This article was downloaded by: [University of North Carolina]On: 12 November 2014, At: 19:29Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number:1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street,London W1T 3JH, UK

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Scotland against England:football and popularcultureH.F. Moorhouse aa University of GlasgowPublished online: 07 Mar 2007.

To cite this article: H.F. Moorhouse (1987) Scotland against England: footballand popular culture, The International Journal of the History of Sport, 4:2,189-202, DOI: 10.1080/09523368708713625

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Scotland against England: Football andPopular Culture

H.F. Moorhouse

In a series of papers I have been trying to outline the specific historicaland social structures which surround professional football in Scotland.'My project has two main purposes. First, I want to excavate aspects of aScottish popular culture which is under-researched even in comparisonwith its English counterpart, and to try to indicate how this relates to aparticular kind of national sentiment in Scotland. Through this 1 hope totrace some of the complexities that can be involved in the relationship ofsport and nationalism. Often referred to, nationalism as a concept is littleinvestigated in the analysis of sport, and is all too often reduced toresolute flag-waving. This done, easy parallels can be drawn betweenpolitical assertion and, say, gold medals or soccer violence.2 Suchparallels, in which precise causal connections are left implicit, are dubioussince nationalism is, itself, a complicated matter, by no means reducible toovert or emphatic or successful actions. Countries which, as it were, fail*politically and economically still produce nationalistic sentiments andstereotypes which can be attached to their sporting life and which, in turn,can reinvigorate their specific kinds of national feelings and identities.

My second purpose is to point to inadequacies in the main way that thestudy of football, indeed sport more generally, has been incorporated intowider social theory. Studies of the cultural trajectories of soccer in Britaintend to be organized around the concepts of class, class relations,hegemony, and class resistance, often to the exclusion of a considerationof the variety of meanings and symbolism that sport can evoke, of whichnationalism (in all its forms) is but one.3 This is not to say that I reject arigorous class analysis, far from it, but 'class'as an organizing concept hasa tendency to fall short in the exploration of the complexities ofconsciousness and consumption. Scottish football, at a number of levels,reveals how sport can represent and enliven all kinds of divisionspertinent in society other that those of occupationally based class, and ifthis is true for Scotland, then it is at least possible that the study of thepopular pastimes of the rest of Britain might require a much moresophisticated grasp on social stratification theory than an over-reliance onan often over-simplified 'class analysis'.4

In this article 1 want to examine these inter-connected issues bydetailing two aspects of the connections between football in Scotland andEngland. I want to consider the problems posed for Scottish football bythe migration of football talent across the border, and I want to outlinehow the biennial trip south for the international match became (and

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remains) a major event in Scottish popular culture. I will then return tomy two broad purposes and discuss what such evidence suggests aboutthem.

England as a Problem: The Migration of Talent

For over a century the generally greater financial resources of mostEnglish clubs has posed problems for Scottish football. Professionalismwas to some extent forced on Scotland by English poaching of players.5

This movement of players raised an issue about the standard of theScottish League compared with its English counterpart which remains, asplayers continue to move, an element in commentary and discussionaround soccer in Scotland. However, once professionalism and registrationprocedures had been established, the money that Scottish clubs obtainedfrom selling players to England became an important element in thefinances of Scottish football. The fees available from England could onlybe matched, and then rarely, by two or three teams in Scotland.6 So,another issue for Scottish football became that English clubs mightrecruit young Scots directly, not only exacerbating a concern aboutrelative standards, but also depriving most Scottish clubs of an importantsource of revenue. Thus one problem which the existence of Englandposed for Scottish football, and which became a priority for the nationalassociation, was how to control the options of the Scottish footballer forthe benefit of Scottish clubs and to maintain a certain structure of thedomestic League.

