An Examination of the Evidence on Sectarianism in Scotland

Footnotes

1. See http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2005/01/20553/50497

2. Search terms were derived from popular public perceptions of sectarianism in the research literature. Key search terms included sectarian/ism in Scotland; Catholics/Protestants in Scotland; race and ethnicity in Scotland; hate crime/and Scotland/international/UK; discrimination/prejudice/bigotry in Scotland; football and sports in Scotland; sectarianism and housing/education/youth/health/employment/internet/culture/religion.

3. While Bruce et al (2005) argue sectarianism is a Scottish myth, Walls and Williams (2005) argue that sectarian discrimination within the workplace has resulted in economic disadvantage for large numbers of Catholics and the Scottish Catholic composer, James McMillan, has called sectarianism 'Scotland's shame'.

4. NFO Social Research, (2003) Sectarianism in Glasgow- Final Report, Glasgow City Council

5. The Orr report into parades states that this "also includes groups which would describe themselves as Republican and political rather than religious, such as the James Connolly Society and the West of Scotland Bands Alliance."

6. See the 2008, 2009 and 2010 publications listed in the bibliography.

7. Deuchar, R. and Holligan, C. (2008) 'Territoriality and Sectarianism in Glasgow: A Qualitative Study'. Report of a study funded by the British Academy. University of the West of Scotland. Page 5.

8. Action for Children (2011) See: http://www.actionforchildren.org.uk/news/archive/2011/september/sectarian-views-are-inherited-say-young-people-in-scotland

9. Perhaps a question that began by asking respondents if they thought there was conflict between Protestants and Catholics would generate quite different results.

10. Rosie , Michael (2004) The Sectarian Myth in Scotland: Of bitter memory and Bigotry. Palgrave Macmillan. P.41

11. While only 2% of Protestants reported being unfairly treated at work, compared with 6% of Catholic respondents, this difference is not statistically significant after the different age and working status profiles of these groups have been controlled for. (In other words, the differences were a result of differences in age and working status rather than religion.)

12. In May 2003, System Three ran a poll for BBC Radio 5 Live which suggested that a much higher proportion (13%) of Scots believed that they had been the victim of sectarian abuse. Levels of reporting were higher amongst Catholics. However, the details of the study were never published and so it is not possible to establish how robust the data are or what how 'abuse' was defined. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/2935922.stm for media report.

13. 23 were those who had no religion.

14. Defined as those aged 16 and over.

15. Since the introduction of the Offences (Aggravation by Prejudice) (Scotland) Act 2009, hate crime refers to any offence where there is evidence that it was motivated by racial, religious, sexual or other social prejudice, such as transgender identity or disability. It can take a number of forms, including physical attacks, verbal abuse or threats.

16. Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service 'Hate Crime in Scotland 2012-13' June 2013. Not live on the website at time of publication.

17. Religiously aggravated offences are defined as charges that include an aggravation of religiously motivated behaviour in terms of Section 74 of the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 2003.

18. The Act criminalises religious hatred that is connected to football and may be used instead of section 74 in certain circumstances. There were 75 additional charges relating to religious charges under this legislation during 2012-13. Adding these to the number of religiously aggravated offences in 2012/13 would bring the number of charges relating to religious prejudice in 2012-13 up to 762 (and still represents a decrease from 2011-12).

19. Scottish Government (2013) Religiously Aggravated Offending in Scotland 2012-2013. Goulding, A and Cavanagh, B. Justice Analytical Services. (Published on the same day as this literature review).

20. In a special edition of Criminal Justice Matters 2002 that focused on hate crime, Cramphorn also observed that crimes motivated by sectarianism can be difficult to define, and that often these are more than a matter of religious prejudice. In the same edition, Clarke and Moody, on racist crime and victimisation in Scotland, pointed out that for some offenders, racist behaviour featured as one element in a range of criminality, so that racism manifested as one aspect of problematic behaviour. They also noted that police statements indicated that a minority of offenders disputed the charge of racism, and that some sentencers distinguished between "casual verbal insults uttered in the heat of an altercation... which they regarded as mostly trivial; and language 'with a fascist twinge', which they were prepared to treat much more seriously" (2002:14).

21. http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2011/11/14105100/1

22. To act in a manner, including speech, which is racially aggravated and which causes, or is intended to cause, a person alarm or distress.

23. Scottish Government (2013) 'A Review of Section 1 and Section 6 of the Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications Act (2012-13).

24. The SSAS is an annual survey which samples around 1,600 randomly selected adults in Scotland.

25. Bruce, S with Glendinning, A., (2003) Full Report of Research Activities and Results: 'Religion in Modern Scotland' 2001 Scottish Social Attitudes Survey ESRC Sponsored Religion Module, ESRC.

