A video shared on Twitter/X shows a University of Glasgow Professor referring to protesters as “huns” during a dispute with a police officer.
Jeanette Findlay, University of Glasgow Professor, has been seen referring to Unionist and anti-immigration protesters as “huns” in an online video. In the video, widely shared on X/Twitter, the Professor of Economics can be seen arguing with a Police officer urging her to move, followed by the words “are you moving the huns? Are you moving the loyalists?”.
Findlay is a Professor of Economics at the University of Glasgow, where she has been employed since 1987. The comments were made at a demonstration held in George Square on Saturday 7 September in which an anti-immigration protest was met with a counter protest by pro-immigration and left-wing activists.
The term “hun” is considered by some to be a sectarian slur referring to members of the Protestant community. In 2024, a man was charged with breach of the peace after shouting the word at a police officer, although the judge found that the man was not motivated by religious prejudice.
Jeanette Findlay spoke at the demonstration as part of a trade-union backed ‘stop the far-right’ campaign. Taking to a stage erected in George Square, Findlay said: “I hope you will indulge me now to say something in a personal capacity, because I am a member of an immigrant community. Like many of you here, I’m part of a community that came here to escape starvation and to this day we are different in Scotland. The Irish community is overrepresented in the prison system, overrepresented among poorer communities, and hugely overrepresented in terms of the victims of religious-aggravated crime.”
She went on to accuse the council of “facilitating racists to organise hate-fests” and also accusing “political police” of segregating a group anti-racist protesters from the wider demonstration. Videos shared on X/Twitter, including by Findlay herself, show a group of masked protesters associated with Celtic FC’s ‘Green Brigade’ being segregated by the Police and prevented from joining the wider anti-racist protest.
In 2007, she was dismissed as Chairman of Celtic Trust after insisting, on a BBC radio show, that songs sung by football fans in support of the Irish Republican Army were “songs from a war of independence going back 100 years”. At the time, Findlay’s comments were condemned by an anti-sectarianism campaign group as well as by numerous Celtic fans.
Since she began working at the University of Glasgow in 1987, Findlay has challenged her employer over what she calls sex discrimination three times; a fact she calls “disappointing and dispiriting”. In 2004, she won a tribunal which was settled within a week, and also settled an equal pay case internally a number of years later. In her most recent tribunal, however, her claim of being discriminated against in the promotion process to professorship was dismissed in 2023.
The Glasgow Guardian has contacted Jeanette Findlay for comment.
