As a boy, my Saturday mornings were spent taking the bus to town to the arcade in Shore Terrace.
It was there I’d buy Superman comics and generally mess about with my mates.
A highlight was watching the verbal jousting in the City Square between members of the public and the various speakers who frequented it, pontificating on their chosen subjects from their soapboxes to whoever was listening.
On any given Saturday there would be everything from communists to religious proselytisers to end-of-the-world doomsday merchants, holding forth and giving as good as they got from the various hecklers who would be arguing the toss with them.
Between feeding the doos and generally larking about, it was all really background noise to me and my pals and there never seemed to be any real menace involved.
I may have been too young and too naive to appreciate any underlying tensions but it always seemed to be more a form of street entertainment than to offer any real hint of aggro.
‘World has changed’
But watching recent events throughout the UK in light of the desperate Israel Palestine conflict, including the very hostile reaction to Chris Law’s address in that same City Square on Saturday, there’s no doubt that the world I knew as a young boy has changed dramatically.
The MP for Dundee West, in trying to offer a balanced view of the current horrors in the Middle East, was berated and shouted down in a confrontational and bellicose manner by those around him who objected to his condemnation of the terrible atrocities committed on both sides.
They wanted his denunciation to apply to one side only.
In London and elsewhere too it looked to me like siren voices were drowning out those airing any view which didn’t correspond with their chosen narrative.
But what worried me most was the feeling that some of what I was seeing was driven by religious fervour and belief – and not just a debate over disputed historic injustices.
If this is the case then we are heading for very troubling waters.
‘And you’re a Catholic’
I remember the first time I was approached and asked to stand for Westminster in the Dundee West seat by an SNP MP.
We met in a café in the Perth Road and after a long discussion I asked him why they wanted me.
He mentioned all the expected stuff about having a local profile knowing many folk throughout the city and so on – and then he whispered almost conspiratorially.
“And you’re a Catholic.”
I don’t know how he knew that but I do know I found it both amusing and perplexing.
From memory I suggested that if the Catholic community had ever been told by the Vatican or priests how to vote, those days were long gone.
I thought, until recently, religion and politics were separate bedfellows.
I’m not daft enough not to know individual politicians and activists will have their views shaped by their various religious views but we need to make sure no religion of any hue drives government policy on this or any other issue.
Sir Keir Starmer is finding his leadership of the Labour party under pressure from some MPs and activists and has suspended senior MP Andy McDonald for the use of the phrase “From the river to the sea”, which many Jewish people find threatening and racist.
The current crisis is set to cause enormous grief, misery and loss of life unless some miraculous agreement can be found to halt the madness.
The last thing needed is religion stoking tensions further.
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