A history of the present: Farage on racism & English cricket- carry on discriminating
Nigel Farage is, or claims to be, a cricket fan and is sometimes seen at high profile cricket matches. He has also appeared on Test Match Special’s View From a Boundary.
British racism and imperialism has a long history, much of it still untold, but Farage is a reminder that it exists in the present as well as the past.
Following his appearance at a Commons Select Committee to discuss his experiences of racism in cricket, former player Azeem Rafiq admitted and apologised for making an Anti-Semitic tweet ten years ago.
This led very quickly to Farage and others tweeting that given this was the case Rafiq’s account of racism in cricket could now be ignored and matters could carry on as before. Again that is part of the history of how official society has dealt with such matters. The carpet is lifted and unpleasantness is swept under it. Farage reminds us that the attitude remains.
There are two points here.
Firstly Rafiq’s owning up to an entirely unacceptable tweet doesn’t in any way invalidate his points about racism in cricket or remove the need for investigation and change.
Secondly an assumption that just because someone can see (and experience) one form of discrimination and oppression doesn’t automatically mean that they understand other forms of it.
That is the work of political education and building solidarity and action against the division that a society based on class exploitation has as part of its mode of operation. Rafiq has played a small but important part in challenging one part of that, but it requires the work of many.
Calling out the unpleasant intentions of Farage and the like is part of that too and has been going back into history.
Noting that the English left had perhaps (it can be argued) not developed such a significant body of theory as in some other countries, the socialist historian E P Thompson noted that this was partly because there was ‘so bloody much to oppose’ in what the British imperial Government was up to…
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