26. See 2000, 2003 and 2004 publications listed in the bibliography.

27. The Twenty-07 study was established in 1987 and followed three cohorts of people, living in and around Glasgow, for twenty years - initially aged 15, 35 and 55, they were 35, 55 and 75 in 2007 - the final year of the Study.

28. Walls and Williams, 2003:641

29. Walls and Williams, 2003: 639-40

30. Finn, G. Uygun, F. Johnson, A. (2008) 'Sectarianism' and the Workplace' Report to the Scottish Trades Union Congress & the Scottish Government

31. The authors explain that both the literature, and the earlier focus groups that had already taken place by then, had identified the existence of Catholic schools to be a topic of importance, and as a specific work place that was often brought up in discussions of sectarianism. These two groups therefore offered valuable insights.

32. An inequality in opportunity that is a result of systemic discrimination.

33. Scottish Executive (2005a) Analysis of Religion in the 2001 Census: Summary Report. Office of the Chief Statistician.

34. Clegg and Rosie (2005) p.55

35. Some of the differences can undoubtedly be explained by loss of adherents over time. Methodologically, whilst the Census surveys every household in Scotland (estimated response rate of approximately 96%, allowing inferences to be made about the Scottish population as a whole), the SHS is a random sample of around 31,000 households, and the SSAS is a national sample of around 1,600 randomly selected adults.

36. Scottish Executive (2005) Social Focus on Deprived Areas 2005, Edinburgh: Scottish Executive.

37. Religion in the 2001 Census" (2005a) Office of the Chief Statistician. Table 2.2.

38. Religion in the 2001 Census" (2005a) Office of the Chief Statistician. Chart 2.1.

39. The occupancy rating relates the actual number of rooms in a home to the number of rooms required by the household, taking into account the number of people, their ages and their relationships.

40. Religion in the 2001 Census" (2005a) Office of the Chief Statistician. Chart 2.2.

41. All Religion Groups in the Census includes, in addition to those listed in the table, Other Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Other Religion.

42. Of all religious groups, Muslims are least likely to be recorded as economically active, though these figures may under-estimate the extent of employment in family run businesses, and reflect the fact that Muslim women are less likely to work than women in other religious groups, partly a result of cultural differences.

43. See Paterson, L. (2000) 'The social class of Catholics in Scotland', Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 163, ( 3): 263-379.

44. All Religion Groups in the Census includes, in addition to those listed in the table, Other Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Other Religion.

45. Ibid.

46. This is an approach which, among sociologists has been criticised because of its gender bias and failure to acknowledge changes in gendered work patterns and because of its disregard for the growth of service sector employment and the decline of traditional manufacturing industries shifts in occupational structures. See Crompton, 1989 for a critique of this class scheme.

47. Paterson, L. and Iannelli, C. (2006) Religion and Social Mobility and Education in Scotland. The British Journal of Sociology, 57(3): 353-377.

48. Those born between 1967 and 1976.

49. See http://www.scotlandscensus.gov.uk/en/howto/questionshelp/index.html#listofquestions These are self assessment questions and therefore rely to a large extent on subjective interpretations of health and illness. There may therefore be some reporting error in self reported health since people have different understandings of what health and illness mean. For a discussion of measurement problems see Baker, M., M. Stabile and C. Deri (2004). What do self-reported objective measures of health measure? Journal of Human Resources, 39, pp. 1067-1093.

50. Parents are likely to have responded on behalf of those under 16. Abbotts et al have drawn attention to the difficulties in measuring children's health from parental accounts (the method adopted in official national surveys). Specifically, they observed (and drawing on research from others in the field, Sweeting and West, 1998) that parents may understate children's mental health symptoms in surveys, since parental reports were found to have contradicted children's accounts of depression symptoms in their study. They maintain that this disparity may be due to either poor parental awareness of children's depression or a desire to present the family in a more positive light (2004:653).

51. Scottish Government (2012) 'Topic Report: Equality Groups' in Scottish Health Survey. http://www.scotland.gov.uk45565db4-8a42-4660-b1e7-68bf626883b8

52. Scottish Government (2012) 'Topic Report: Equality Groups' in Scottish Health Survey. Table 2.1. http://www.scotland.gov.uk45565db4-8a42-4660-b1e7-68bf626883b8

53. See Abbotts et al, 1997; 1999; Abbots et al, 2001; 2001a; 2001b; Abbotts, 2004; Mullen et al, 2000; and Walls and Williams, 2004 (listed in bibliography)

54. The study included a Regional Sample (Random sample of people in the three age groups in the Central Clydeside Conurbation), a Locality Sample (Random sample of people in the three age groups from two localities in Glasgow City), and Sub-sample Studies (Smaller numbers of respondents from either the regional or locality samples who are invited to take part in more focused studies).

