Famine Ireland.

From day one, there has been a section of Celtic fans whose support for the club was an expression of their support for the goal of a united Ireland, a support that strengthened through the years of war in Northern Ireland (1969-1994). In fact, back then, the club invited well-known Irish republican Michael Davitt to plant the sod of grass in the centre circle of the pitch – a historical fact conveniently ignored by those now attempting to destroy the Green Brigade.

Since the peace process, the republican element of Celtic fans has waned, and young fans with little knowledge of Irish politics have mingled with ever more middle-class fans who have gravitated towards football in recent decades. But the pretence that politics has never had any place at Celtic is ludicrous. In many ways, the Green Brigade is more true to the club’s history than those fans who can no longer tolerate any reminders of Celtic’s roots and connection with Irish nationalism. The demonisation of the Green Brigade is more than an attack on its heretical politics. Everything about these fans is out of step with the club’s desire to become ever-more respectable.

I have written extensively about the demonisation and criminalisation of Scottish football fans, which culminated with laws in Scotland banning songs and slogans deemed ‘offensive’ to rival fans and right-minded people. ‘The club has a legal duty to the shareholders to protect the brand, and by allowing association with damaging imagery they will not be doing that’, wrote someone on a Celtic fansite this week. It seems the club now prefers the prawn-sandwich brigade to the Green Brigade. Sadly for the Green Brigade, and those of us who admire it, the kind of football supporter that fills its ranks is looking like an endangered species. Many of those supporting the sanctions taken against the group say they were necessary to avoid a harsh punishment from UEFA, which has threatened the club with punitive action over ‘illicit banners’ and blocked stairways.

But things have taken a very strange turn if boisterous football fans, who unfurl ‘offensive’ banners and refuse to stay still in their allocated space, are cause for international punishment from European football’s ultimate governing body. In a radio phone-in, one fan said ‘the Green Brigade aren’t Celtic supporters. They are a total embarrassment.’ But why should commentators and respectable fans get to decide who qualifies as a Celtic supporter?

The Green Brigade may not be to everyone’s taste, but it is made up of devoted Celtic fans who have as much a right to be part of the Celtic fanbase as those with a different politics and class background. The draconian policing of football fans has often been carried in the name of tolerance, of protecting rival or fellow fans from offence. But who is being intolerant now? The Green Brigade does not fit with the ‘brand’ being projected to shareholders, and so its days are numbered.

Those lining up against the Green Brigade should be careful what they wish for. Indeed, even McAvennie, writing in the Scottish Sun in support of the ban, conceded that during the Brigade’s two-game ban Celtic will have lost a certain special something. ‘On Wednesday, the very guys who have almost single-handedly created one of the most remarkable atmospheres in European football will be posted missing when they are required the most’.

We Celtic fans are faced with a choice. Either we can choose to give in to the sanitisation of our football club, the policing of behaviour, and the clampdown on expressions of sympathy with the men and women who fought against the British in Ireland. Or we can choose to allow a section of Celtic fans to carry the baton for the club’s political history. I say we do the latter. And let’s do it in the name of tolerance.

UEFA and the Celtic board are demanding compliant, conformist, obedient, passive and ‘respectable’ fans – the type that does exactly what they are told to, who accept ever-greater regulation, surveillance, restrictions and policing of their behaviour.

The Green Brigade will not accept such restrictions on its members’ civil liberties. These fans will not be not be told where to stand, when to sit, what not to wear, what they and can and cannot wave or sing. That is why I love them. And that is why anyone who cares about civil liberties should defend them to the hilt, as the football and political establishment line up to try to destroy them.

Make no mistake: this is an important civil liberties battle. It is time to defend the Green Brigade.

A Personal Opinion piece by Kevin Rooney. Kevin is a teacher, writer and a member of the Institute of Ideas Education Forum.
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God help our kids if this guy is a teacher. "Civil Liberties" ffs, this guy is handing them martyrdom status. This is the sort of guy who would write "I may disagree with what you say but I would die defending your right to say it". Sanctimonious bollocks.

 

Seems like the GB aren't the only ones without wriggle room

 

Ah the good old misty eyed beautification of Irish republican history. Ye canny whack it.

"The PIRA were a lovely bunch Rascals fighting the tyranny of those rotten scroundles from Britain and only targeted said horrible invaders. The sniper squads in the border country were heroes of.the cause because they killed British aggressors and helped milk the coos when there were no British army types to kill.

Is that a guy a teacher? Not of history i would imagine. Especially not Irish history. Tbh any **** who could write such a load of bollocks like that should be kept as far away from kids and students as possible because he obviously has a very tenuous grasp on reality.

 

I wonder where the GB got the idea from?