20th September 2005

Ending racism is the goal

It is a team we should all support, regardless of the sport we follow or our affiliations. Derek Whyte and Gerry Britton, the former Partick Thistle joint managers who played football at the highest level in Scotland, put the side through its first paces in Glasgow yesterday. Tactics were kept to a minimum. There was only one goal: Show Racism the Red Card. Success demands an all-out attack on attitudes that have no place in Scotland.

Yet they persist. Three of Scotland's biggest police forces have reported significant rises in racist incidents. Glasgow City Council has compiled figures to show that racism exists in the authority's schools. There is worrying evidence that the perpetrators are as young as nine or 10. It was appropriate that the initiative should be launched in Glasgow as there is clearly a problem to address. Glasgow was a fitting setting for another reason. The city is the lead authority in accommodating asylum-seekers in Scotland. While research has shown that the children of asylum-seekers are an asset to Glasgow's schools, the persistence of racist myths makes them a target for physical and verbal abuse.

The initiative aims to confront those myths and expose them for what they are: nasty, brutal and plain wrong. But they have a malignant effect. It is imaginative to use football, not for the first time, in anti-racist strategies. As Mr Whyte pointed out yesterday, some of the world's greatest footballers are from asylum-seeking backgrounds. One of them, Dado Prso, is a firm favourite among Rangers supporters. It defies logic that a person from one country can be feted as a hero in another while his compatriots, facing an uncertain future in unfamiliar surroundings, can be abused in the very same location because they, too, are outsiders. But that is the problem with racism, whether based on colour or ethnicity. It is illogical.

It cannot be defeated simply on the training ground. The initiative will be linked to anti-racist education sessions, initially in Glasgow schools and then across Scotland. Children are impressionable. Schools seek to instil values of tolerance, respect for others and their way of life, and good neighbourliness in pupils. Where attitudes are acquired in the home or on the street that run counter to these values, it is essential that schools have effective anti-racism strategies. That is especially important when the targets of abuse can be the children of asylum-seeking families in the care of schools. We wish the initiative every success in eradicating irrational prejudice. It should not be too late to change attitudes.

The Herald, Editorial