On Tuesday night BBC Scotland decided to screen a programme documenting the history of black footballers in this country with an emphasis on the experiences of Mark Walters.
Up until the late 1980s only a handful of black players had been seen in the Scottish game which was similar to English football. Clyde Best at West Ham was almost on his own at West Ham in the seventies but an exciting West Brom side emerged with Remi Moses, Cyrille Regis and Laurie Cunningham the star players.
Hey @BBCScotlandNews can you confirm this is Mark Walters singing an anti-Catholic, anti-Irish racist song & Graham Souness telling somone to “get in there”? https://t.co/rQz8FSg314 Thanks.
— Bill Cruickshank (@BjCruickshank) May 25, 2021
Walters was without doubt given a shameful ‘welcome’ to Scottish football, that is factual. What is also factual is that the club he joined had a shameful signing policy at the time, a policy that many major Scottish employers had operated throughout the 20th Century.
Nae Kaflikz but if we must have some they are in the most minor roles available.
Walters was welcomed into that culture, more than that he embraced in wholeheartedly as the video above demonstrates.
John Brown and Jimmy Bell can be seen in the video but it is clear that Walters knew the words and felt quite at home endorsing loudly The Billy Boys, a song that UEFA later banned although shamefully the SFA never once took action against the club that happily endorsed the lyrics that are familiar to the vast majority of people in the west of Scotland, certainly to football fans.
When it comes to the big questions BBC Scotland prefers to look the other way.