DAVID Kennedy, the general secretary of the Scottish Police Federation, has described the failure to set up an organised fan zone in Glasgow for supporters celebrating a Scottish title win as “bizarre” after years of unrest on the streets.
And he has warned that reduced staffing levels due to government cutbacks mean that Police Scotland officers will be unable to maintain public order if violence flares in the city centre on the day of a mass gathering or showpiece match in future.
Kennedy was astonished when Celtic fans once again descended on Trongate in their tens of thousands after the Parkhead club had been presented with the cinch Premiership trophy a fortnight ago.
There had been identical scenes after Rangers were crowned champions during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2021 and when Celtic finished first in the top flight in 2022 and 2023.
Kennedy believes that setting up an official fan zone – similar to those which have been put in place when European finals have been staged at Hampden in the past – in Glasgow would be a solution to the problem.
“Why are there no fan zones when it is the Old Firm?” he said. “We put on fan zones in George Square when there were European finals in Glasgow. We have done it on several occasions. Why do we do it for teams coming in from outside, but not for our own? It seems bizarre to me.
“The council have an opportunity to make money off it. You licence bars within the fan zone and you can limit how much drink people are getting. It is similar to being on a licensed premises. If somebody drinks too much they don’t get served any more.
“The biggest hassle was at Trongate. The flares are a real issue, the pyrotechnics are a massive problem. More needs to be done on that.
“But I would say that 99.9 per cent of fans don’t want to cause trouble, they just want to celebrate their teams winning. We have to focus on the good, not the bad. We should creating these zones and making sure they are properly policed.
“The clubs can be partly involved as well. Wherever they turn up with the trophy is going to attract fans. Rangers were going to go to Edmiston House if they had won the Scottish Cup I believe.
“I genuinely think having a fan zone would help to curtail trouble and reduce the number of people who are meeting to celebrate. We have to try it. It has not been tried, but I would strongly suggest that it should be.”
Kennedy added: “One of the main reasons for the trouble at the UEFA Cup final in Manchester in 2008 wasn’t the screen breaking down, it was the fan zones weren’t good enough.
“There were Rangers fans turning up with shopping trolleys stacked with drink. There was no curtailment of what people were drinking, it was just a free for all. You would have expected proper facilities which were being controlled. But there is a lot of learning from that.
“But the majority of fans just want to have a good time. So let’s look after them, let’s try it and give them an opportunity to have somewhere to go to celebrate.
“That should hopefully take the masses away and then you are just left with the minority who are going to cause trouble. That would help the police because they are concentrating on a smaller rather than a bigger group.
“For me, this should come from the council. They should be putting fan zones on and they’re not. Maybe they think they don’t have the money to do that. But the reality is it is going to make money.
“The authorities should be able to do it. They do it for New Year, they did it for the Queen’s Jubilee. They should be looking at it because the cost of policing it and clearing it up is not very good.”
Kennedy was also disturbed to see videos of a large number of Rangers supporters marching through Glasgow city centre near to where Celtic fans had gathered ahead of the Scottish Cup final last weekend.
He believes that if trouble had broken out then police officers would have struggled to contain it due to their stretched resources.
“One issue at the weekend was hundreds of Rangers ultras marching through the city centre on the morning of the game,” he said. “There was a mass of them singing and marching through the Trongate.
“The reality is the police are strapped, there are not enough cops. We had more than 1,000 police officers on duty and the vast majority of them were out working on their rest days.
“That shows you the scale of the operation that is required to control the crowds and maintain public order. If there are not too many arrests and nobody is injured then that is a success.
“But you need more police on the streets. If you don’t have enough cops to deal with that then that causes an issue. I guarantee you, the police didn’t have enough cops to deal with trouble flaring and that is the problem.
“The Cabinet Secretary for Justice says they don’t want to go below 16,600 police officers. But the problem I have got with that figure is it is over 1,000 less than what we had in 2007.
“The workload of the police is through the roof. The numbers we are at at the moment is way short of what we need to police and look after the community effectively. That is one of the big issues.”
Kennedy continued: “I think we have to look at football in a different way. We always focus on the violence. It is about time we flipped that and actually looked at the people who just want to celebrate. That might take some of the violence away from it, or at least the focus on those who are that way inclined.
“This is where the clubs have to get involved. For me, if people are getting arrested for football violence they shouldn’t be getting back into their clubs. The clubs have to take responsibility. I think they do on the whole. They want their games to be friendly and safe environments.
A Glasgow City Council spokesman said: “We’ve spoken to both clubs about organised celebrations in various forms, but we have been clear these come with a set of challenges and do require an event organiser.
“Should any club wish to pursue organised celebrations, at any scale, we would welcome this and work with them to review any plans. Open top bus parades have been part of our discussions and plans are in place should either make a request for such an event.
“There are licensing and legislative requirements around an alternative uses for either stadia, but we have committed to work with the clubs to ensure we can deal with these appropriately.”
