The following article, which concentrates more on Rangers than Celtic, simply because this was the nature of the particular research, has been useful in providing some background and for pointing students towards other likely sources of material.

The article itself however, refers to both Rangers and Celtic throughout and offers interesting information on the development of crowd behaviour in Scotland.

It is extracted from 'Crowd Behaviour at Football Matches - A Study in Scotland', published on behalf of the Football Trust in 1984.

["Rangers became a professional club in 1893. Any reading of the history of these years must lead to an agreement with Hutchinson's (J Hutchinson, 1975, 'Some Aspects of Football Crowds Before 1914') conclusion that:

"Riots, unruly behaviour, violence, assault and vandalism appear to have been a well established, but not necessary dominant pattern of crowd behaviour at football matches at least from the 1870s".

Rangers had their quota of pitch invasions and abandoned matches, and their crowd seems to have gained a reputation fairly early on for having an unruly element. For example, the Scottish Athletic Journal, commenting on the first game at Ibrox in 1887 said:

"What must have been a pleasing feature of the proceedings to Rangers was the very large number of the better classes that turned out to see the game. It behoves Rangers to do everything in their power to retain the patronage of these people, who mostly belong to the district, and they can only do so by rigidly keeping the rowdier portion of the crowd in order".

Pitch invasion continued to be an aspect of Rangers' matches at the turn of the century including some of their games against Celtic. Neither of the New Year's Day matches at Parkhead in 1898 or Ibrox in 1905, for example, was finished. The Glasgow press put both incidents down to inadequate policing and the influence of alcohol on the vast crowds. Indeed, it is important to note that while there was 'trouble' in matches between the two clubs at this time it does not appear to have had a particularly sectarian edge but turned on overcrowded grounds, general rivalry, or, in one of the most famous riots in early Scottish football at Hampden in 1909, a shared irritation with officialdom. This was the riot that the Daily Record referred back to when it commented that the troubles at the end of the 1980 Scottish Cup Final were:

"…the most violent and ugly scenes seen at Hampden in more than seventy years."

The 1909 riot, in which 6,000 spectators beat up police, tore down goal posts, lit bonfires and cut firemen's hoses lasted for two and a half hours and resulted in 58 police and 60 others being treated at hospital. However, it does not seem to have turned at all on ethnic antagonism but on the ambiguity of official pronouncements about the playing of extra time in the event of a drawn game. This is not to suggest that there was not ethnic antagonism in Glasgow before 1910, there certainly was. It has a long history in Scotland. The Orange Order had lodges in Scotland from about 1800. Handley (J E Handley, 1960, 'The Celtic Story') writing of two Clydeside towns in the 1850's, reports:

"For months on end it was customary for young members of the Orange Party to assemble at the street corners and attack with Skull-crackers passers-by who were Irish or Catholic".

On St. Patrick's day in Govan in the 1890s, Catholic schoolboys were given a holiday and dressed with green ribbons and favours, wandered the streets beating up Protestant boys. So ethnic antagonism was prevalent in Glasgow in its boom period and the ethnic divide was reflected in divisions in the labour market between skilled and unskilled, status divisions in the community between respectables and roughs, and also some residential segregation. However the coupling of sectarianism with professional football, such that it became an aspect of soccer violence, seems to have been a feature of the years after 1910 and, especially after the First World War. Attention to this feature of Scottish football history would seem to disturb the cyclical trend noted by Dunning (E G Dunning, 1981, 'The Social Roots of Football Hooligan Violence'), while the association of skilled workers with anti-Catholicism and so support for Rangers and so hooliganism throws some historical doubt, at least, on the general tendency of the theories considered to locate hooliganism with the rough working class.

A number of reasons have been put forward to explain this, rather late, inter-linking of ethnic antagonism and football rivalry in the inter-war period.

