Last week one of the SNP’s flagship policies received yet another stinging shot across her bows, this time from one of the most unexpected of quarters. Since the end of the previous football season Alex Salmond has been attempting to push the Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications (Scotland) Bill through Holyrood in an avowed bid to tackle sectarianism in Scotland. The bill, which at first looked set to sweep through Parliament in record time thanks to a wave of public disgust at the Old Firm’s antics, has since stalled. Badly.

One organisation after another has lined up to blow holes through the proposed legislation, with critics describing it as “heavy-handed” and “unnecessary.” It isn’t just the political parties and football fans either, but church bodies, numerous NGOs and also high profile academics, among them former acting-head of the University of Edinburgh's School of History, Classics and Archaeology, Tom Devine. Surely the cruellest blow for Salmond came last week, however, when avowed anti-sectarian group Nil by Mouth joined the ranks of the opposition.
Nil by Mouth is Scotland’s leading anti-sectarian nongovernmental organisation. It claims to have found evidence of sectarianism “in schools, communities and workplaces across Scotland.”

Since the introduction of anti-sectarian legislation in 2000 Nil by Mouth has assisted in putting thousands of bigots behind bars.  And yet last week it came out saying that it wanted “less grandstanding and more understanding” from Alex Salmond’s administration. With support in Parliament ebbing rapidly it seems the First Minister will be forced to rely upon his own party’s majority vote alone to see the bill through.
All of this has important implications for Edinburgh. Nil by Mouth’s official stance comes barely a month after eleven Hibernian fans were lifted from their Edinburgh homes in a dramatic dawn raid on charges of sectarian aggravation at a recent football fixture. This would seem to support to the claim being made by opponents of the bill that current legislation is enough to tackle the bigots.

And yet Edinburgh has also made the case for the counter-argument – it was at Tynecastle, after all, that Hearts fan John Wilson mounted his assault on Celtic's manager Neil Lennon, the action that gave the right tide for the SNP’s policy ship to set sail. Wilson has since been cleared of the more serious charges, a fact that has enraged many Celtic fans.
Edinburgh is not free from sectarianism, indeed far from it. Take a walk down Lothian Road and it won’t take you long to find sectarian graffiti scrawled on a few walls. Of course the capital’s problems pale in comparison to Glasgow’s, but that’s no reason to disregard it. If anything Edinburgh’s recent record has been worse that the Glasgow area’s. What we find ourselves asking is, will Salmond’s legislative drive really improve matters, or does it stray into the murky territory of repression of free speech? It’s critics seem to think so, yet the First Minister isn’t likely to drop it any time soon.