The four football associations within the UK formed an InternationalBoard to discuss common problems. It first met in 1886, and while a lot ofits early annual meetings were devoted to resolving exactly what 'football'was and creating a common set of rules, the Board also had to helpmanage the intricacies of the inter-relationships between the game in thefour countries, especially the recruitment of players. In 1898:

It was agreed that no action should be taken upon the followingquestion, the Scottish Association having omitted to give therequired notice in accordance with the minutes:The question of players signing League forms for clubs whilstregistered as professionals for another Association from that towhich the club belonged was considered. The Board was unanimouslyof the opinion that legislation was desirable on this subject, and thatthe matter be formally considered at the next meeting. In themeantime, the Scottish Association to give notice by regulation.7

It seems likely that the matter was not pursued because the Scottish andEnglish Leagues agreed to a mutual recognition of players' registrations in1897 and set up their own board to resolve transfer disputes.8 The issuedid not disappear however, for at the International Board meeting in 1909the Scottish Association gave notice of the motion: The illegalapproaching of players registered with one Association by clubs under the

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control of another Association be recognised as an infringement*. Thiswas withdrawn a year later after the following recommendation by theScottish and Welsh Associations was carried unanimously: The Boardrecommends: That each National Association incorporates in its rules aprovision that a player registered with any National Association shall notbe approached by a Club of any National Association until after theexpiration of the Player's engagement'.9

The poaching of existing professionals having apparently been dealtwith, future discussions were to focus on young, indeed ever younger,footballers and how to stop English clubs recruiting them. In 1949 theScottish Association proposed: 'A player under 17 years of age shall notbe allowed to register or play or be employed on ground or other staff of aclub outside the country in which he has normally resided or normallyresides' but this was lost on a division.10 The issue to which this alludes,the initial recruitment of young talent, became particularly urgent forScottish football in the 1960s. The Scottish Association located the rootof the new situation in a decision by the English to introduce an'Apprentice Players' scheme in 1960-61 which enabled the English clubsto recruit 15-17 year-olds and register them as professionals. This wasdesigned to deal with the poaching of players by English clubs fromEnglish clubs but it now threatened the other home countries:

many boys having been attracted to England during the short periodin which it has operated. Apart altogether from the obvious moralissue involved in such a scheme, it is felt that we must, in the face ofthis threat, seek to protect our own interests and we have putforward a proposal for consideration by the 4 associations which, ifcarried, will restrict the activities of the English clubs to boys bornand resident in England."

This proposal laid down that players under 17 born in Scotland orNorthern Ireland could not register as players in England and Wales (i.e.for English League clubs) unless they had resided in those countries forthe two years immediately before registration. This was carried but didnot succeed in limiting the activities of English dubs in Scotland. Theminutes of the Executive and General Purposes Committee of theScottish Association in the early 1960s are full of examples of complaintsabout various top English clubs approaching and signing Scottishschoolboys and of correspondence with the Football Association aboutthese.12 In general the Football Association exercised few sanctions andwhile the Committee believed: 'of greater moment than the penalty in thisparticular instance, is the need for the FA to bring it home to theirmember clubs, that they are not authorized to approach boys who are atschool in Scotland and that to do so is a punishable offence'13 and whilethe Scottish representatives to the International Board expressed satis-faction that the Football Association had sent a notice to all English clubssaying such activities were not permitted, it seems that a curb on Englishrecruitment had to be achieved by Scottish action.

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What the Scottish Football Association did was to introduce a newform of registration of players on form Y. As it put it in 1967: 'Theintroduction of form Y was at the insistence of the member clubs of theScottish Football League, who saw in it a barrier to the drift southwardsof outstanding young players' but the Association felt the professionalshad not made much use of it. Of the 1,965 players registered on form Yonly seven were registered as probationary professionals by Leagueclubs.14 The next year, the Association, noting that, as far as young talentwas concerned, 'the drain continued, for our clubs have made little use ofthe opportunity afforded them', tried a more specific tactic. In May 1967it introduced a new Form S registration whereby boys of 13 could beregistered by professional clubs for the purposes of training and coachingbut could not play for the club until they reached school leaving age. Theboys then had to register professionally with that club unless they receivedno offer within a six-month period. The Association said of the Leagueclubs: 'It is early yet, perhaps, to assess the extent to which they may availthemselves of the benefits of this scheme, which is yet another designed tohalt the drift southwards of the younger player'.15 This new system led tocriticisms at the 1968 International Board meeting where the FootballAssociation pointed out that the Scottish Association had lowered the ageat which players could be registered as professionals. They wanteduniformity but, though slight modifications have been made, it is the SForm system that now protects the pool of Scottish talent from Englishraiders.

