the black Rangers player whose debut in an 'old firm" game was marked by a delugc ol bananas thrown onto the pitch hy Celtic supporters. That, he savs, is exactly the way us "paddies" were treated 100 years ago!
As the story of the club: unfolds so does that of the twentieth century with its wars: and economic depressions — members of the family go away to light and die or are out of work for ycars But the club gues
Ir's the women relations who have the best lines here about Lie pointlessness of their men's blind fanatical support specially when it combines with the apparent acceptance of war and recession. Their senriments are overwhelmed, however, by lat continuing tale of Celte's
The conditions surrounding this production made it impossible to do a political job relevant truths about the cinh: hat Celtic were an important product of the mineteenth century immigration and played a key part in giving an identity to a discriminated-against minority. That Celtic have never had the same sectarian employment policies as Rangers - Konny Dalglish, Danny MrGrain and Jock Stin are a employoes. And that in the late twenneth century Celtic 9: success depends, however, on maintaining a religious bigotry that, in the words of Bill Murray, author of a recent book in the vid firm, has been the source of the success of the two clubs. It has brought them the best players in Scutland. the most supporters and consequenrly the biggest proline.
One of the saddest sights to be seen is a mass of yung Celtic supporters at one end of thr ground waving tricolours and singing repuhlican songs confronting, at the other end, the union jacks and the cries of god save the queen"
And it's truc, consciousness 15 a little different at cach end: we'd get more money for a strike at the Celtic end, and the fascist BNP c attempts to get a loothold in Scotland include leaflecting Rangers supporters. 36 Up in the directors" box, however, the builders, the garage owners, the bookies and the priests and ministers are laughing all the way to the bank.
l'o do a play exposing the real hature of the old firm would have been more in the Wildeat tradition. Meantime go and see "The Geltic Story' — if only for
Torry Neason's magnificent singing — and supporr Partick: TONY SOUTHALL
Mai Si!
Alain Krivine & Daniel Bensaid Mai S/ Lu Breche, 1988. (This hook is ouly availahle in French. Available Grom La Breche, 2 rue Richard Lenoir, 99108 Montreail-Sons-Bois, France. 75F F plus postagc.) THE PREDOMINANT media image of May 58 is of ever-cnergetic students running. not while waiting to graduate and grow up. Analysis of the real siguilicance of the events of that Yoar is hard to find.
Mus sil is an exception. Beginning witl a cool analvsis of the significance and potential of the general strike of May 1968 in France this book leaves remuries of personal
Krivime and Bensaid, both Teading members of clie Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire then and now, point out that there were hetween six and nine million workers on strike in 1968, compared with three million in 1936 (at the time cif the Popular Front and two-and-a-half million at the peak of the widespread strikes of biggest strike in the history of the French labour movetnent: But real self-organisation on thr part of strikers was relatively rare and the negotiations al Grenelle which centually ended the strike brought little of historic significance.
Power vacuum perhaps there was not, cven when de Gaulle slipped off to Baden Baden on 29. May. But for a regime dependent on tight control of almust all aspects uf French life, extreme governmental confusion at the end of May indicated serivus injury. (De Gaulle following year after being defeated in a plebiscite-like
On the question of whether there was a revolutionary situation in May, Krivine and
Bensaid give an eminently sensible answer; you cannot talk of a situation being 'objcctively revolutionary but lacking the subjective clement (the party), because the two are
Mat s! is actually more about the far Jeft and political events since 1968 than about the evenes themselves. But the authors deal with so much that it reads in parts like a whistle-stop tour.of the 1970s and 19805: on your left, Nicaragua, terrorism; on your right, Alghanistan, Francois Minterrand, and so on
The most lasting overall Impression from the book is the difficulty of being a revolutionary socialist in France
Over the past twenty years many lurmer revolutionaries have been sucked into an ever rightward moving Socialist Party because it, at least, seemed likely one day to govera, il not fulfil the hopes of May 1968.
The communist party's popularity has declined from 22 per cent ol the vote in 1968 to 7 per ccul in 1988. And marxism among intellectuals is decidedly out of fashion. But Marxit, in ins allempt to objectively but critically analyse May and its legacy, plays a small part in helping to understand the past and therefore understand how to carry on the struggle in the NICK HEWLETT