Paul McBride has warned Celtic supporters that singing songs about h**s will no longer be acceptable.
Supporters of Aberdeen, Dundee United and other clubs often refer to Rangers as h**s but according to the QC those days are almost over.
New legislation going through the Scottish Parliament is geared at clamping down on offensive behaviour with a number of issues about to be highlighted and outlawed.
McBride shot to fame in footballing circles when he took on the SFA as he defended Neil Lennon forcing outgoing President George Peat into a humiliating climbdown as an independent inquiry chaired by Lord Carloway described Peat’s role as ‘contrary to the principles of fair play’.
Not long afterwards he found himself a target for extremists as he was sent a ‘viable device’ in the post at the same time as Neil Lennon.
The new legislation won’t provide a list of banned songs and chants but McBride is in no doubt that any references to huns will no longer be tolerated.
Speaking to the latest Celtic Underground podcast he explained: “All the talk in parliament about what is a reasonable person or what is offensive behaviour is all puff and smoke- we all know what is offensive.
“I think that using the expression h** is now offensive. I don’t think that we’ll be seeing at Parkhead next season signs saying ‘No H**s in Europe’ or ‘H**s get out of here’. We have to accept that if we are going to have one side behaving in a certain way we have to make sure that our own side, the Celtic family, don’t act in an unacceptable way.
“That’s not taking the fun out of the game, you’ll never take swearing out of football, you’ll probably get abuse and all the rest of it but we can’t have people throwing bananas on the pitch, we can’t have people abusing black players, we can’t have people being called h**s, we can’t have people being called orange b’s.
“Those days have to go in the same way that we want the Rangers family not to sing The Famine Song, we don’t want them to sing ‘upto our knees in fenian blood’.
“We have to look at our own side as well, we can still enjoy ourselves at Parkhead without singing about the IRA, without singing about h**s go home and without singing about orange b’s- I don’t think any of that behaviour is unacceptable and it has to apply across the board or we’ll never get rid of it.
“When the term (h**) is used it’s designed to cause offence. You can have rivalry without being blatantly offensive.”
McBride’s views are bound to spark plenty of controversy with the QC very clear in his views that any songs relating to the IRA must end despite the British Queen’s decision to lay a wreath at Dublin’s Garden of Remembrance during a visit to Ireland.
He added: “99% of people at Parkhead will have nothing to fear, I don’t think that there is a particular problem at Parkhead in any event. I’m not happy with some parts of the crowd, a very small part, singing songs about the IRA.
“We’ve got the Green Brigade, who I think are very entertaining, I think that they add something to Parkhead- sometimes the games are so dire they are the only thing entertaining as the bounce up and down and sing songs!
“I’m not that happy about them singing about the IRA. Why are they singing about the IRA in the context of a football game? This culture has got to change, we can go along to games, yes we can shout abuse at the other side, yes we can have fun but there is a line over which we should not be crossing. I think that we all know where that line is.”
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its gonna be hard for folk to stop referring to other folk in a way that thay have been doing so for 50 years (in many cases) – on both sides of the divide
a 4-0 victory always did the trick as far as i can tell in regard to upsetting the opposition
Ahhh guys come on. I and around 96% of Celtic supports don’t find it offensive to be called a Fenian and I think around about 96% of R#ners fans don’t mind being called Huns either. I hope more and better legislation does come into play so long as it doesn’t get too petty and the sounds of things its going that way.