The press
The glare of global disgust
Paul Johnson
r When Labour MPs start rtanting about
`bloodstained kfugerrands' we can be sure that humbug is in the air and one longs for a G. K. Chesterton to tell them to chuck it. Fleet Street was right to give the 'rebel tour' of South Africa big play when the story broke, but after midweek the whole thing became a bore, with excessive, lacklustre coverage and leader-writers steel- ing themselves to make the right condem- natory noises. 'It has to be conceded', said an uneasy Daily Mail, 'that this short yet lucrative jaunt is bound to have regrettable consequences.' The Guardian man sounded even more weary: 'Those of us, long ago and far away,' he began, 'who were young when Peter Hain was young (and, indeed, a Young Liberal) are apt to feel a bit old and tired about sporting boycotts.' A good deal of irrelevant ideological froth has been thrown up,' the Observer thought, entire enterprise does not really deserve to be dignified by any discussion of general Prin9iples.' Indeed it quickly got matters down to the proper gossip column level by insisting the real point was that Mrs That- cher had refused to make the approved Parrot-squawks in the Commons because $he had been 'influenced by her husband' — an unlikely suggestion, I'd say. The Sunday Times, by contrast, had a great deal of ideological froth, news coverage, three feature articles, plus sports- Page features, and an excited leader, 'The Mask which Veils the Monster'. The tour 'threatens to wreck world cricket' and 'im- poverish English county cricket', as well as 'throw another spanner' into the `already creaking mechanism' of other world sports. It was a case of 'personal pecuniary greed', something unknown in Fleet Street, of 'subterfuge', of 'evading international agreements', an 'affront to the victims of apartheid'. Boycott was 'a pawn, albeit a rapacious one'. Cricket might 'seem a tea- Party to us' but 'sport is the issue of the mo- ment', the 'struggle' against 'a regime of tyrannical oppressicn'. It concluded Menacingly: 'We have to decide whose side we are on.' Well, whose side are we on? According to a Daily Mail National Opinion Poll, Published on Thursday, 'nearly eight out of ten men and women are either in favour of the unofficial tour or think it is of no im- Port ance'. It added: 'Nearly half the coun- try believes that spofting links with South Africa help to break down the barriers of racial prejudice.' The poll showed that 'the vilification that has followed the cricketers to Capetown is not echoed in the country'. This was confirmed by readers' letters, at any rate thOse in the Dai'y Telegraph. A. D. Russell of Shipton Bellinger described peo- ple who condemned the tour as 'arrogant', 'as bigoted and as contumelious as any Afrikaner extremist'. Their behaviour was `hypocritical', wrote A. B. Covington, 'hypocritical in the extreme', echoed Rufus Trembath, 'ridiculous posturing' according to J. Howard Wilkinson. Helen Head of Blackawton noted: 'Our supermarkets are full of tinned goods imported from South AfriCa.' Patrick Moore of Selsey asked, 'as a humble leg-spinner', why 'it is so dreadful to play cricket against South Africa, when we are quite happy to play Russia at foot- ball, even after Afghanistan?' S. Wignall of London SE9 was quite clear about his side: 'If I have to make a choice it will be South Africa.' In The Times's letter column Lord Chal- font expressed 'grave concern' at the 'con- fusion and hypocrisy' of the reaction, It was not 'reasonable, or indeed tolerable', he argued, 'that citizens of this country should be deprived, by harassment, blackmail or threat, of their freedom to pursue their sporting activities, either for pleasure or for gain, wherever they wish to do so'. Applauding Chalfont's 'timely and courageous protest', Edgar Palamountain thundered: 'This, Sir, is yet another exam- ple of the double standard under which the suppression of human rights is (rightly) condemned in South Africa and South America but regarded with tolerance when practised by Communist and black American dictatorships.' Not all readers took this line, however. Stephen Corrin thought Chalfont's point 'hysterical'. But anti-tour readers were not agreed about what it would actually do. Donald Penheath insisted: 'I applaud the action of Boycott and Co. in playing cricket in South Africa. Any action which serves to keep a racist regime permanently in the glare of global disgust is to be applauded.' David Evans, on the other hand, told fellow Guar- dian readers that, as a result of the tour, warders in South African prisons 'will strut more confidently', police will feel 'more secure in their brutalities' and troops 'il- legally occupying Namibia or adventuring in Angola' will 'shed some of their doubts'. 'Because of this tour,' he concluded, 'more people will die.' Really? The Times wailed last Tuesday that the tour might lead `to the end of Test cricket as we have known it'. The Sunday Times insisted that cricket has to be 'run by national and world bodies. That is the only way it can be made to work.' One can't help asking whether, if cricket 'as we have known it' is now a killing matter and can only be 'made to work' by 'national and world bodies', its demise might not be in the general interest. There are plenty of other kinds of cricket. It was a relief to turn to another debate, also in the Telegraph let- ters column, on whether women cricketers should wear skirts or trousers, Mrs J. M. Lawrence of Swanage, writing as 'a member of the first touring team to. visit Australia and New Zealand in 1934-5', hot- ly denied a reader's.claim that trousers were better since women 'stand still and bend over most of the time'. Women on the field, she wrote, were 'extremely active', and `their well-tailored, divided skirts are neat from all angles'. Despite the disappearance of 'long white lisle stockings' the 'back view of women cricketers' still 'compared favourably with the back view of a Rugby scrum'. Because of skirts, women's `behaviour on the field kept up the old stan- dards'. There was, she concluded trium- phantly, `no undignified embracing of each other at the fall of a wicket'. Good to hear that some cricketers, at least, are not in danger of the glare of global disgust.
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