Categories: glasgow
Tags: sectarianism, Glasgow
Date: 10 June 2006 16:46:58
Now that it's officially summer (and the sun is most definitely out, how fantastic, about time!) the marching season seems to have started with a vengeance. I'd always associated the marching season with Northern Ireland, and vaguely been aware that stuff like that happened in Glasgow too (given that we have a large Irish population here and sectarianism, particularly in our two main football teams, is often in the news. Up in town earlier I saw the tail end of a march in George Square, I wasn't sure if it was Orange Order (Protestant) or Republican (Catholic), and when I got back home an hour or so ago I saw the entrance to the park at the end of the road full of police vans, flashing lights etc, helicopters hovering overhead, and people hanging around looking to see what was happening. It turned out that it was the end rally of a Republican march, and that there had been an Orange march earlier in the day. I chatted with one of the policemen (there were absolutely loads of them, mostly hanging around looking bored), he looked sweltering in his body armour, yellow jacket and whatnot - apparently the two marches were due to be in the same park within half an hour of each other so they had lots of police around to make sure that the first lot left before the second lot arrived. There was just a smallish crowd, not much seemed to be going on (in fact last week in the park the Canine Concern dog show attracted a lot more people, as far as I could tell), and it seems to have dispersed pretty quickly. I wonder how many there'll be over the summer?