TABLE 1

SCOTTISH S FORM REGISTRATION(SELECTED YEARS)

YearRegistrations

196892

1969. 118

1970250

1978372

1979394

1983436

(Total registered as Full Professionals = 2034 in 1983)

Source: Scottish Football Association Annual Report, 1970-71 and 1983-84.

Table 1 shows that at any one time a large number of Scottish schoolboysare registered with League clubs and certainly a large number in relation tothose who can move on to become full professionals. Alex Ferguson, nowmanager of a top English club, remarked, while still manager of Aberdeen,that 'the abuse of S forms is terrible in our game'16 by which he appeared tomean that while each club can register up to 30 boys, this is far more thancan actually make careers as professionals. Aberdeen registered 12 atmost.However, it does enable the Scottish clubs to control virtually all ofthe pool of Scottish juvenile talent. A few boys do hold out, avoid the Sform, and sign directly for English clubs, and some English clubs did, anddo, continue to try to recruit in Scotland. In 1972 the minutes of theScottish Association record: 'The President undertook to raise with theExecutive and General Purposes Committee the question of the staging, by

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English clubs, of trial matches, on a Sunday, involving players who havenot reached the Statutory School Leaving Age, some of whom areregistered by means of Form S'17 and a few English clubs run nursery teamsin Scotland, provide strips, managerial visits, invite boys to train, etc.Generally, however, the tactic of the S Form has succeeded in stoppingyoung Scots from joining English clubs. Players still move south butthrough the filter of the Scottish clubs who get some seasons of play fromthem and then a transfer fee. The situation of the 1960s, when the nationalidentification of a lot of Scottish youth (and their parents) proved ratherweak in the face of the temptations of English cash and 'glamour', has beenreversed and the 'natural gravitation' restored at the cost of limiting theoptions of Scottish youth, and giving them fewer opportunities than theirEnglish counterparts.

Another problem posed for Scotland by the movement of players was,and is, whether the 'Anglos' (Scots playing in England) would be availablefor the international side and whether they should be picked. At theInternational Board meeting in 1898:

The representatives of the Scottish Association intimated that theFootball Association would be asked to recognise the right of theScottish Association to call upon Scotch players who are membersof English Clubs to take part in the International Matches betweenEngland and Scotland.18

The problem of the availability of players reached a high point in 1929when representatives of the four countries held a special meeting inLondon about the possibility of playing international matches on daysother than Saturdays. Arsenal, a prominent English club, had sent a lettersuggesting this to all the associations, and 46 clubs in the English Firstand Second Divisions were in favour of-such a change. The problem wasthe number of players the English clubs had to supply to all internationalsides. They estimated they provided all the players for Wales and Ireland,and a third of the Scots for Saturday internationals even though there wasstill a full league programme on the day. The discussion was a long onebut the nub was nicely put in this exchange:

Mr Kingscott (England): There would be no difficulty if the variouscountries would select their registered players.Mr. Campbell (Scotland): Are we to understand that we are tosubstitute registration instead of birth as a qualification forInternational players? We could never agree to that.19

Actually, periodically the Scottish Selectors did act as Mr. Kingscottsuggested. 'Anglos' were not picked for Scotland until the last years of thenineteenth century, when following a run of seven defeats by England, theselectors picked a team with five Anglos in 1896.20 But this was not alwaysa popular option as, among other faults, the Anglos were held to have adubious nationality as in the Lord Provost of Glasgow's comments on thenight of the 1904 international match:

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it is a pity, that when Scotland pits itself against the sister part of thekingdom that we have to bring to our aid those who are without therealm of Scotland(applause). For his own part he would rather takedefeat after defeat if our own men, trained on our own soil, weredefeated in honest combat, because he felt if we had such littleconfidence in our own prowess that we had to augment our ranksand our forces from other sources - even though these might havetheir origins in our own land - if we had so little confidence inourselves - then farewell to all honest competition. Rather let usencourage our native talent by selecting the very cream of it andpitting it against the best quality of any other competitor(applause).21

It was also believed that Anglos 'disturbed' Scottish based players andrecruited for the English clubs. In 1925, and in 1931 and 1932'All-Tartanteams' (i.e. Scots playing in Scotland) were picked against England partlyprovoked by the difficulties of obtaining players from the south.However, the international match was something of a showcase,managers gathered at it and business was done. What could happen toAll-Tartan teams can be seen in Table 2.

