Jack McConnell is right to fight and we should all be behind him;

It is certainly shameful, but I don't know why the First Minister calls sectarianism "secret". You don't have to look very hard to find religious intolerance alive and well and living openly in the streets and sporting grounds of Scotland - and not just in Glasgow. They have flute bands in Edinburgh too, you know, and even Hearts matches have been infected by sectarian hatred and Red Hand flags.

I seem to recall a Scottish junior minister warning the Irish Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, a couple of years back that his presence at the Carfin Grotto in Lanarkshire would likely incite sectarian violence. In Dalkeith, outside Edinburgh, Catholic and non- denominational state schools have reportedly had to stagger their break times to prevent rival gangs clashing in the streets.

Half the Scottish group of Tory MSPs, including their leader David McLetchie, have spent time in Masonic lodges. Not many Catholics there. In deepest Lanarkshire, the Labour Party is riven by religious factionalism - as First Minister Jack McConnell discovered when he became an MSP. He found sectarian slogans daubed on his front door after he moved to Wishaw. Remember the Monklands by-election, when the now Scottish Secretary Helen Liddell had to denounce factionalism in her own party?

Religious prejudice is deeply ingrained in the Scottish consciousness, even among people who never go to church. In educated middle-class circles you often hear a quasi-sectarian banter that is only a few pints away from bigotry. Scratch the surface and you find perfectly normal adult Scots who just can't bear to sit next to Protestants or Catholics. It is infantile, but that does not mean it is insignificant.

The trouble with sectarianism is not that it is secret, but that everyone always says nothing can be done about it. The response to McConnell's very modest proposals for driving religious bigotry from Scottish football was wholly predictable. How can you outlaw such songs as The Sash or Soldiers Are We at Old Firm matches, asked critics. How can police arrest 50,000 supporters hurling sectarian abuse at each other? How can you ban religious bigotry without compromising freedom of speech? What about Orange marches? What about Catholic schools? It's in the blood, we're told. Religious divisions have been endemic in west central Scotland for centuries - and indeed, some people used to argue that sectarianism at Old Firm matches acted as a safety valve and prevented Scotland turning into another Ulster. Some might even criticise the First Minister for raising the issue at all, on the grounds that it might besmirch Scotland's image abroad.

Well, nobody said it was going to be easy. But if English football can drive out racism - and it's not so long ago that you never saw a black face in an English team - then Scotland can surely tackle sectarianism.

And the terraces are where you have to start, because that is where bigotry is out in the open. To drive this antediluvian passion from Scottish culture you first have to confront it. Pretending it isn't there is no longer an option - not when every encounter between Scotland's two great football teams leads to riots, dozens of arrests and packed casualty wards in the local hospitals.

McConnell's list of measures for tackling sectarianism has been dismissed as PR and window-dressing. His ideas are cast as unenforcable or irrelevant. And some MSPs are apparently opposed to any changes to the law on religious hatred: Labour MSP Gordon Jackson QC, a member of the justice committee, and his advocate colleague Brian Fitzpatrick said last week that they didn't think any change in the law was necessary. Just what the First Minister needed, that.

There is surely nothing wrong in reminding people that incitement to religious hatred is already illegal in this country, even if the police seem reluctant to enforce the law. Perhaps if those senior figures in Strathclyde Police who have been so dismissive of the First Minister's action plan were a little more vigorous in enforcing the law in the first place, the government wouldn't have to talk about strengthening it.

Why shouldn't football clubs be required to have clear policies against religious bigotry, and to ban supporters who promote hatred? They should have been doing that anyway. And if you don't think this bigotry really exists, just ask Fernando Ricksen of Rangers, who has to change his telephone number every week because of hate calls over his Catholicism. Oh, sorry, I forgot. Real Catholics don't join Rangers.

I do not see how civil liberties are infringed if street traders are banned from selling paramilitary regalia, which is another of the requirements of McConnell's anti-bigot charter. Oh, and you might have thought it was a matter of routine for the police to record any religious motivation in an assault when they come to write up their report. But apparently this has not been standard practice. Well, it's about time it was.

To read some of the comments made last week, you would think that the Scottish Executive was trying to abolish religion itself. It isn't - the churches seem to be doing a pretty good job of that themselves. Nor is the First Minister seeking to introduce new laws on the expression of extreme views. The proposed change to the law on aggravated assault is a very specific measure designed to put the law on sectarian violence on a par with the existing law on racial assault. If a racially motivated attack carries a higher penalty than ordinary assault, why shouldn't an assault motivated by sectarian hatred? It is a technical change, but an important one. The law should be clear and unambiguous in its opposition to bigotry and prejudice.

Similarly, the notion that you cannot tackle sectarianism unless you abolish Catholic schools is a form of studied defeatism that has been allowed to go unchallenged for too long. Personally, I abhor religious segregation in Scottish schools - if children were assigned to different schools on the basis of the colour of their skin, it would rightly be regarded as divisive. Catholic schools write sectarianism into the very fabric of society by encouraging children to define themselves in terms of their faith, and in a largely secular society where few people go to church this is a dangerous anachronism.

However, you cannot do everything at once. I cannot see any way of abolishing overnight the 420 Catholic single-faith schools that educate 20% of Scotland's pupils. But a prudent government would be seeking to integrate these schools into the rest of the state system.

This is surely a matter for the Scottish parliament in its second term. Public opinion is changing. According to the most recent poll by the National Centre for Social Research, nine out of 10 Scots want Catholic schools abolished. Six out of 10 Catholics want them gone. Such schools were established in the 19th century to provide Catholic Irish immigrants a safe haven from Protestant persecution - but nobody seriously believes non-denominational state schools would discriminate against Catholic pupils today.

This task of integration is not made any easier by a UK government that is actively promoting faith schools in England as part of a dubious notion of multiculturalism. The Prime Minister, Tony Blair, sends his children to a single-faith school, and thinks they are such a good idea that there should be lots more of them. Muslim schools, perhaps. Or Mormon schools. Why stop there? What about Islamic fundamentalist schools, Moonie schools and Branch-Davidian Sect colleges?

Not in my back yard, thank you. We've enough trouble with faith already. You only need to watch the Orange marches on July 12 to see how deep the fear and loathing is in Scottish working-class communities. Teenagers who haven't a clue about the meaning of transubstantiation will march through nominally Catholic areas shouting obscenities about the Pope and all manner of other sectarian abuse.

We have turned a blind eye to this for too long. We have shrugged at the pitched battles. Just a boy's game, they used to say. Well, it's time Scotland grew up. And if the First Minister's measures are so inadequate, perhaps his critics would like to come up with some ideas of their own. We're waiting.

Copyright 2002 SMG Sunday Newspapers Ltd.
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