A thread on what tonight’s events in George Square mean to me:

When I started researching ‘sectarianism’ (a term I can’t stand) nearly a decade ago, I couldn’t believe how little solidarity there was (including within the left!) for those of us from Irish Catholic backgrounds.

Almost complete silence as we endured, for several months of the year, frequent orange marches down our streets and past our churches. ‘Fenian bastard’, ‘bead-rattler’, ‘Taig’ there’s not much I’ve not been called. It felt like a very lonely experience.

When I began researching racism more broadly and sought to place the experience of Irish Catholics in the historical context of Britain’s colonial relationship with Ireland and Irish migration to Britain, I experienced a fair bit of resistance from some within academia.

You can’t call it racism. Yours is a sectarian problem. A Protestant-Catholic divide. The culture of equivalence was dominant. So, no solidarity from much of the left, from academia, from society as a whole. With some exceptions of course.

The last few years have been better. The trade union movement was very well represented in the campaign to stop orange marches going past Catholic Churches (surely if they’re not anti-catholic they wouldn’t be bothered about going past churches? They took the council to court )

Debates in academia on this issue have also improved, more research being done. So that’s positive. But there’s been very little progress in getting our politicians or much of the media to move beyond the culture of equivalence paradigm that is totally devoid of power relations.

It’s extremely damaging. The loyalist thugs who are rampaging over a human rights protest tonight are the same thugs who have tried to terrorise us and question our right to exist for decades. They are racist and bigoted to the core. There is no equivalence. There never has been.

Facism and racism need to be fought by a united working class led movement. But we also need decent politicians to stop being afraid to call this out for what it is. Confront all elements of Scotland’s history of colonialism and racism, including the Irish Catholic experience.

This is a moment of opportunity for solidarity against all forms of racism and bigotry. Hopefully the silence that has allowed loyalism to quietly flourish for this long is over.