TABLE 2

•ALL-TARTAN' SCOTTISH SIDE 1925 By 1926

Harper (Hibs) to Arsenal for £4,500McStay (Celtic)McCloy (Ayr)Meiklejohn (Rangers)Morris (Raith)McMullan (Partick) to Manchester City for £4,700Jackson (Aberdeen) (o Huddersfield for £5,000Russell (Airdrieonians)Gallagher (Airdrieonians) to Newcastle for £5,000Cairn (Rangers)Morton (Rangers)

Source: Derived from C. Anderson ('Custodian*), 'Association Football Scotland v. England1872-194T (Edinburgh, 1947). 28, and D. Lamming, 'The Who's Who of ScottishInternationalists 1872-1982', Association of Football Statisticians, 1983.

Still the idea that Anglos should be excluded from international sidespersists in Scotland, its last major expression being in 1983 when aninterview with the Aberdeen manager Ferguson (later the national teammanager) elicited the following thoughts:

I'm against Anglos being in the Scots team. I'd pick a tartan sideand they'd give England a run for it - and that's what it's about.Players go south and return with their llama coats and theirdiscipline on and off the park isn't as good as that of the lads athome. I'd worry only about players who stayed at home and shirt-advertising revenue will help. Meantime, encourage them with caps

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and it would be good for our game. Fewer Anglos are being chosennow than ever but I'd ban them.22

In 1986 Ferguson left Aberdeen to manage Manchester United, inEngland.

England as 'Battleground': The Trip to Wembley

There is one very interesting aspect of Scottish football, whichbecomes prominent about the turn of the century, its associationwith border raids and forays and with violence generally. Often afootball match was the prelude to a raid across the Border, for thesame hot-headed young men were game for both, and the Englishauthorities learnt to keep their eyes on the footballers.23

Scottish fans travelling abroad have generally not engaged in the kind ofactivities which have gained English followers their reputation andEnglish clubs a ban from European competitions. Scots pride themselveson this.The main exception has been when Scottish fans have followedtheir teams to England. Marples's comment above refers to the turn of thesixteenth into the seventeenth century but, combined with an additionalelement Marples mentions, alcohol, it could stand as a broad descriptionof the behaviour of Scots travelling to club and international matches inEngland in the 1970s and 1980s or, at least, so the English football andstate authorities came to think as they adopted a variety of measures torestrict the ability of the Scots fans to travel to London for theinternational game.24 What is also true is that the banners and chants ofScottish supporters always have had a historical and military edge, as hasfootball commentary in the Scottish media. The Glasgow popular paperThe Daily Record contained in its reports of the 1924 international23 apoem which began:

Not So Easy Tae SlewIn days of oldEre Scots were doledEach hard-up heilant sworderKent unco' weelA yaird of steelMeant riches over the BorderTo day alack!We've lost the knackOr Sassenachs grow tougher.

As the international fixture between the two countries moved into abiennial rhythm the English-based matches were played in variouslocations, mainly in the North of England. Scots travelled to such gamesin quite large numbers, as in 1891:

Blackburn has to put up with a good deal of noise and incipient

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blackguardism from the crowds following football teams who cometo play the Rovers, but the hordes of Scotchmen who poured intothe town on Saturday morning put all records in these respects intoa deep, deep shade. It is estimated that about 5,000 men travelled bythe excursions from Glasgow and Edinburgh, and they commencedto arrive as early as four o'clock in the morning. Soon after thishour sleeping townsmen were alarmed by shrieking war whoops andriotous singing accompanied in several places with the crash of glassand smash of door panels.26

The mass movement became established as a cultural event of somesignificance in the inter-war.years. In 1924 the Empire exhibition, whichinvolved the construction of a massive new stadium at Wembley, offeredan international match in London for the first time since 1913. TheGlasgow Herald, in the midst of ruminating, as many Scottish commen-tators were to do for years to come, that the Cup Final was of muchgreater interest to English fans, put it like this:

It is somewhat curious that this fixture has never attracted largecrowds, as football crowds are estimated, when played in London,yet the enthusiasm shown in connection with it in Scottish circleshas always been greater than when staged in the provinces. Today'sgame should prove no exception, the indications being that Scottishfollowers, despite the hard times in which we are living, will findtheir way to Wembley, the combined influences of witnessing thecontest and having a day in the first city of the Empire inducingmore travellers than would have been the case otherwise.27

