Auld Enemy – new T-shirt

THE launch of a provocative World Cup top suggests anti-English feeling is rife, but is it really?

IT HAS become as integral a part of the World Cup experience as Brazilian flags, Mexican waves and references to 1966. Indeed the pre-tournament hype hasn't truly started until a stramash erupts over Scotland fans' refusal to support the Auld Enemy. And sure enough last week – with less than four months to go until the competition kicks off in South Africa – the touchpaper was lit when Scots company Slanj produced a provocative T-shirt, bearing the legend "Anyone But England" on the front, and Algeria, Slovenia and the USA (the other teams in England's group) on the back.

With many sports-lovers still glued to the Winter Olympics, and English football dominated by off-field antics, the cheeky slogan might have gone unnoticed. But then eagle-eyed officers in Grampian Police spotted it in the window of the company's Aberdeen store, and warned staff it might "cause offence", providing Slanj with the kind of publicity money can't buy, and reigniting the debate over whether such sentiments are just a bit of a laugh or symptoms of the kind of pernicious Anglophobia that leads to verbal abuse and violence.

So is it different this time round, with Scotland another few years into its experiment with political self-sufficiency? Can critics of "Anyone But England" be as easily dismissed these days as suffering a sense of humour failure? Or is it time Scots fans dropped a vendetta that many find immature and distasteful?

Any discussion of the subject risks becoming a seminar in moral philosophy. Hamish Husband, spokesman for the Association of Tartan Army clubs, is banned from his English stepmother's house during matches because he cannot find it in himself to cheer her team on. But he doesn't believe the "Anyone But England" (ABE) campaign is in any way racist or damaging to the country's image.

"The die-hard Scotland fan is a fan of his team and England is the Auld Enemy… it's the oldest footballing rivalry in the world," he says. "But you can be anti-England – and it's just a football team; it's not the same as being anti-English. There are anti-English incidents, but they are a separate thing fuelled by stupidity and drink or whatever. They are not symptomatic. And the ABE campaign is not a metaphor. It is a just reaction to the ambitions of the media in England that overblow the team's importance."

Others, though, insist the anti-English jibes that flourish in the run-up to big tournaments do make life difficult for English people who live north of the Border. "The issue with sport is that it exaggerates national identity in a way that emphasises difference," says Dr Douglas Robertson, author of the book English People in Scotland. "It might seem like light-hearted banter, but it makes English people who identify with Scotland feel excluded. Although they feel Scottish (it seems] they will never be accepted as Scottish."

It wasn't supposed to be like this. Devolution – we were promised – would surgically remove the chip from Scots' shoulders and stop us defining ourselves in relation to England. But our national team's persistent failure to qualify for major tournaments, a feat it last achieved in 1998, and a genetic predisposition for stirring it, effectively put paid to such ambitions. In 2006, the Tartan Army took pleasure in rallying behind Trinidad and Tobago, the underdog in England's group, because its star player was called Jason Scotland and some of its squad played for Scottish clubs.

The resulting row gathered momentum as the then First Minister Jack McConnell jumped on the bandwagon, sparking allegations of parochialism, and several fans wearing England strips were attacked in Scotland. In England – where fans traditionally support other UK nations in international tournaments – bemusement at Scots' hostility gradually turned to anger, as public figures who expressed ABE sentiments discovered to their cost.

There are some who have never forgiven Andy Murray for saying he would not support England in the last World Cup, although he was only 18 at the time and was replying in a jocular fashion to a jibe about Scotland's failure to qualify.

An England fan, who lives in Edinburgh, James Hamilton, is perhaps the last person you would expect to laugh along with the ABE campaign. Yet not only is the sports psychologist unoffended by the Slanj T-shirt, he wants to buy one and wear it with a Bobby Charlton scarf. Having lived north of the Border for 18 months, he believes that, for most, engaging in anti-England banter is just something people do – like talking about the weather.

"The golden rule about ABE is that it must be expressed in a humorous tone," he writes on his blog More Than Mind Games. "Serious use of ABE is considered de trop. But so is energetic argument against it from an Englishman, which is why the wearing of an England shirt in a Scottish pub, while unlikely to inspire anything worse than brief comment, is seen as inappropriate, a misjudgment of the situation.

