It started as a diplomatic incident, but now the Famine Song has triggered open warfare between two of our best known public figures. John Reid and Sir David Murray have emerged from their respective green and blue corners to slug it out over the terrace chant NOW branded racist by the Irish government.

In case you’ve been occupied with trivial matters like the collapse of the world economy and impending doom, and have missed the story convulsing the rest of Scotland, the song is a taunt in which Rangers fans tell their Celtic rivals “The famine’s over, why don’t you go home?”

Reid, the former Home Secretary who is now chairman of Celtic, has also condemned it as racist and the police say anyone singing it will be arrested and charged. David Murray, his opposite at Rangers, says the song is “wrong” but that Reid was too provocative in his comments. Rangers fans argue the chant is just banter aimed at the “plastic paddy brigade” — Celtic supporters who, despite being as Scottish as mince ’n’ tatties, obsess constantly about the historic wrongs done to old Eire. Post-modern irony thrives on the terraces of Ibrox then.

It’s pretty understandable why the the Dublin government would feel compelled to complain. The famine of the 19th century was by far the most traumatic event in the country’s history — its population has still not recovered from the death and mass migration of that time.

Urging repatriation for any particular immigrant group is racist, so the case is pretty clear cut there. The full-length version of the song, with references to child-abusing priests, thieves, papists and even collaboration with the Nazis in the second world war, would make the Rev Ian Paisley blush. Comments on Facebook by “Fans of the Famine Song” rather undermine the arguments about good-natured banter. Where’s the irony in: “F*** off home Taig Bastards”?

The row, however, throws up difficult questions about identity in Scotland which we thought had been settled long ago. Although I believe the Famine Song to be offensive and racist, I cannot feel personally hurt by it because I feel Scottish, not Irish. I don’t feel it is aimed at me and resent the assumption that I am a stranger in my own land because a few of my great-grandparents left Antrim for Greenock one day and didn’t return.

But it’s not just the Fans of the Famine Song who think that the allegiance of Scots like me lies across the Irish Sea . . . and this is where matters become troubling.

The Irish Diaspora in Scotland Association was formed at a civic reception in Glasgow last Friday. The Irish consul attended, along with members of the Holyrood parliament, councillors and cultural groups like hurling and step dancing clubs. Publicity material named Billy Connolly, Liz McColgan and the Lord Advocate Eilish Angiolini as examples of the diaspora which, they said, goes back four generations. It hopes to help such people celebrate their heritage. One is tempted to add “whether they want to or not”.

One supporter, the MSP Michael McMahon, offered his congratulations, observing that “most other immigrant groups are organised”. Sorry, but I am not an immigrant. Another, Professor Patrick Reilly, expressed his delight that “Scotland’s biggest single ethnic group is organising itself.” There was much talk about multi-culturalism, a word that has fallen out of favour elsewhere in Britain. It is four years since Trevor Phillips, now the chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, said the term should be ditched because it emphasises separateness.

If your heart lies forever in some misty corner of Kerry, then who am I to displace it. But for most of the diaspora, it’s much more complicated.

My great-grandparents came from Antrim as babies and married in Greenock, but he was Protestant and she was Catholic. Does that mean he was less Irish than she? Their daughter, my grandmother, married a Scot whose name suggests a highland lineage. So should I be celebrating my Ulster Scots heritage, my Scottish heritage or my Irishness? I am interested in all of them and wonder why we cannot shout about the mixed backgrounds most of us now have. Irish immigration shaped urban Scotland, along with American movies, English pop groups, Indian food and a myriad of modern influences via television and the classroom.

Squeezing us into narrow categories because our surname starts with Mc or Mac or an O apostrophe is simplistic and ignores all the cross-fertilisation that keeps our society vibrant and ever-changing.

Negotiating this 21st century complexity gets too much for some people. Perhaps it’s because of the decline in religion, or the rise of globalisation, but they long for the cosiness of authenticity and a set of core beliefs about themselves and the world. That’s easiest to find if you return to a fixed point in the past and select an identity that suits you, like a student brandishing a lapel badge. Even better if it’s so far away in terms of time and geography that it stops you engaging in the politics of now and the country of which you are a citizen. The term “plastic paddy” is borderline offensive, but it describes a real phenomenon in which some modern Scots construct their own myths and so play into the hands of bigots like The Fans of the Famine Song.

joan.mcalpine@sunday-times.co.uk

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