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Three Black England footballers have faced online racist abuse since missing key penalties in Sunday’s Euro final.
The match against Italy was the England men’s first major tournament final since 1966, when they won the World Cup. With the score level at 1-1 after extra time, a penalty shootout was needed to separate the sides. It was England who took the early advantage by slotting in their first two attempts. But Marcus Rashford hit the post, before Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka saw their efforts saved.
“As soon as Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka missed last night, I knew we would be waking up this morning to stories of racist abuse,” Sky commentator Gary Neville said. So it proved. By Monday morning, the players’ social media accounts were flooded with hateful messages. Monkey emojis and the n-word featured prominently.
Condemnation flowed from all quarters, including England’s Football Association, who, in a statement, also called on the government to ensure that “abuse has real life consequences” and on social media firms to “ban abusers from their platforms”. England manager Gareth Southgate called the abuse “unforgivable”. His captain, Harry Kane, termed it “vile”, and said anyone who perpetrated it was “not an England fan”.
Twitter and Facebook both said they had removed racist content and suspended a number of accounts.
Of the three players, Rashford is the best-known outside football for forcing the government into a U-turn over its decision not to continue providing food vouchers for poor children during school holidays. A mural of him in Withington – near Wythenshawe, his birthplace – was defaced after the penalty shootout. Akse, the original artist, quickly repaired the damage, and the mural was soon covered in messages of support, which will be preserved.
Rashford took to social media to say that “my penalty was not good enough”, but that “I will never apologise for who I am” and that “the response in Withington had me on the verge of tears.”
Sancho similarly apologised “to all my teammates, coaching staff and most of all the fans who I let down.” He wrote, “As a society we need to… hold these people accountable,” but added that “the positive messages and love and support” had “far outweighed the negative.”
Saka said, “I was hurting so much” after missing the decisive penalty, and called it a “sad reality” that social media companies “are not doing enough to stop these messages.”
Prime minister Boris Johnson announced on Wednesday that those who abuse footballers online will be banned from stadiums for up to ten years. He also emphasised that the Online Safety Bill, a draft version of which was published in May, will force social media companies to remove harmful content, including racist abuse. Failure to do so will incur fines of up to £18 million or 10% of annual global revenue, whichever is higher.
Critics, most prominently the Conservative MP David Davis, have called the bill a “censor’s charter”, but the government says the bill requires companies to protect “democratically important” content.
There have also been calls to end anonymity on social media, to discourage abuse, and make offences easier to prosecute. One petition to that effect has attracted over 680,000 signatures. However, opponents of the move argue that vulnerable people, such as victims of real-life abuse, need to remain anonymous, and that the level of identification already required by social media sites evidently does not prevent racism.
Johnson pays the penalty
In a way, it was bleakly fitting that England’s tournament should end with a torrent of racist abuse, as it had begun amid controversy over the players’ decision to take the knee before each match. The gesture, which originated with former NFL star Colin Kaepernick, became widespread as a protest against racism when the Black Lives Matter movement gained public attention last summer. A minority of England fans booed the taking of the knee. They argued variously that BLM espoused anti-capitalism, that its beliefs and actions were divisive, or simply that politics and sport should not mix. England’s players insisted that they were interested only in challenging racism.
Johnson initially refused to criticise those who booed; his spokesperson said he respected the right “to peacefully protest”, though later reported that the prime minister wanted people to “cheer [the team] on, not boo.” Home secretary Priti Patel dismissed taking the knee as “gesture politics”.
This was not the first ‘culture war’ row in which the government has become involved. Within the sporting arena, culture secretary Oliver Dowden recently criticised the England and Wales Cricket Board for suspending the bowler Ollie Robinson over racist and sexist tweets from 2012 and 2013. There were also scuffles over Oxford students voting to remove a portrait of the Queen, over the taking down of statues of slave traders and colonialists, and more. By wading into these often trivial debates, the government hopes to present itself to its base as a bulwark against ‘woke’ ideology and cancel culture.
But, in reaching the Euro final, England’s players have made themselves into national heroes, and their decision to take the knee is supported by a majority of both football fans and the general public. This time the government picked the wrong fight with the wrong enemy.
Johnson condemned the “appalling abuse”, while Patel expressed her “disgust” at the “vile racist abuse”. England defender Tyrone Mings hit back at Patel, writing that “You don’t get to stoke the fire at the beginning of the tournament… & then pretend to be disgusted when the very thing we’re campaigning against, happens.”
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer echoed the charge that the government had “stoke[d] a culture war” and now “realised they’re on the wrong side”.
There is growing alarm among Conservative MPs that the culture war strategy is toxic.
Tory MP Johnny Mercer said Mings was “completely right.” Steve Baker wrote to the Conservatives Against Racism, For Equality parliamentary group, declaring that the party had to change its attitude to taking the knee.
Further embarrassment for the government came in the form of Conservative MP for Dover, Natalie Elphicke, who messaged fellow MPs wondering whether it would be “ungenerous to suggest Rashford should have spent more time perfecting his game and less time playing politics.” The resounding answer, when the message was leaked, was yes, and Elphicke later apologised.