Thursday, 05 Dec 2013

Created by Helen, 05/12/2013

It’s less than a centimetre long but it seems to look a lot bigger when I stare at it in my mirror. The scar is partly hidden by my eyebrow but I know it’s there even if most folk don’t notice it.

It’s a constant reminder of what it feels to grow up as a Catholic in a housing scheme where me and my sister were the only ones in our street to go to our school. The Proddy dogs as we called them didn’t wear a school uniform so it was easy to spot us.  And once you were branded as a Catholic then it felt as if a bullseye target was painted on your back, or in my experience, my fenian face.

The boy that threw the stone and split my skin was chased by my dad but he was too fast for a man in his bare feet. I didn’t want my dad to catch him; it would only make things worse.

I had this flashback when I recently attended the ‘Mixing the Colours’ creative writing workshops organised by the Glasgow Women’s Library. The workshops invited a group of women to reflect on their experiences of sectarianism in Scotland and write a poem or piece of prose. It was a fascinating insight into how issues related to religion had shaped their relationships between family and friends. Some of the anecdotes shared were humorous but most were horrific in the sense that incidents and attitudes had a lifelong impact.

The good news is that I believe that times have changed for the better.  I have two sons and neither of them have been the subject of sectarian abuse despite attending the same secondary school I did and wearing the same bottle green blazer that signalled, “batter the fenian” when I wore it as a pupil. Organisations such as Action on Sectarianism and Nil by Mouth are working hard to make sure scars like mine are a thing of the past.  I hope they achieve their goal; no Scottish child should be marked by sectarianism today or ever.

More information on the 'Mixing the Colours' project by the Glasgow Women's Library can be found here: