Millwall won’t take the knee but the tradition exists for a reason: to say NO to racism
It is reported that after Saturday’s disgraceful booing of players taking the knee at Millwall’s first home match with spectators they won’t do so again when they play QPR on Tuesday.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/55223935
Taking the knee is quite a recent protest tradition which started in the US often involving sports players kneeling rather than standing for the US national anthem:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._national_anthem_protests_(2016%E2%80%93present)
It has not previously been much taken up in the UK not least because in most contexts there isn’t much concern if people don’t stand up for God Save the Queen or mumble their way through the words at sporting events.
In that sense, as the seminal work on tradition by George Rude and Terence Ranger argued we are inventing a tradition, and all the best traditions are invented.
Taking The Knee became common here at sporting events and elsewhere to mark the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police earlier in the year. It was picking up on a tradition invented in the US and for a very important reason, to take a stand against racism.
There is plenty of historical precedent for the invention of actions that become traditions. For example the point that no one thinks much in 2020 of those who don’t stand for the English national anthem can be traced back (in part) to January 1819
At the Manchester Theatre Royal, soldiers attacked Henry Hunt supporters who refused to uncover, take off their white hats for God Save The King, just months before the Peterloo Massacre took place in August 1819 where Hunt was the speaker.
It was politics certainly, a politics that led to the start of Parliamentary Democracy.
The statement by Millwall supporters (at link above) that they don’t support taking the knee because they don’t like the politics of Black Lives Matters is fully in line with all those ‘I’m not a racist but..’views one can here.
Black Lives Matters is a movement not a political party containing people with varying ideas and strategies. All of them are united however by the principle that racism is a bad thing and publicly opposing it is important.
Black Lives Matter and so does the tradition of Taking The Knee
My late father never stood for the queen. He always said she and her family should stand for him and all the others, who had fought in their name during WW2.