Double disgrace for UK as racists target footballers

It was a double heartbreak for England last Sunday when the national football team lost to Italy in the final of the Euro 2020 championship, then a bunch of racists added disgrace to defeat by abusing black players on social media. 

The three players targeted were Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and a teenager, 19-year-old Bukayo Saka, all of whom failed to score in the penalty shootout. A mural of Rashford in Manchester was also defaced with swear words. 

Team manager Gareth Southgate described the abuse as “unforgivable” and it was notable how the other players on the pitch, regardless of colour, hugged and comforted the distraught trio. 

Held to account

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said those responsible for posting racial abuse “should be ashamed of themselves”. The fact is, however, modern technology now allows lowlifes to insult whoever they like anonymously, with a potentially enormous audience seeing the comments and probably joining in. 

The inescapable conclusion is that social media platforms such as Facebook, Tik Tok, YouTube, Twitter and the like must be controlled in the same way as traditional publishers and broadcasters. 

As a correspondent wrote on the BBC’s website, “If racist comments appeared below this article, written not by me but by someone who had read it, the BBC would be held to account and the UK regulator, Ofcom, would decide on a penalty, probably a fine.”

However, Ofcom does not have such powers over social media, which are mostly self-regulating. It seems likely that this situation will be changed in forthcoming legislation, the long anticipated Online Safety Bill. It could enable Ofcom to fine social media companies up to £18 million if they fail in “their duty of care”. 

The Home Secretary, Priti Patel, said she was “disgusted” by the abuse of the three players. However, another black international, Tyrone Mings, accused Ms Patel herself of “stoking the fire” of racism. 

Last month, Ms Patel described the practice of “taking the knee” before matches as “a type of gesture politics”. 

Writing on Twitter, Mings said, “You don’t get to stoke the fire by labelling our anti-racism message as ‘gesture politics’ and then pretend to be disgusted when the very thing we are campaigning against happens.” 

It seems we might be heading in the right direction on this sordid business, but we have a long way to go. 

***

I was saddened to hear of the death on July 7 of the Grand Old Man of Kenyan journalism, Hilary Boniface Ng’weno. 

It is all of 57 years since I first shook hands with Hilary in the newsroom of the Daily Nation, prior to his assuming editorship of that newspaper in its early, uncertain days. 

Hilary promptly took steps to identify the Nation more closely with an African readership, turning the paper away from the European mindset of its founders. Partly, he did this by opening its pages to Kenyan writers through columns which made their names, more so by focusing on issues of national and pan-African consciousness. 

It must have become quickly apparent to Hilary that to achieve his ambitions at a time of growing authoritarianism by government, he needed to be his own man. Whatever the reason, he quit the Nation job and launched an astonishing career that embraced just about every conceivable aspect of journalism, from the written word to television, by way of humour, economics, finance, children and satire. 

In my own mind, his crowning achievement was The Weekly Review, in which Hilary developed a unique technique by which he was able deftly to criticise the powers-that-be, where criticism was justified, yet remain just this side of official retaliation.

I believe the The Weekly Review, at its best, was one of the finest news magazines in all of Africa and lit the way for many others. 

When Hilary first arrived at the Nation, word went round that the new editor had graduated in physics (nuclear physics, we heard), not the ordinary path into newspapers. But then nothing Hilary did was ordinary. He was his own man, a person I much admired. God rest his soul.

***

Somebody sent me a list of famous comments about politicians, not one of them complimentary. I think Hilary Ng’weno might have cracked a smile. 

Politicians are all the same. They promise to build a bridge, even where there is no river – Nikita Khrushchev. 

Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber. – Plato.

I offered my opponents a deal – If they stop telling lies about me, I will stop telling the truth about them. – Adlai Stevenson. 

Instead of giving a politician the keys to the city, it might be better to change the locks. – The late British athlete Doug Larson. 

Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Government. But then I repeat myself. – Mark Twain. 

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