House of Commons debate on Statues, cricket and racism
Looking (virtually)at Hansard, the Parliamentary record for the last 5 years there are hundreds of references to cricket. Jacob Rees-Mogg is particularly keen on mentioning Somerset, the cricket team he supports.
There are very few mentions of racism and cricket amongst all the Parliamentary interventions however. Full marks therefore to Labour MP Rupa Huq for raising the matter in the context of Tory Culture Wars in a Commons adjournment on Monday evening. An extract and link to the full debate is below.
In the meantime Lord Ashcroft has tweeted a cartoon showing the W G Grace statue at Lords being attacked by the ‘woke’. I think not. W G’s beard is quite safe.
The Culture Secretary vowed in his most recent interviews to have more statues erected to unspecified British heroes, blocking what he sees as a kind of Britain-hating, statue-toppling metropolitan bubble that controls cultural institutions. He wants to replace it with red wall voters in the latest “war on the woke”—or front, battle, cultural cleansing or whatever we call it. Again, it looks like Government interference in a traditionally independent sector motivated by electoral calculation. I think people are saying the same about today’s cricket controversy.
Rupa Huq (Ealing Central & Acton) Adjournment Debate, House of Commons,7th June 2021
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