I didn’t feel shock or surprise when I heard there had been a serious racist incident at the Spurs v Chelsea game yesterday. Just deep disillusion with the state of our country today. It felt like the new normal. It wasn’t a question of if, but when it would happen.
The Professional Footballers Association, rightly, called for a government inquiry into racism in football but they also recognised that this was not just a football problem. In their statement, they said this: “It has become clear that football players are on the receiving end of the blatant racism that is currently rife in the UK, but they are not alone.”
They’re right, aren’t they? Football does have a problem with racism but football didn’t invent racism. I grew up in a time when racism was almost an accepted part of society, whether on television with programmes like ‘Love Thy Neighbour’ and any number of Spike Milligan shows. We were encouraged to laugh at racism, to effectively be racists ourselves. Years, decades, went by and racism gradually declined. It never went away but it was in the fringes, carried out by ill-educated bigots and far right political parties. What changed?
Politics is responsible. Not just Nigel Farage, a far right English nationalist, but more mainstream politicians, too. Boris Piccaninny Watermelon Letterbox Cake Bumboys Vampires Haircut Wall-Spaffer Spunk-Burster Fuck-Business Fuck-the-Families Get-Off-My-Fucking-Laptop Girly-Swot Big-Girl’s-Blouse Chicken-frit Hulk-Smash Noseringed-Crusties Death-Humbug Technology-Lessons Surrender-Bullshit French-Turds Dog-Whistle Get-Stuffed FactcheckUK@CCHQ Get-Brexit-Done Johnson* and his pals have, for years, stoked up the rhetoric on migrants, asylum seekers, refugees, especially when they are not white.
Let’s be honest: one of the main gambits by the powerful, well-funded groups who helped bring about Brexit was the language of racism. These horrible foreign people were all coming here from Europe to get free money, free houses and take the jobs of Englishmen and, for all we know, women. Theresa May’s ‘hostile environment’ was, let’s face it, not just aimed at illegal migrants: it was aimed at all migrants. The Windrush scandal wasn’t an accident, either. Where politicians lead, decent men and women follow. Which brings us back to Antonio Rudiger.
Presumably, the bone-headed morons who abused Rudiger saw him as just another black migrant. Never mind that their team, Spurs, has a significant number of black players. They might have thought: “Rudiger is black so it’s fair enough to abuse him. Our own black players won’t mind!” Or, more likely, they didn’t think at all.
By all means have a government inquiry on racism in football. Then, hold a national inquiry on the same subject, on the lines of a full public inquiry. The alternative, the line we usually take, is to do nothing. I expect the latter because any findings would likely incriminate the very people who ordered it in the first place.
* With acknowledgements to Stewart Lee who came up with Johnson’s full name in the Observer newspaper.
