AS England cricketer Oli Robinson is suspended for offensive tweets he made when he was 18, discussion erupts about England football fans booing the taking of the knee. Whoever said sport and politics don’t mix?
It’s funny how the discussion about English knee taking in support of Black Lives Matter has been miraculously transformed into talk in England about this being a choice made by “Our Boys”. As if the whole knee taking gesture has anything to do with football players.
Kier Starmer, who opposes booing, believes the knee taking is an “important collective decision by the team”. Starmer also condemned Boris Johnson as a coward for not denouncing the booing. The real cowardice, however, comes from those hiding behind the England players and putting the onus on them to make the knee taking decision. The same pressure has been placed on Scottish players.
Former PM Gordon Brown, unable to see the real world, argues that England players taking the knee, “brings the whole country together”. Demonstrating that Brown continues to live on another planet, he has warned against fan booing because, apparently, it would be bad for Britain “if a culture war started to develop”. And I thought the point of being “woke” is that you’re actually awake. Well wake up, Gordon, that ship has sailed, and it wasn’t football fans who started it.
READ MORE: Stuart Waiton: Do not panic about racism in football
When we live in such intolerant and immature times that you face having your international career destroyed by teenage Tweets, the “choice” of knee taking is not the freest one you’ll ever make.
Sport and politics don’t mix, it seems, except when it is the politics of the new elites.
But then again, the constant anti-racist message fed to football fans is arguably not politics in any meaningful sense because with politics you have different arguments, debates and ideas promoted. Here you have simplistic mantras and chants, "Say No to Racism” or “Black Lives Matter” flashed across your screen and around stadiums. Like lab rats, the imagined simplistic fan will lap this up and, hey presto, the country magically comes together.
Manager Gareth Southgate has gained praise for his “Dear England” letter where he explains his patriotism and notes that for football players, “It’s their duty to continue to interact with the public on matters such as equality, inclusivity and racial injustice”. And I thought their duty was to kick a ball around a pitch?
The point of course is that many a booing football fan is sick of being lectured to about racism. They also have questions about the BLM movement, despite the ludicrous attempts by the authorities to say that taking the knee has nothing to do with events in the US, or with their own moralistic crusade.
When you read fan statements, they make these points. They dislike the subservient gesture of getting on your knees. They oppose the culture war that has resulted in the attack on statues, and they hate the cancel culture that is evident everywhere, from universities to workplaces in popular culture and, of course, sport.
Ironically, the denunciation of the booing and the moral pressure being placed on fans is an expression of cancel culture itself and indeed an enforcement of the culture war that Mr Brown can only see when it comes from the other side.
When it comes to “educating yourself”, it is in fact our new elites who need to be educated about the meaning of tolerance and the importance of allowing people to express themselves in public, whether you like what they say or not.
If the England fans are all racist, then simply telling them to shut up or flashing slogans at them is unlikely to have any effect. If there is more to it than that perhaps you need to listen to people and have some debates and discussions about what the problem is. Perhaps most of all, you should realise that you should be doing this in the world of politics not sport.
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