The flawed, ambiguous and unnecessary Offensive Behaviour at Football Matches Bill is now on the statute book.
There is therefore little further point in rehearsing again its many weaknesses. Iain Macwhirter has already dealt with these comprehensively ("This dumb unjust law is Salmond's first own goal'', The Herald, December 15).
The issue now is where to go from here. The Herald has outlined part of the way forward in general constitutional terms by encouraging debate on how scrutiny of newly passed legislation at Holyrood might be improved for the benefit of our democracy.
But there remains the more specific problem which the Bill was intended to partly address, though the term is not even mentioned throughout its many clauses and sub-clauses: the thorny question of sectarianism in Scotland.
Irish Catholics and Protestants settled throughout the world over many generations, however ours is the only jurisdiction which has anti-sectarian legislation in its criminal codes in 2011. This suggests that there are specific Scottish issues which need to be addressed.
Understanding what these are will be vital and indeed the sine qua non for the implementation of any effective long-term strategy to root out the disease once and for all. Yet convincing analysis of the problem, even within the academic community, remains thin, shallow, partial and contested. At one extreme, some social scientists argue that sectarianism in Scotland is a myth; at the other, the Catholic Church asserts that the issue is not sectarianism at all but, in the words of the Cardinal Archbishop of Edinburgh, "blatant anti-Catholicism". In between these two poles sits the Justice Committee of the Scottish Parliament which concluded after its lengthy deliberations on the aforesaid Bill that it could not even define the term sectarianism.
Such intellectual confusion on such a pressing and important challenge for public policy can only be addressed by careful and through investigation which is prepared with honesty and transparency to face all the relevant questions without fear or favour.
Such a review, comprising an appropriate membership, should not be like the Royal Commissions of old (famously criticised by Harold Wilson "for taking years taking minutes") but time-limited, authoritative and credible with its terms of reference subject to all-party consent within the Parliament.
I know that some senior members of the SNP favoured such an approach before the Government embarked on its recent legal adventuring. It is not too late to began such a process now. Only such a wide-ranging inquiry can hope to lay the intellectual and evidential foundations for a reasoned and just way forward on this age-old problem.
TM Devine,
Senior Research Professor in History,
University of Edinburgh.
A political party in government is perfectly capable of making mistakes, including bad ones, and the SNP together with its leader Alex Salmond has come in for vigorous criticism over the handling of disorder at football matches ("Landmark legislation or law on the hoof?", The Herald, December 15).
Is there a serious disorder problem at football matches in Scotland? If so might one reasonably expect the Scottish Government to make some attempt to do something about it?
If the legislative measures adopted are wrongly conceived, would it not be helpful to outline alternative measures that would be manifestly more suitable? It seems to have been suggested that existing legislation is adequate for the purpose. It would have been helpful if this had been explained as explicitly and as energetically as were the criticisms of the Government's action.
The SNP Government has been accused of using its majority to railroad this legislation through Parliament with scant regard for alternative opinions. Is this not a bit one-sided?
In the previous Parliamentary session, the opposition parties forced the minority Government to accept the ill-conceived Edinburgh trams scheme. The same thing happened over the minority government's attempt to regulate alcohol prices. This was a measure widely supported outside the Scottish opposition parties. Perhaps Mr Salmond has made an ill-judged use of political muscle. He is not unique.
The proposal to establish a second chamber is interesting ("Calls for more powers to hold Holyrood to account", The Herald, December 16). One might wonder about the motivations of its members and whether there are enough highly placed people in Scotland who have a loyalty towards their country.
Ian Ross,
3 Kenbank Crescent,
Bridge of Weir.
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