The LNE Railway offered cheap day returns from Glasgow at £2 9s 6d intrains which stopped at many other Scottish towns. The Scotsman noted:

The football Scot when he crosses the Border to follow the fortunesof his country's representatives on the field of play leaves behindhim that natural reserve usually attributed to his race, and packsinto his travelling bag a number of weird articles consideredindispensable if he is to make himself seen and heard in the midst ofLondon's hustling millions. Early on Saturday morning the Scottishbattalions swept out of the railway termini, and in their rainbow-hued Tarn o' Shanters, fluttering rosettes and skirling bagpipes theycreated no little stir.*28

The 1926 international was played in Manchester but thereafter itreturned, permanently, to Wembley. The 1928 match coincided withanother great sporting and social occasion, the Boat Race, and both werethe pegs for advertising railway excursions. Return fares were down to£l5s 6d from Glasgow, while one special began at Inverness with 1136 seatsat £1 10s Od. In all more than thirty special trains took fans south with 33trains due to pass through Carlisle in the four hours around midnight (arecord).29 The excursionists, marshalled by pipers, were picturesquely

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garbed, the papers referring to tarn o' shanters as big as busbies and hugethistle decorations, while pictures show everyday bunnets and soft hatsswathed in tartan cloth.30 The Daily Record provided tips by'Anglo Scot'on 'How to spend the forenoon in London' plus a map of the quickestroutes to Wembley from various London landmarks. The historical andwarlike themes were woven into commentary and headlines like:'TheInvasion of London' or 'The Clans Gather' became, and remain, acommonplace way of locating the trip. The Daily Record's 'LondonLetter* column discussed the different types of Scots who followedfootball and rugby. Both came decked in tartan, but, 'many of the former,who come in groups, attract undue notice by the devotion which theyhave obviously paid to the bottle. They are a source of wonderment to theLondon crowd, but they are so manifestly "enjoying" themselves thatnobody seems to bother very much about them.*31 While The SundayMail remarked on 'the big trek from the North of zealots anxious to makean annual event out of some forgotten event that happened near Stirlingin 1314. Scenes were animated and even frenzied occasionally but at notime was there any disorder or untoward incidents'.32 In fact the trip fortens of thousands of Scots had now fallen into a pattern that was to lastfor decades. The trains (and hundreds of charabancs) left Scotland onFriday evening and arrived in London in the early morning. Excursionists,who included a fair proportion of women and some children, would seethe sights: visit the House of Commons, Downing Street, the Changing ofthe Guard, take coach tours of London, and boats on the Thames.33 Onevery trip, groups - in 1928 the Clyde Royal Artillery - laid wreaths onthe Cenotaph, while in that year many made their way to the towpathswhere they danced highland flings and sang with the boat race crowd.During the match (or matches), Scots with no international ticket wouldgo to League games in London to cheer any Scots on view,34 some womenwent shopping, and afterwards the West End became the focus fordrinking, dancing and theatre-going. At around midnight the trippersreturned to the stations for more dancing and singing and the longjourney north. There were few arrests and the police in evidence inCentral London in 1928 were on the look-out for student rags rather thanbellicose Scots.35

By the late 1930s the trip had become extremely well organized withinpopular culture. As the Glasgow Herald of 1936 put it, referring to the30,000 and more going south: 'Over periods of varying lengths Scots havebeen paying weekly subscriptions into clubs; yesterday they "burst thebank" as the saying goes'.36 While the Daily Record of 1938 discussing the60,000 Scots likely to travel in a trip costing £250,000 said: 'Scotland"saves up" for the Great Invasion for two years. All over the country areclubs, the members of which subscribe a weekly donation for the Day.One Wembley game is no sooner finished with, than subscription lists areopened for another. Wembley has become an institution'.37

Table 3 provides evidence about the way these shilling-a-weekWembley Clubs structured the crowds of excursionists, and the immense

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TABLE 3

PASSENGERS ON SPECIAL WEMBLEY TRAINS

Stirling-Kings Cross 1949

Leaving Stirling 10.00pmLeaving Kings Cross 11.55pm

AUoa Supporters ClubAlva WCHoneymansHorse Shoe WCForsyths WCUnionists WCTosh'sEglinton WCRobertsons WCDunfermline Supporters ClubMaysSt. Ringans

