A portion of the crowd at Celtic’s Parkhead stadium booed the minute’s silence for Remembrance Sunday. It was abandoned after 30 seconds. This latest embarrassment comes just a week after the club suspended the season tickets of over 250 of its most zealously committed fans – a faction of ultras known as the ‘Green Brigade’. The members of this querulous group which occupies the north curve of Parkhead have been causing trouble/engaging in principled activism (depending on your take) for years, with the latest issue being the repeated display of pro-Palestinian flags and banners at matches, despite warnings from the club to desist. The two events were probably connected.

The Green Brigade was founded in 2006 ostensibly to add colour and atmosphere. But over the years they have somewhat exceeded their brief and added a bit too much colour and atmosphere. They have engaged in sectarian chanting in support of the IRA and minor acts of reckless misbehaviour, such as letting off flares and rushing turnstiles. They are also fond of anti-British banners, such as one in 2010 that read: ‘Your deeds would shame all the devils in Hell. Ireland, Iraq, Afghanistan. No bloodstained poppy on our hoops’; it was a response to Celtic players sporting poppies for a game with St. Mirren. There were fairly unambiguous anti-monarchy banners after the death of Queen Elizabeth II last year.

Celtic justified the suspensions with reference to an ‘increasingly serious escalation in unacceptable behaviours’. Safety issues were cited but a key accelerant is believed to be the display of pro-Palestine paraphernalia in the immediate aftermath of the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October. Just hours after the atrocity, members of the Green Brigade held up two large banners that read ‘Free Palestine’ and ‘Victory to the Resistance’ at a game against Kilmarnock.

Celtic fans booing through the minute silence for Remembrance Sunday.

Vile. pic.twitter.com/YgrMAAeAN9

— Emily Hewertson ?? (@emilyhewertson) November 12, 2023

In response to the suspensions, the Green Brigade issued defiant statements and have since threatened a ‘day of action’ to coincide with the club’s game against Motherwell on the 25 November. Fellow Celtic supporters’ groups have weighed in on their side: the Celtic Trust have issued a statement of support and ‘the Bhoys’ staged a walkout on 1 November after ten minutes of a game with St. Mirren and promised no return to ‘normality’ until the club relents.

The contentious issue is the exact cause of the suspension, with the Green Brigade and their supporters insisting the club is punishing them for the Palestinian protest alone, thus infringing their rights to free expression, toeing the line of the hated ‘far right’ UK government and putting finances before the club’s historic principles (Celtic have been repeatedly fined by UEFA over the years; it adds up).

Just hours after the atrocity, members of the Green Brigade held up two large banners that read ‘Free Palestine’ and ‘Victory to the Resistance’

Celtic may have declared that ‘it is not a political organisation’ but it is happy enough to play on the club’s particular history and association when it suits – the Irish flag still flies from the stadium, after all. Some believe many in the club are quietly sympathetic with the ultras, but it has chosen to clamp down now because its activism has started to cause serious revenue threatening embarrassment. As the Bhoys statement put it (the club) ‘are happy to celebrate the cultural and political tendencies of our fanbase when it suits their commercial agenda’.

At the heart of the problem is that many Celtic fans clearly see the club as not British at all but the legacy organisation of a refuge for an oppressed minority within an unfriendly state. In a British league but not of it, they like to present themselves as something other, ‘mair than a club’ to translate into Glasgow vernacular the motto of the somewhat analogous Barcelona.

But that narrative has less resonance today than it did in 1888. Celtic are a global corporate enterprise now a long way from their humble charitable, outsider roots and their foundation by Brother Walfrid, a tireless campaigner for the poor. Which makes association with the Palestine cause, at least as understood by the Green Brigade (Nir Bitton, an Israeli midfielder who played for the club between 2013 and 2022, called the fans ‘brainwashed’ with ‘zero clue about this conflict’) attractive. By importing and adopting what they imagine to be something similar to their club’s origin story, they can carry on the great struggle by proxy and keep imbibing the moral intoxicant of defiant righteousness.

The losers in all this are football fans in general, and Celtic fans in particular, sick of the politicisation of their sport. What percentage of the Celtic fan base that amounts to is hard to gauge but fan forums and comments under articles suggest there are plenty who just wish the Green Brigade would take their protests to a neutral location and give the rest of the support a break.

But that may be wishful thinking. Ultras are so-called for a reason.