Opinion No, a win for England is not a win for Johnson | Morning Star (morningstaronline.co.uk)
Said the Socialist Worker on Tuesday: “If football comes home, it’s going to Johnson’s house. Let’s not stand at the door begging to be let in.”
With dreary predictability, one section of the left, the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), has come out with a well-worn argument on the false consciousness of supporting England (they seem to have mislaid Scotland and Wales) at the Euros.
This kind of miserabilism isn’t restricted to the SWP — there’s plenty of others on the left who grasp their ideological pearls nervously at the sight of England, St George, and football.
What are they all so afraid of?
This summer, Harry Kane, Gareth Southgate and Raheem Sterling have done more to challenge popular racism than tens, hundreds, thousands of Socialist Worker placards. In contrast, the manager and players have taken on, and won, the argument around race, protest and its place in sport.
The racists haven’t disappeared, but they’ve been firmly isolated. That Tory MP Lee Anderson, who says he’s boycotting England games over taking the knee, is now looking pretty stupid — and very lonely.
The racist Twitterati who the morning after the semi-final the night before tweeted a picture of Sterling captioned “What Englishman would cheer this team on,” going anything but viral with their hate, have also been left lonesome with only their hatred to make up for nobody listening to them.
The SWP derides all these shifts as the product of “plastic rubbish,” which is a fundamental misunderstanding of how popular racism can be challenged and shifted. All the more surprising, and worrying, from the main backers of the Stand Up To Racism campaign.
Fifty-five years ago, the all-white England team of 1966 represented the English society of that era. The 2021 line-up could hardly be more different, including the manager. They symbolise and ignite a conversation around race, national identity and Englishness on a nationwide scale that conventional politics could only dream of. Instead, from their political pulpit, they preach, deride, and absent themselves, incapable of contributing or contesting.
Which is to treat fans as bucketheads. Anybody who seriously believes that an England win will be celebrated as a victory for Johnson has clearly never been to an England game, sat in a packed pub watching an England match, or chatted with their workmates about all these England victories and the team that achieved them.
The idea, should England win the Euros, that fans will credit Johnson with the team finally lifting a trophy again is so ludicrous to actually be quite funny. Harry lifts the Euro 2020 cup and all around Wembley “There’s only one Boris Johnson” rings out. Really? I’d like to see the person trying to get that chant going.
It’d be a trophy won by a team, according to right-wing critics, stuffed full of Marxist influences for taking the knee. I’ve no idea if a quick read of The Communist Manifesto is part of the players’ pre-match warm up, but perhaps self-professed Marxists and others on the left could learn a lesson or two from this collective – resolutely working class and multicultural in their composition – on how they articulate their anti-racism.
Of course there’s a wide variety of political outcomes from an event like these Euros. The Tories will whip up the martial and imperial while defining a viciously racist English nationalism to see off Scottish independence and at the same time reasserting their forlorn “global Britain” post-Brexit project.
It is surely the job of politics to seek to confront the possibility of such an outcome on the popular cultural terrain, of which the England football team is so obviously a big part, where these ideas manifest themselves and take hold.
This means stepping outside of the cosy world of placard-wavers, paper-sellers and meeting-goers to find the means for conversation and contestation, rather than beating a headlong high-minded retreat after the fashion of a miserabilist tradition which, on very first impression, spots an England flag being waved, worn or painted on a face and doesn’t like what it sees.
In and amongst all those waving and wearing the St George come 8pm tomorrow will be plenty of workers, and as an England fan I’d hazard a well-informed guess there’ll be more than a sprinkling of socialists too.
Perhaps the next time anybody on the left seeks to write us all off as a lost cause, they might ask what we think rather than presume he or she knows already and write us off accordingly.
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An interesting piece is yesterdays People's Daily.
By Mark Perryman who is the co-founder of Philosophy Football.
And this one
We love football, we hate racism | Morning Star (morningstaronline.co.uk)
EURO 2020 is not the first major sporting event to find itself at the centre of a storm over racism.
The 1968 Olympics black power salute by athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos was an iconic moment for anti-racists and boldly expressed the ideals of black power amid the civil rights movement and the fight against the Vietnam war.