2192832243030303542763030

606

South Queensferry Masonic 29

Edinburgh-Kings Cross 1953

Leaving Edinburgh 09.20pmLeaving Kings Cross II.15pm

National Dock Labour BoardLodge CanongateLeith Dock Grain Elevator WCSighthill Social ClubLamont and Co. WCScottish Orbitt WCAlder and MackayNational Coal BoardWaverley Rubber Co. WCEdenhall Hospital StaffNB Rubber Co. WCLNE Bowling ClubHanover Sports and Social ClubPO Supplies LtdHawthorn WCEdinburgh Corporation TransportWestern 1952-3 WCMarinville WCScottish Gas BoardMiners Welfare WCScottish Cooperative Welfare

Society (Leith Warehouse)

Shields WC

3023353120101030402040171015121035304210

10

IS524

(Total seating = 620)(WC = Wembley Club)

variety of social institutions on which they were based, gleaned fromexisting railway records which, though they refer to the immediate post-war years, are likely to be similar to the structures of the inter-war years.38

Other special trains in the immediate post-war period took ex-servicemen's clubs, church groups, parties based on churches, supporters'clubs (of all levels of football), servicemen, workplaces, pubs and streets.Hunter records for Dunfermline in 1953 that the demand by supporterswas so great that the club's allocation of tickets was allotted in a publicdraw supervised by a local newspaper reporter to ensure fair play.39

Just as the Wembley Club had become an element in popular cultureand popular economy, so the send-off of the excursionists had become amajor event in its own right. The Daily Record headline on its front pageon 4 April 1936 was:'Glasgow Hears the Wembley Roar: Football's FieryCross - and More - Carried South'. The story began 'Glasgow went crazylast night...' with the major stations beseiged by travellers, spectators,peddlers and so on. The travellers were: 'easily distinguishable by theirtartan tammies and scarves, the football favours that adorned their coatlabels, and the variety of suspicious looking parcels, labelled "Fragile"

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which many of them carried with extreme care to the safety of appointedtrain compartments'.40 Press photographs show the large concourse ofGlasgow Central station absolutely packed with people. According toreports women danced 'war dances' to send their trippers on their way,and:

nearly everybody sported a huge tartan rosette pinned to a coat lapel.Some parties brought their own pipe bands.. .while there was hardly aparty of any size at all which did not boast of a musical instrument ofsome kind, although drums seemed to be the favourite choice... Onegroup of excursionists arrived at St. Enoch station complete with pipeband and a huge banner portraying Wallace on one side and Bruce onthe other, together with the encouraging slogan 'Forget Flodden andremember Stirling Bridge and Bannockburn*.41

Another banner carried south 'Scotland 534 England 0' referred to a morerecent Scottish success, the launching of the Queen Mary on the Clyde.The scenes of the departure were such as to cause one person to write to apaper about tipsy girls, drunken men, obscenity and 'debauchery enoughto make me empty my stomach. It seemed quite the fashion to do this inany case'.42 The fans, already believed to be a majority in the Wembleycrowd, carried rattles, accordions and kitchen receptacles to make theirpresence felt in London. The Scottish goalie at the 1936 matchremembered: 'The hordes of tammied Scots, most of them armed with tinfrying pans to bang together, let bedlam loose as the referee awarded apenalty'.43

By the late 1930s Scots were already having trouble in obtainingenough tickets to satisfy demand and the match, and ancillary events, hadbecome a focus for excitement and discussion well beyond the immediatedate. The continuous war-like metaphors of the media, banners andchants suggested that this was much more than'a day out;'while the folk-lore of the trip added to stereotypes of English pretentiousness, rapacityand gullibility. Yet to come was an increase in the symbolic weight via thecarrying back of the turf of Wembley in 1967 and 1977, this last the act ofa 'Tartan Army' whose name derived from a group of political deviantswho tried to take on the English with bombs rather than balls. Also tocome was the way the trip became defined as 'hooliganism' by variousEnglish authorities, whose very attempts to control the trip fuelled theembers of nationalistic sentiment and emphasized the virtues of theScots.44 The trip to Wembley had become part of a sturdy sub-culture ofsymbols, slogans, heroes and myths which sustains an apolitical, inverted,but palpable sub-nationalism which combines a strong identity of beingScottish with a very weak national project.45