"You are highly unlikely to meet anyone who wants to press the ABE point even among those Scots for whom ABE is an important fact of life. The conversation always moves on. Much ABE isn't about England at all. It's not about hating the elderly in their freezing deckchairs at Morecambe, for goodness' sake, or a playground of children in Gateshead or a Leytonstone mum struggling to stretch her pennies. And there's always a note of regret behind the humour, a sorrow that Scotland isn't better than she is; an indefinable if-only."

Paul Scott, a prominent Nationalist and former president of the Saltire Society, believes devolution has tempered that animosity to a degree. "It gives us a more relaxed attitude because we have a lot more control over our own affairs rather than everything being controlled from (Westminster]. It means we are better disposed to England," he says.

As a Manchester United supporter, Hamilton is used to being an outsider (It was the Anyone But Manchester United Campaign that inspired the Slanj T-shirt), but he says he has never experienced any real anti-English abuse. His decision not to be too voluble in his support for the national squad this time round has less to do with fears for his own safety (he says he'd feel more threatened wearing a Man U shirt in a Chelsea pub) than with his disillusionment with the team.

"I find it very hard to get het-up about the current England side," he says. "The fact is we have a bunch of people, most of whom are not very nice. What might have been an insult of real force – when an England team could contain a Charlton brother, a Brooking, a Mick Mills or a Gordon Banks – now sounds, in the era of Cole, Terry and Ferdinand, no more than a sound but slightly exaggerated opinion that many disillusioned Englanders quietly share."

For co-host of BBC Radio Scotland's Off The Ball, Stuart Cosgrove, the debate over Scotland's footballing allegiances is a hoary old chestnut. But the broadcaster agrees that the events of the past few months may put a different spin on Anglo-Scot relations this year.

"I have already decided on my own T-shirt: it's going to say 'ABVC' – Anyone But Vacuous Celebrity – in reference to the whole John Terry and Ashley Cole affairs," he says. "Because of these scandals, there is a chance England will be going to the World Cup less organised, less arrogant, less puffed up."

Add to all that Fabio Capello's determination to "focus on the football" and the FA's decision that – for the first time since 1966 – there will be no official World Cup song, and it is clear England's campaign will be less in our faces than usual.

Aware of the potential ramifications of supporting the "wrong" side, politicians too seem reluctant to ramp up emotions. Stung by previous experience, many are hedging their bets, insisting they want England to do well, while nevertheless backing another team.

McConnell, whose support for Trinidad and Tobago last time round led to accusations he might have put tourism and inward investment at risk, says he would like to see one of the African teams do well: "Part of the excitement of the World Cup for Africans is that it's being held on the continent for the first time, so it would be good to see an African team getting to the semi-finals."

Taking the Partick Thistle route through the minefield of footballing allegiances, Scottish Labour leader Iain Gray and Scottish Secretary Jim Murphy are both backing Brazil. Even First Minister Alex Salmond has refused to rise to the bait. "It's great for African football that (the World Cup] is being held there for the first time and it would be terrific for the tournament if South Africa reach the latter stages," he says. "I don't root against England – they have some fine players and under the impressive Fabio Capello are capable of being involved deep into the knockout stages. I wish them well."

Husband, too, believes it's time for fans to leave their obsession with England behind. "Most of us are passionately indifferent to England, but when we try to ignore them the English media swamps us. Many Scotland fans want England to do well, but not win because if they did win it would be so unbearable."

Of course, there will always be a rump of Scotland fans who want England to crash out of the World Cup, but is their attitude really evidence of deep-rooted Anglophobia? "What those who view this as racist fail to understand is that we are talking about English football not English literature," says Cosgrove. "Football inspires a venal rivalry and Scotland's rivals are England. But the vast majority of the people who wear the T-shirt wouldn't walk into a DVD shop and say: 'I'm not buying Only Fools And Horses because it's set in London.'"

While other English commentators complain about Scottish whingers, James Hamilton is so taken with the ABE T-shirt he has written to the company asking if it can make one for English people watching their team in Scotland. And what message would such a shirt bear? "I suppose it would have to say something like: 'Pretend I'm Not Here', or 'I Don't Think We're Going To Win Either', or 'Hope Scotland Gets There Next Time.' Something suitably self-flagellatory, you know?" Hmm, something tells me he hasn't quite got the hang of this whole venal rivalry thing.