55. See http://2007study.sphsu.mrc.ac.uk/publications.html for a wide range of papers published up to 2011.

56. Abbotts, J., Williams, R., Ford, G., Hunt, K., West, P. (1997). 'Morbidity and Irish Catholic descent in Britain: an ethnic and religious minority 150 years on', Social Science and Medicine 45(1): 3-14.

57. Abbotts, J. (2004) 'Irish Catholic Health Disadvantage in the West of Scotland', Scottish Affairs, 46: 131-48.

58. Abbotts, J., Williams, R., West, P., Hunt, K. and Ford, G. (2004) 'Catholic socio-economic disadvantage in the west of Scotland: a narrowing of inequality', Scottish Affairs, (49), 77-87.

59. This does not necessarily mean that they were the victims of sectarian or religiously motivated crime. We know from other analysis mentioned earlier (see section headed Sectarian crime and harassment) that this accounts for only a very small proportion of all crimes.

60. 2010/11 Scottish Crime and Justice Survey: Main Findings. Scottish Government 2011. Figure 3.2. http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2011/10/28142346/5

61. See Hickman and Walter, 1997; Hickman, Morgan and Walter, 2001; Mooney and Young, 1999 - listed in bibliography.

62. See PQ S1W-15069 - Pauline McNeill (Glasgow Kelvin) (Lab) (Date Lodged Thursday, April 12, 2001).

63. See SPICe Briefing for the Public Petitions Committee, 20/09/2007.

64. Wiltshire, S. (2010) Offender Demographics and Sentencing Patterns in Scotland and the UK. The Scottish parliament Public Petitions Committee

65. It should be noted however, that over the same period in Scotland, the direct sentenced population increased, alongside remand prisoners and those recalled to custody.

66. Houchin highlights that one quarter of the prisoner population came from just 53 of the 1222 electoral wards in Scotland, whilst a further quarter came from the next 102 wards. Glasgow was identified as particularly conspicuous and qualitatively distinct owing to the strength of the links between deprivation and imprisonment, particularly compared to other regions such as Edinburgh. The report showed unequivocally that the imprisoned population is derived disproportionately from the most deprived communities and that there is a "systemic link between social deprivation and imprisonment" (Houchin, 2005:16).

67. Hickman, M. and Walter, B. (1997) Discrimination and the Irish community in Britain. London: Commission for Racial Equality ; Devine, T.M., (ed) (2000) Scotland's Shame? Bigotry and Sectarianism in Modern Scotland, Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing.

68. Abbotts, J., Williams, R., West, P., Hunt, K. and Ford, G. (2004) 'Catholic socio-economic disadvantage in the west of Scotland: a narrowing of inequality', Scottish Affairs, (49), 77-87.

69. See Raab G. & Holligan C. (2011) 'Sectarianism: myth or social reality? Inter-sectarian partnerships in Scotland, evidence from the Scottish Longitudinal Study' in Ethnic and Racial Studies 2011, Volume 34, Part 9. p17. Callum G. Brown (2008), 'The secularisation decade: what the 1960s have done to the study of religious history', in Hugh McLeod and Werner Ustorf (eds), The Decline of Christendom in Western Europe, 1750-2000, Cambridge: Cambridge UP. p33-34

70. Religion in the 2001 Census" (2005a) http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2005/02/20757/53568

71. 2012 data show that, among the working age population, 16-14 year olds have the lowest employment rates. See Scottish Government, Local Area Labour Market in Scotland: Statistics from the Annual Population Survey 2012. http://www.scotland.gov.uk3cb824c5-e2df-47af-b2e4-bf939baba125

72. We know from other sources that both criminal victimisation and offending behaviour decline with age.

73. Scottish Executive (2005a) Religion in the 2001 Census" Office of the Chief Statistician.

74. Religion in the 2001 Census" (2005a) Office of the Chief Statistician. Chart 1.9.

75. Defined as a married or co-habiting couple or a lone parent.

76. Religion in the 2001 Census" (2005a) Office of the Chief Statistician. Chart 1.10.

77. Chris Holligan and Gillian Raab (2010), Inter-sectarian couples in the 2001 Census. Scottish Longitudinal Study Research Working Paper 7. http://www.lscs.ac.uk/sls/working%20papers/WP7%20Holligan.pdf

78. Partnerships with those of the same religion.

79. See Raab G. & Holligan C. (2011) 'Sectarianism: myth or social reality? Inter-sectarian partnerships in Scotland, evidence from the Scottish Longitudinal Study' in Ethnic and Racial Studies 2011, Volume 34, Part 9. p17.

80. Walls, P., and Williams, R., (2003) 'Sectarianism at work: accounts of employment discrimination against Catholics in Scotland', in Ethnic and Racial Studies 26, (4): 632- 662.