I have detailed two aspects of the relationship between Scottish andEnglish football and it is tempting to make a direct connection betweenthem. Scottish football is economically weak relative to England andrecognizes, relies on and resents the power of its neighbour. Not

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surprisingly, this sets up rather contradictory themes - 'they take our bestplayers', 'let's not pick Anglos'/we're as good as they are' and so on -which have been part of the discussion around football in Scotland for acentury. The sense of loss and fatalism and anger which co-exist in thefootball subculture of Scotland (and in Scotland more generally) find oneoutlet in a biennial 'descent' on London and a football 'battle' withEngland whose only flaw is that the enemy does not seem all that aware ofexactly what is at issue. All this is to say that 'nationalism' is a complexmatter, a variegated mixture of feelings and stereotypes, and also that the'meanings' which football can evoke are many and varied. There certainlyis a 'class' element in the 'march1 on London but one which is itselfmystified and mystifying.

It has been claimed that the class analysis of British football has beenrigorous.46 This is not at all true, the assertion of the significance of classbeing somewhat greater than, say, the analysis of the occupations of thefootball crowd or varying patterns of football finance, but in any caseclass might not be the most fruitful aspect of inequality through which toanalyse the cultural significance of sport. What Scottish football suggestsis that the Weberian concept of status group, whose definition turns oncommon styles of life, patterns of consumption, and perceived similarity,might be a better shaped key for analysis than the concept class (howeverdefined).47 Football in Scotland.and elsewhere,48 'represents' and enlivensethnic divisions based on cultural differences but this is no simple mattersince these seem to give way at another level of ethnic rivalry (and a'nation* is a Weberian status group) when opposed groups join togetheragainst a third grouping. This is one reason why 'understandings' ofScottish football which dwell on lurid accounts of the 'hatred' betweenRangers and Celtic and their 'religiously' based support49 requirequalification, for they do not allow for what binds Scots together - adislike of the 'English* which has historical, material and cultural rootsand which is given colour and circumstance, among other things, in theregularities of the structure of British football.

University of Glasgow

NOTES

1. H.F. Moorhouse, 'Professional Football and Working Class Culture, English Theoriesand Scottish Evidence*, Sociological Review 32 (1984), 285-315. H.F. Moorhouse, 'It'sGoals that Count? Football Finance and Football Subcultures', Sociology of SportJournal 3 (1986), 245-60. H.F. Moorhouse, 'Repressed Nationalism and ProfessionalFootball: Scotland versus England', in J.A. Mangan and R.B. Small (eds.). Sport,Culture, Society (London, 1986) pp.52-59. H.F. Moorhouse, 'Soccer Violence inPopular Culture' (forthcoming).

2. See the lack of discussion in J. Williams, E. Dunning and P. Murphy, HooligansAbroad (London, 1984).

3. 'Class' is the organizing concept in e.g. J. Clarke, 'Football and the Working ClassFans', in R. Ingham (ed.). Football Hooliganism (London, 1978), pp.37-60, C.

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Critcher, 'Football since the War' in J. Clarke, C. Critcher, and R. Johnson (eds.)Working Class Culture (London, 1979), pp.161-84. E. Dunning, P. Murphy, and J.Williams, 'The Social Roots of Football Hooligan Violence', Leisure Studies 1 (1981),139-56.1. Taylor, 'Football Mad: A Speculative Sociology of Football Hooliganism', inE. Dunning (ed.), The Sociology of Sport (London, 1971), pp.352-77.1. Taylor, 'SoccerConsciousness and Soccer Hooliganism', in S. Cohen (ed.) Images of Deviance(London, 1971), pp. 134-62.1. Taylor, 'Class, Violence and Sport: The Case of SoccerHooliganism in Britain', in H. Cantelon and R. Gruneau (eds.), Sport Culture and theModem State (Toronto, 1982) pp.39-96.1. Taylor, *On the Sports Violence Question:Soccer Hooliganism Revisited' in J. Hargreaves (ed.). Sport, Culture and Ideology(London, 1982) pp. 152-96. S. Wagg, The Football World (Brighton, 1984).

