The Celtic Board. Celtic Champions 2025. Dundee United v Celtic, 26 April 2025. Photo Vagelis Georgariou (The Celtic Star).
Tensions between the Celtic board and its most passionate supporters have simmered for several years. The Bernard Higgins saga of 2021, when fans mobilised to block the appointment of a former senior police officer to a club role, exposed deep mistrust about how the club views its own people. Supporters who had felt criminalised under the now-repealed Offensive Behaviour at Football Act saw the move as an insult.
Then came the 2023 suspension of the Green Brigade. Officially, it was about safety breaches and unauthorised movement inside the stadium. In practice, many saw it as punishment for pro-Palestinian displays. Serious allegations were floated at the time, threats to staff, break-ins, but nothing materialised, and the ban quietly lifted.
Each episode however left scars, each also widened the distance between the club’s hierarchy and the support it depends on.
Mark Hargreaves started as the Celtic FC Head of Safety, Security and Operations this summer.
Similar to his predecessor, and Bernard Higgins who fans successfully prevented from being appointed to the same role, Mark joined following a long career in the police. pic.twitter.com/mH34wH2HQG
— North Curve Celtic (@NCCeltic) November 8, 2025
When Mark Hargreaves was appointed this summer, many perhaps hoped for a reset. A former Chief Superintendent of Police Scotland and Assistant Inspector of Constabulary, he brought with him credentials and authority. What he didn’t bring, according to supporters, was empathy.
Under his tenure, policing around the standing section has intensified. Barriers and fences have appeared, ticket checks have multiplied, and police officers, once absent by mutual agreement, are now a regular presence on the concourse. Fans say it has changed the atmosphere entirely, to feeling edgy, suspicious, and confrontational.
The Green Brigade claim that at an August meeting, Hargreaves acknowledged the absence of any fair disciplinary process and promised to work with them to build one. Since then, however, the relationship has deteriorated beyond repair. The October incident, they insist, is the inevitable consequence of a security policy that treats supporters as a risk to be managed, not a community to be understood.
And for many, it all feels familiar, another ex-police appointment, another escalation, another clash between order and expression.
We oppose collective punishment pic.twitter.com/nEsLWmaeg7
— Celtic Fans Collective (@CFC_Collective) November 8, 2025
Into this atmosphere today stepped the Celtic Fans Collective, a broad coalition of supporter groups that includes the Green Brigade, the North Curve and many others. Their statement following the ban was both a show of solidarity and a sharp rebuke.
They accused the club of“collective punishment without a fair or transparent investigation,” contrasting the speed of the club’s action against its inertia over the “London Road kettle”, the mass detention of Celtic fans before last season’s derby. That event, eventually investigated through the Fairhurst Report, resulted in no disciplinary action and no public defence of supporters.
The phrase collective punishment cuts to the heart of the supporters’ anger. By banning an entire section for the alleged actions of one or a few, the club has chosen the bluntest possible instrument. It may simplify stadium management, but it strips away any sense of fairness or proportionality and tells every supporter in that area that their individual conduct no longer matters.
“When fans are mistreated, the club looks away,” the Collective said. “When fans are accused, the club acts overnight.”
They also linked the timing to wider unrest. With the AGM approaching, shareholder activism rising, and discontent over proxy voting procedures raised via The Celtic Trust swirling, many believe the board sought to neutralise the loudest voices of protest. Whether or not that was the motive, the effect is the same, the group most visible in expressing dissent has been removed from the stage.
Continues on the next page…
