Call It Out formed in 2018 as a concerted response to a series of high-profile anti-Catholic and anti-Irish incidents.

 

Although these incidents were nothing new in Scotland, the time was right to establish an organisation capable of addressing and tackling bigotry and hatred against our community.

 

Incredibly, a vacuum existed whereby the Irish community – a centuries-old ethnic minority in Scotland - had no structured advocacy group to represent its interests.

 

And so our aim is to be that coordinated voice. Right from the beginning, Call It Out has campaigned against anti-Catholic marches past Catholic churches. Joined by trade unions and progressive groups committed to equality, our protests successfully stopped the Orange Order marching past St Alphonsus church in 2019.

 

In a short space of time, we've amassed almost 13 thousand followers on Twitter. Social media allows us to rapidly record instances of racism and bigotry, and to increase public awareness of any issues by tagging authorities.

 

Unfortunately, our community is overrepresented in prisons, among the poor, and as targets of hate crime based on religion. What's worse, rectifying these problems is complicated by the Scottish government's unwillingness to recognise us as a community.

 

In spite of these challenges we will continue to engage policymakers and politicians to redress the serious issues affecting the Irish diaspora in Scotland. We hope to work with other ethnic minority groups, the trades union movement, and political parties allied to enacting true equality for all of Scotland's citizens.

 

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Together, we can Call It Out.