AMID all the wailing and gnashing of teeth over the last few days about the undoubted and depressing upsurge in Scottish football hooliganism, very few people pointed out the role of politicians in this hugely regrettable return to the bad old days of vile and disgusting behaviour by so-called football supporters.

When the repeal of the Offensive Behaviour at Football Act was proposed I was not alone in arguing that scrapping the Act completely would send out the wrong signal. I had accepted the evidence that the Act should be changed, but asked that it be thoroughly reviewed as part of the overall discussion and debate on the issue of hate crime.

OBFA was very far from perfect and Police Scotland under Stephen House abused the powers it gave them, but the Act was an attempt to deal with the unique problems of football, not least the bigotry that besmirches Scottish football and by association, Scottish society as a whole.

As I have written before, the principal aim of Alex Salmond and Kenny McAskill in bringing in OBFA was to tackle sectarianism, education having been seen to fail.

The opposition parties led by Labour’s James Kelly forced through the repeal. They simply would not listen to the warnings and now every cretinous ned with a brain cell deficiency thinks they have an entitlement to misbehave.

Sure the vast majority of fans continue to act within the bounds of decency but a small number of idiots think they now have permission to pelt people with coins, march to matches dressed in black and giving Nazi salutes, sing “you can stick your f*****g poppies up your arse”, and generally act the hooligan when, apart from the Hibs v Rangers Scottish Cup Final of 2016, behaviour by fans was slowly improving.

That’s gone into reverse, obviously. Now I’m well aware that coin-throwing and sectarian-chanting can be tackled by other laws, but that’s not the point – when the Act was repealed by opposition politicians anxious to give the SNP a kicking, that told the knuckle-draggers and the would-be tribal heroes that it was sort of okay to be a baddie again.

After the repeal, you should have read the crowing comments on social media where most of these morons reside and you would have known that trouble was coming.

For these miscreants just don’t see things the way the rest of civilised society does. In no other walk of life do you see people throwing coins at their fellow citizens. No other part of Scottish society would tolerate any individual being targeted for non-stop sectarian and racist abuse, but Neil Lennon – a man I count as a friend and whose book I helped to write, and hopefully you’ll read the sequel – gets it every day of his working life. And gets nearly beaten unconscious, gets bombs sent to him, is nearly run off the motorway, and has to read about people spray-painting “hang Neil Lennon” on a wall in Edinburgh.

Lennon is right – such actions are racist and bigoted against him as an Irish Roman Catholic.

If Scottish football and Scottish society doesn’t accept that truth then there will never be an end to the racism and the bigotry.

In all the brouhaha, one bright light was almost missed. The launch at the weekend of the Ibrox Pride LBGTI supporters group is a huge credit to Rangers who have backed the initiative.

I have a feeling that it will be hard work to convince every Rangers fan of the club’s sincere intentions, and judged by one social media outlet Ibrox Pride might have a struggle on its hands.

For yet again the anonymous prats – and these cowards are always anonymous – have been having a pop on social media in extremely unpleasant ways. Here’s just a few comments from the Rangers Media website: “When do we get an all white, Protestant and heterosexual only supporters club?”

“Who the f*** in football cares about the LGBTQ community, go and f*** off somewhere else or sit your arse down and enjoy the game without being a f*****g drama queen!”

“Straight, white Brits become more & more marginalized on a daily basis ... they can stick their diversity up their arse!”

Like I say, it could be a struggle for Ibrox Pride. Oh, and any Celtic fans thinking they have a moral superiority should read next week’s column which I will write on Remembrance Sunday.

I applaud Rangers and Ibrox Pride for tackling something that is rife in the sport, namely homophobia, but on behalf of Lennon and others, can I suggest that Rangers, Scottish football and Scotland as a whole start tackling anti-Catholic Romophobia?