On 23rd February, James Dornan MSP, during a Twitter exchange in which he misrepresented the Club 1872 position on unacceptable behaviour, made the false allegation that “Club 1872 abuse me regularly on their website.”
This statement by Mr Dornan was an outright lie. Club 1872 has not mentioned him on our website, let alone subjected him to regular “abuse”. We wrote to Mr Dornan, giving him the opportunity to delete his tweet and to make a public apology but we have received no response and no apology has been forthcoming.
It is completely unacceptable for an elected representative to make demonstrably false accusations about our organisation or its individual directors, all of whom are volunteers.
Mr Dornan’s risible attempts to ‘combat sectarianism’ by smearing groups and individuals, undermines genuine and sincere work against prejudice and discrimination. In doing so he raises questions not only of his competence to be Convenor of the Cross Party Group on Combatting Sectarianism but also of his fitness for public office at any level.
We do not believe that Mr Dornan is a fit and proper person to act as convener of that group and we will now write to his colleagues to request his removal. It is incomprehensible that Mr Dornan was able to take up this position in the first place given his selective approach to sectarian issues – including an incident where he posed in front of the flag of a proscribed terrorist organisation.
We will also contact Rangers to make them aware of this incident and to urge them to be extremely cautious over Mr Dornan’s publicity seeking, public announcement expressing his wish to meet with them. Rangers and Club 1872 should always engage with any individual or group seeking to genuinely address issues around unacceptable behaviour. We firmly believe that Mr Dornan does not fall into that bracket.
Issued by Supporters Voice Limited, a Club 1872 company
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