4. Class locations are more often asserted than demonstrated and 'analysis' often claimedto be 'Marxist' drifts into a conventional working class/middle class opposition.

5. R. Crampsey, The Scottish Footballer (Edinburgh, 1978), pp.5-7.6. Moorhouse, 'It's Goals that Count?' op. cit.7. International Football Association Board Minutes (hereafter IFAB), held National

Library of Scotland, 20 June 1898, minute 32.8. R.M. Connell, 'The Scottish Football League and its History', in The Book of Football

(in 12 parts) (London, 1906) parts 11 and 12 pp.266-9.9. IFAB. 12 June 1909 and 11 June 1910.

10. IFAB. 11 June 1949, p.7.11. Scottish Football Association Annual Report (hereafter SFAAR) held in National

Library of Scotland, 1960-61, pp.1-2.12. Minutes of Scottish Football Association Ltd. (hereafter MSFA) held in National

Library of Scotland. Executive and general purposes committee 7 August 1963, 7October 1963, 6 May 1964 etc.

13. MSFA. Executive and general purposes committee 7 October 1963.14. SFAAR 1966-67. p.2. and see 1964-65, p.2 and 1965-66, p.2.15. SFAAR. 1967-68 p.2.16. Interviewed in 'Only a Game? The Story of Scottish Football', part 4, The Player',

broadcast on BBC 1 (Scotland), April 1986.17. MSFA. The Council 15 November 1972, p.138.18. IFAB. 20 June 1989, p.34.19. Minutes of Representatives of the National Football Associations of the U.K. in

Conference at the Euston Hotel, 18 November 1929, in IFAB.20. A. Davis, 'England's International Teams and How They are Selected' in The Book of

Football (in 12 parts) (London, 1906), part 10, p.227.21. The Glasgow Herald (hereafter GH) 11 April 1904, 9.22. The Daily Record (hereafter DR) 19 March 1983.23. M. Marples, A History of Football (London, 1954), p.61.24. Moorhouse, 'Soccer Violence', details these developments.25. DR. 14 April 1924, 16.26. The Northern Daily Telegraph. Blackburn, April 1891, reported in B. James, England

v. Scotland (London, 1969), pp.242-3.27. GH. 12 April 1924, 11.28. The Scotsman (hereafter TS) 14 April 1924, 10.29. GH, 31 March 1928, 13.30. DR. 31 March 1928, 1.31. DR.31 March, 1928, 10.32. Sunday Mail30 March 1928, 1.33. See e.g., Sunday Mail, 5 April 1936, 1, 3,40. GH, 11 April 1938, 13, and DR 2 April

1928, 12 and 13.34. TS. 11 April 1938,9.35. Sunday Mail. 30 March 1928, 1.36. GH. 4 April 1936, 3.37. DR. 8 April 1938, I.38. British Rail (Scottish Region) records in Scottish Records Office are rather

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uninformative about the details of the Wembley excursions in the period. These detailscome from Relief. Excursion and Special Train Arrangements file for 8 April 1949,p.287 and Programme of Special Trains (SX) 18 April I9S3, p.269.

39. J. Hunter, Dunfermline AtWwic FC (Dunfermline, I98S), p.56.40. DR. 4 April 1936, 1.41. GH. 4 April 1936, 3 and 6 April 1936, 11.42. Sunday Mail, 5 April 1936, 14.43. J. Dawson, Jerry Dawson's Memoirs (Glasgow, 1949), p.5l.44. Moorhouse 'Soccer Violence...' discusses this development in the trip to Wembley.45. T.Nairn, The Break- Up ofBritain (London, 1977) and The Bulletin of Scottish Politics

2 (1981) contain good discussions of the contours of'Scottishness'.46. J. Pratt and M. Saher 'A Fresh Look at Football Hooliganism', Leisure Studies 3

(1984), 201-30.47. M. Weber, 'Class Status and Party' in H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (eds.). From Max

Weber (London, 1948).48. J. Lever, Soccer Madness (Chicago, 1983) for Brazil, and D. Shaw, The Politics of

Futbol, Spanish Football under Franco', History Today 35 (1985) 38-42.49. So Scots are proud of the Rangers and Celtic clash as something with which England

has nothing comparable. It is routinely referred to, in Scotland, as 'the biggest clubgame in the world'.

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