We’ve known some fairly prodigious war criminals in our time, have we not? Adolf Hitler is surely the exemplar of an unsavoury breed but such blokes as “Uncle Joe” Stalin, Pol Pot and Saddam Hussein also spring to mind. More recently, I don’t believe Slobodan Milosevic did much to further human happiness.

Let’s face it, there is a long and unedifying list to be cited here.

Controversially, please note, I’ve chosen to omit Dr John Reid from this rogues gallery. The new Celtic chairman is many things, and not all of them fragrant, but it seems to me he makes a fairly weak and feeble case as a “war criminal”. To be the latter I always thought that, in the classic cases of Messrs Hitler and Milosevic, you had to specifically design and wallow in the slaughter of civilians for no reason other than your own psychotic instincts.

I’m being serious about this: isn’t that what a war criminal is? Not someone who orders a war, but someone whose tyranny reduces communities to fear and death for no reason other than their own prejudices? In which case, alas, I find John Reid a total flop. In fact, if Dr Reid in his temerity tried to claim to have been one of the big, brave war criminals of our time, I’d tell him to go away and try much, much harder.

You all know why I’m exploring this line. At the Celtic AGM on Monday, when Reid was unveiled as Celtic’s new chairman, one or two dissenting voices piped up and, in condemning Reid’s appointment, accused him of being a “war criminal” through his membership of Tony Blair’s Cabinet at the time of the Iraq intervention.

Well, it is a long and complex subject and certainly not one for the sports pages. Certain wars and pestilences are hard enough to debate, and rarely find a moral resolution, let alone when that debate is sandwiched between the cricket and croquet results. But I must demur from such a critical stance on John Reid.

What Reid has had to do throughout his political career is get his hands extremely dirty – you can hardly be a Northern Ireland Secretary and a Defence Secretary, as he has, and do otherwise – but to call him a war criminal? This, surely, is to bring a complex and hot-blooded political view and blithely plonk it at the door of a football club, which we all try not to do these days.

Ironically, I am of a mind to defend Dr Jeanette Findlay, the head of the Celtic Supporters Trust, whose comments about Reid and about political chants among the Celtic support suddenly cast her into infamy last week. While I disagree with Dr Findlay on both issues, it seems to me she is infinitely more capable than some of her plankton-brained critics who have tried to impale her since her ill-fated dialogue with Nicky Campbell on the BBC on Tuesday.

Dr Findlay has done impressive work at Glasgow University. She has specialised in studies on housing, urban renewal, gender issues and, amid it all, the economics of football. Laughably, one tabloid football columnist last week tried to lampoon Dr Findlay, whereas in fact, she would swat him around the ears and be done with him in five seconds flat if the two were ever allowed to go head-to-head in debate over bigotry or the ethnic make-up of Celtic.

Dr Findlay’s problem with her high-minded arguments about John Reid and “so-called pro-terrorism chants” is that football fans tend not to be made up of legions of Jeanette Findlays who happily and sensibly trade their opinions. If it were so, such subtle and perceptive points could be happily raised and accommodated.

Instead, football is infested with people who might euphemistically be called passionate hot-heads, for whom such refined arguments have no place. And in this context, we simply cannot have Rangers fans or Celtic fans wading in with such religious or political baggage, because it quickly gets out of control.

I wish Dr Findlay could see this but it would appear she can’t.

In her world we’d have Rangers and Celtic chairpersons saying, “Aye, fine, sing about the IRA and other stuff, because the fine academic points have been forensically explored...” Alas, it doesn’t work like that in football. It would be a recipe for disorder. Time for Rangers to break BJK silence

It truly beggars belief that a sizable and unfortunate section of the Rangers support have come up with a regular terracing song about a child sex abuse case. Today at Falkirk, where Rangers are due to play, will doubtless be the latest Scottish ground to be polluted with this dirge.

Some of you may be aware by now of this excruciating embarrassment for Rangers known as the “Big Jock Knew” campaign (henceforth BJK). The chant, which has been fomented among the usual victims on a fans’ website and by certain Rangers supporters groups leaders, refers to a Celtic Boys Club controversy of more than 30 years ago.

The episode shocked Jock Stein, then the Celtic manager, when he was informed about it. Yet this Rangers song, as factually flawed and repellent as it is, tries to infer that Stein either condoned or attempted to cover-up the incident, which is nonsense.

I have to admit I never thought I’d ever see the day when Scottish football supporters sang a song about a child sex abuse case, yet Rangers have duly delivered. Even more amazing and shocking is Rangers FC’s ongoing silence on the matter, as this cretinous chant builds up its head of steam among supporters.

In the Scottish media we have tried to help Rangers by not quoting the subject in our pages, giving the club the chance for once to be proactive rather than reactive to misconduct among their less-fortunate followers. But those days of our silence on BJK are drawing to a close for one good reason – the longer this deafening silence from Ibrox about it prevails, the more decent people are starting to agitate for Rangers to actually do something about it.

Gordon Smith, the SFA chief executive, had the guts and the moral fibre to refer to BJK as “morally repugnant”. Yet what have Rangers got to say about it? Does no one at the club actually possess the bottle to stand up and condemn it?

BJK is now a ticking time-bomb for Rangers. It is The Billy Boys all over again and I am frankly amazed that the club hasn’t learnt lessons from their recent past and their prosecution by Uefa. Unless Rangers do something and act strongly, this proud but benighted club is once more going to be stung.