Opposition to the Springboks’ tour in 1969-70 brought the reality of South Africa’s apartheid regime to the heart of British society.
It is over 25 years since the day footballer Eric Cantona launched himself into the stands at Selhurst Park to kung fu kick a racist — a much-celebrated moment.
The England team’s insistence on taking the knee — in the face of booing and opposition from the British government — has created a storm.
Taking the knee is evidence that the Black Lives Matter movement was not just a “moment” but has made a permanent mark on our society.
The government may well regret its support for attacks on the team in the light of their amazing success.
Boris Johnson is now wearing his No 10 England shirt — but we should never forget that he and Priti Patel were defending the “right” of so-called supporters to boo the England team for its stance against racism.
It’s ironic that an England team predominantly made up of the sons of immigrants, with leading black players, should now be lauded by a government that does nothing but attack immigration — from immigration raids to the Windrush scandal.
They opened the door for the likes of Nigel Farage and Laurence Fox to attack the players, while Tory MPs compared Take The Knee to England players giving the fascist salute in front of Hitler in the 1930s and called for a boycott of England games — without any challenge from the Tory leadership.
Far from being the pampered elite that the racist right would like to paint them as, players like Raheem Sterling and Marcus Rashford have experienced racism first hand — both as young men growing up in working-class communities and as star players, with online abuse and attacks by the media.
Their example has clearly inspired the team. Gareth Southgate and the whole England team were prepared to stand firm — despite the boos and the government’s failure to condemn them.
But the team’s stance is also a reflection of the wider sentiment of anti-racism that exists in many multicultural working-class communities.
It’s interesting that Italy and England — the two finalists who’ll meet this Sunday — have the highest level of support among their populations for their teams taking the knee.
Johnson’s and Patel’s attack on Take The Knee is part of their “culture war” — an assault on so called “woke” culture and their ongoing attacks on the anti-racist movement.
They are desperate to drive back the gains of the BLM movement, from their new “free speech” Bill for university campuses to the new police Bill that — alongside its attack on Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities — targets those who pull down the statues of racists and slaveowners with 10-year sentences.
The last thing the government wants is popular cultural figures promoting anti-racism on such a massive stage.
Patel argued that she was against the “gesture politics” of Take The Knee. But it’s clear that this is more than just a gesture.
Thousands of people in working-class communities across Britain joined Take The Knee events last summer organised by Stand Up to Racism as part of the BLM explosion — alongside the TUC we initiated these actions in towns, cities and workplaces on the anniversary of the death of George Floyd on May 25 this year.
The “gesture” by England, Belgium, Wales and other teams has inspired anti-racists.
The German and Scotland teams joined England players in solidarity to Take The Knee despite the years of bitter rivalry between the teams because, as German manager Joachim Low said, they “shared the values” of the BLM movement.
But while international teams have come together to oppose racism, Johnson and Patel prefer the model of conflict jingoism and nationalism expressed by George Orwell: “[Football] has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words, it is war minus the shooting.”
And talking about wars, we should remember Italian footballer Bruno Neri who in the 1930s was an anti-fascist and partisan. In 1944 at the age of 33 he was murdered by the fascists.
In the wake of the incredible BLM movement amid the sharpening political polarisation of pandemic and crisis, the Euro 2020 has reflected this, with players across different borders standing together, and a particularly strong example was the unity of Scotland joining England in #TakeTheKnee, going against the grain of the nationalistic jingoism that is whipped up by the Establishment and runs alongside the tournaments, to challenge institutional racism on a global stage.
On Sunday we celebrate the fact that at an event watched by tens of millions, England players will Take The Knee against racism again. We hope the Italian team will join them.
But we should never allow the Tories’ attempts to stoke up opposition to anti-racism be forgotten or allow themselves to wrap themselves in “the flag” after attacking a team that has faced hostility to highlight the ongoing reality of racism.
The Tories’ Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities report claimed that institutional racism doesn’t exist in Britain — despite Covid-19 and the ongoing reality of police racism and discrimination in education, housing, employment and throughout our society.
That’s why they hate the fact that England players won’t forget the lesson of George Floyd’s death — that black lives do matter and the time for being silent is over.
We love football, we hate racism.
Weyman Bennett is co-convener of Stand Up to Racism.