Firstly, it should be noted that the Glasgow teams had developed a certain style of support from the 1890''. These were the 'Brake-Clubs', associations of young men who made their way to matches in horse-drawn brakes. Maley (W Maley, 1939, 'The Story of Celtic'), the Celtic Manager in these years, reports developments as they relate to Old Firm matches thus:

"In the early days of the club's meetings, followers were the best of friends, and used to forgather together after the games in friendly spirit, and often times the Brake Clubs would drive home from Hampden and other grounds after some big games between the two Clubs in that sporting spirit which I have so often admired at an English final, where victor and vanquished arm in arm spend the Night after the game with each other.

In 1912 the rift in the lute appeared, and the Brake Clubs became in the main the happy hunting ground for the breed termed 'gangster' which has become such a disgrace to our City, and religion became the common battlefield for those supposed 'sports'. Scenes which disgraced the sport, the town and the individuals became common and the game's good name was tarnished".

Secondly, influence from Northern Ireland was particularly strong during this period. Harland and Woolf started operating in Govan in 1912, bringing over many Protestant workers, while others came in the munition boom. Given that this was the bloody phase with war and then partition, it is not perhaps surprising that aspects of the culture of Ulster took deeper root in the West of Scotland. Of course, the depression and competition for jobs that followed the end of the war and extended on into the 1930's also meant that those who wished to emphasise the importance of ethnicity had a material argument to hand. 'Aliens' could be prevented from competing for scarce jobs and several firms made it clear that Catholics need not apply.

Thirdly, the rise of the Labour Party to national and local power in the 1920s and 1930s also solidified ethnic divisions since, for a number of reasons, its rise was associated with heavy catholic support. The Protestant working class tended to be linked to the Unionists (i.e. the Tories) via the Orange Order and similar bodies and, indeed, specifically Protestant parties had some successes in the inter-war years.

In short, a number of economic and political developments, not related to professional football, were combining to emphasise ethnic division and antagonism in Glasgow in the inter-war years. Given this, in combination with the youth cultures mentioned earlier, in a situation where Rangers always seem to have been a Protestant club and Celtic were (and are) straightforwardly proud of their Irish connection, it is not at all odd, that in a soccer conscious city, professional football and ethnic antagonism were welded firmly together.

Rangers dominated Scottish football between the wars and established themselves as the premier club north of the border. The club presented itself as ultra-respectable, proud and secure. This was endorsed in red brick at Ibrox Park where the grandstand, added to the great oval of terraces in 1929, completed a stadium that was to survive in essentials until the late 1970s. The stadium was measured to hold 139,940 spectators with seats under cover for 10,294 of these. In fact, the highest recorded attendance was 118,561 at the New Year meeting with Celtic in 1939.

Disorder continued to be associated with Rangers' games. There were notable outbreaks of disorder in Scottish football (almost all Rangers versus Celtic games) in 1941, 1949, 1953, 1955, 1957, 1958 and on into the 1960s. The disorder comprised fighting, bottle throwing and pitch invasions (in addition to ritual chanting, obscenities and jeering). The press denounced such incidents in a rhetoric that was to become familiar in England a decade or so later. Thus the Glasgow Herald wrote in 1952:

"Something must be done. The hooliganism on the sports field cannot be allowed to go on. The sport of football must be cleaned up".

In effect, little was done. Over the years, magistrates, the police and the football authorities considered limiting the crowds, police measures against provocative insults and flags, and the nature of the link between football and drink. The clubs appealed to their supporters in various ways to stop the rowdyism, which was seen as the work of a few hooligans.

However, there was an air of ritual in all the meetings between clubs and officials, officials and magistrates, magistrates and the Secretary of State. In general, the magistrates avoided the issue of the swearing, sectarian chanting and flag waving at Old Firm games and in general, too, they were dissatisfied by the attitudes of the clubs and football authorities to the proposals. For their part, the clubs argued that trouble was caused by a few hooligans in crowds of tens of thousands of respectable fans and that violence was a much wider problem in the city. As the SFA President put it in 1958:

"We in football do not try to minimise the danger of misbehaviour in football ground, but there is hooliganism and crime in every day in the week in Glasgow's dance halls, pubic houses and in the streets, and we have not heard of any special powers being sought to eliminate this dreadful state of affairs".

However, sociologically prescient this observation is, it does not seem that from the mid-1960s (and Glasgow's syndrome of economic decline should be remembered here) various Glasgow elites began to find the hooliganism increasingly irksome. Sheriff Daiches, QC, spoke in 1965 of:

"…this disgraceful behaviour, which is making this City a by-word in Europe".

The chairman of the Scottish TUC wrote to the magistrates arguing that the Old Firm violence was having a damaging effect on Scotland's image among industrialists. The Provost made a plea to the clubs to take steps to sever their sectarian identities: Rangers should sign Catholics, Celtic should remove the Irish flag from their flagpole.

So, hooliganism in Glasgow became linked, more than in the South, with having an economic effect of being in part responsible for Glasgow's image and so of delaying inward investment and the inward migration of white collar workers. Although Scottish hooliganism did not just occur at games between the Glasgow clubs, even where it occurred elsewhere it could usually be linked back to the Old Firm rivalries and so as relating to Glasgow. Significantly these links between soccer violence and economic effects were again made after the televised pitch invasion following the 1980 Cup Final between Celtic and Rangers. On this occasion a Provost remarked that:

"The damage this has done to the prospect of getting foreign investment and much needed jobs to Glasgow are incalculable. Who would come and live and work in a city projected as one of violence?".

The Provost's denunciation of hooliganism as damaging the economic prospects of the city became a regular feature of commentary on soccer. To the extent that hooliganism was becoming a political issue in the 1960s and 1970s (and some references in the Scottish press run along the lines that 'now it's happening in England something will be done about it'), then Rangers policy was bound to come under increasing official pressure.

Certainly the Rangers' board seem to have been increasingly discomforted by the adverse publicity its supporters received and the open suggestions in the press that they were largely to blame for the problem and could help end it by signing a Catholic. The press (and television) became increasingly concerned with soccer violence and part accepted that it was economically damaging to Glasgow. However, this increased concern also echoed the 'concerns' running through the English media about the English game. As a consequence there is some ambiguity in press accounts about whether the issue in the 1970's was a matter of traditional sectarianism or was a simple youth phenomenon, fuelled, in Scotland, by alcohol.

In all this concern, both Celtic and Rangers were pressed to end their religious, more correctly Irish connections. Rangers however, were under more pressure partly because Celtic's rather prim flag flying could not be equated with Rangers' ban on signings and because the 1970s included some very spectacular pieces of violence involving Rangers' fans. The club's discomfort was increased by the Ibrox Disaster at the New Year's game in 1971 when 66 died and 145 were injured. Although the trouble was not caused by hooliganism, it did lead commentators to attack the poor state of facilities at football grounds, and Rangers' response to earlier incidents on the staircase exit where the trouble took place was soon revealed to have been insufficient. A subsequent court case, by relatives of the dead, showered bad publicity on the club. One of the sources of the decision to rebuild the stadium certainly lies in these events.

There were significant crowd problems at Ibrox in 1973 and 1975 but it was a Rangers' fans riot in Birmingham in 1976 in a 'friendly' with Aston Villa, which provoked the biggest media storm. In genera,l Rangers' expressions of disapproval and condemnation of 'certain sections' of their support, which had followed earlier outbreaks, were seen as irrelevant and now the Glasgow press severely criticised the club. The press detailed the Rangers' fans riots in Wolverhampton, Newcastle, Barcelona and now Birmingham, along with minor skirmishes elsewhere, and condemned the club. The general tone is revealed by Ian Archer in the Glasgow Herald:

"This has to be said about Rangers…as a Scottish Football club they are a permanent embarrassment and an occasional disgrace. This country would be a better place if Rangers did not exist".

His reasons turned on bigotry and on the club's reputation for rough play. Rangers reacted to this growing criticism by stating that they were determined to end Rangers' image as a sectarian club and stated that no religious barriers would be placed on the signing of players.

A further response was to suggest that one solution to the violence was an all-seated stadium and plans were presented at a shareholders' meeting in 1976. It is interesting to speculate that, as well as problems of crowd disorder and the repercussions of the 1971 disaster, an element in the growing drive to rebuild Ibrox was the club's ideology that Rangers should always be, and seen to be, the best.