What is a person to do, when successful in their working life their youthful past becomes the hunting ground for imperfections? And when those imperfections are judged to be punishable years later to satisfy today’s obsessions, and the judges, like all of us, are imperfect themselves.
ENGLAND INTERNATIONAL CRICKETERS CONFRONT THEIR PAST
Ollie Robinson, 27 years old, all-rounder cricketer who starred in his debut test match for England against New Zealand in June 2021, made the mistake when a teenager some 8 or 9 years’ earlier of tweeting material now judged to be racist and sexist. By all accounts he was a nonconformist teenage cricketer with Yorkshire who broke some rules. Who unearthed the tweets and why is not clear? Now more mature, he apologised publicly for his historic error. What else can he do? Yet the guardians of virtue at the English Cricket Board (ECB) suspended him from playing for England while they investigate his moral suitability to represent England at cricket. Commentators have reacted in mixed ways. Certainly, Mike Atherton, a pundit and ex-England player, and Matthew Syed seem rather sceptical of the motives of the ECB, perhaps driven by fear of more criticism of systemic discrimination against people of colour in English cricket over which they have it seems presided for so long and done so little to change. It evidently took a long time indeed for women’s cricket to be accorded the respect which it deserves, and for male bastions such as the MCC to open its doors to women.
Mike Atherton quoted Mohin Ashraf, a teammate and room-mate of Ollie Robinson when at Yorkshire, and a Bradford born Asian, as saying “I know full well he isn’t a racist. Yes, his remarks were inexcusable and irresponsible. He’s apologised. We should forgive and move on.”
Is that not more of a common sense and grown-up reaction? Yet now the ECB is reviewing all past social media posts by its international players. Legendary bowler James Anderson is under scrutiny for a tweet in 2010 describing the then latest haircut of his fellow bowler, Stuart Broad, as making him look like a “15-year-old lesbian”. The ECB will be confronted with some judgements which they may find difficult, absent some common sense and proportionality, and realism about human relationships and humour between friends.
Matthew Syed notes “the ECB – an organisation whose judgement has fallen off the edge of a cliff – is happy to take cash playing in nations where misogyny is codified under the law, where homosexuality is punishable by death, where social discrimination is rife”. The smell of hypocrisy? The ECB is an illustration of the numerous organisations, where weak or insecure Boards take it upon themselves to apply life-changing judgements to people for their past, without context or sense of proportion, as the “virtue signal” to the world. Who are the saintly individuals, for example at the ECB – have any of them, perhaps even when somewhat younger than their current years or even recently, been guilty of, for example, bullying, being abusive in a working context or even domestically to a partner, or offending a fellow worker? Who in the world has never been guilty of some form of discrimination? See Sherbhert article Discrimination – Racism, Sexism and a spot of Ageism
Most recently, Eoin Morgan and Jos Buttler, the leaders of English one day cricket, it has been suggested, may have been discriminatory in communications addressing people as “Sir”, perhaps in mockery of the Indian tendency to use that term! Maybe they were laughing at idiosyncrasies of a nation. But is not that a source of great and general humour? Do not people laugh at exaggerated characteristics of the English, Irish and Scottish, or perhaps the berets and onions of the French? People’s odd manners are quite simply often funny and can be laughed at, and people who cannot laugh at themselves, whoever they are, wherever they are from, have perhaps some learning to do. To exclude Indian people or other races of colour from any form of humorous imitation could be regarded as discrimination in itself.
SELF-APPOINTED MEDIA “POLICE”
The Times of 9 June reported that Joanna Toch, a Senior Barrister at the Family Law Café, has been suspended by her legal practice, and Julie Burchill, a journalist, has been sacked from her column at the Daily Telegraph. The reasons are that they exchanged tweets, arguably mocking the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, containing banter around possible names for their new daughter. Apparently, they are guilty of racism, coming up with names such as Doria Oprah and then Doprah (Doria being a reference to the mother of the Duchess, and Oprah being Oprah Winfrey, who hosted the show for the Duchess to publicise her poor experience as a member of the UK Royal Family). The banter included a sentence “Don’t black names matter?”. Could it be that half the UK population are regularly making fun of, or are tired of, the Duke and Duchess, and their money-making activities from broadcasting and self-publicity, while wanting total privacy in their reclusive lives in the quiet village of Hollywood? Is the reaction of the Family Law Café and the Daily Telegraph puritans proportionate?
The same week saw Stonewall, the charity which supports the interest of homosexual and lesbian people, prompting controversy: first in its activist interference in championing behaviour to prioritise transgender people, which even Matthew Parris, a founder of Stonewall, criticised as inappropriate territory for them. And second, in relation to its league table of Diversity Champions where Stonewall judges how homo-friendly or homophobic employers are according to Stonewall’s criteria. Stonewall is accused of misrepresenting the law on equality in the instructions it conveys to participating organisations. It seems many a Government Department do what Stonewall tells them: for example, it instructs organisations to give employees multiple pass cards with different forms of gender expression so they can be a different gender each day if they choose.
Stonewall is instructing employers on the right language to use: the word “mother” being unacceptable, with “parent who gave birth” being more appropriate. Libby Purves of the Times referred to their dictat on language as “linguistic fascism”. While recognising that Stonewall has done some good work for the gay and lesbian community, it now runs the risk of undermining its reputation through excessive arrogance in its dictation. This risk is being sharpened by some employers now rejecting the Diversity Scheme.
Language contortions such as those required by Stonewall and their encroachment into important institutions are demonstrated in spades by NHS leadership on diversity. They recently published on its website a new glossary of words to ensure the NHS staff know the right terms to use and avoid to meet modern diversity requirements: it has been described apparently as “a guide to bonkers wokery”. The Times quoted Stephen Pollard of the Jewish Chronicle “It’s a truly extraordinary document. And chilling in what it reveals about the mindset within an important part of the NHS”.
The reactions of ridicule, disbelief and anger to the glossary resulted in it becoming unavailable on the website to the public, password protected, and described by the NHS as “not NHS guidance, was not intended for publication and it has been removed”.
So, how does this new language authoritarianism, seeking to entrench the extremes of every “ism” and phobia into how the British people communicate, connect with the ECB, Ollie Robinson and his teammates?
A THREAT TO SENSE, PROPORTIONALITY AND TOLERANCE
If enough British institutions, employers and arms of Government succumb to the weaknesses being demonstrated by the ECB, perhaps that will threaten the strengths of robustness, realism, proportionality and tolerance which a resilient society depends on, and of which the UK, at least until recently, has been a bastion. Surely the misdemeanours of childhoods long past, or of student days, cannot forever be excavated and used under the judgement of self-proclaimed virtue police to tarnish and destroy the lives of normal people?
Sterilising vocabulary and condemning organisations and ordinary people for not adopting the latest fashionable description that some unnamed or certainly unelected interest group decided to promote, must surely be resisted by anyone who purports to lead, whether in commerce, politics, media or other life activities. The nature of the world is that language will sometimes be used to offend, and it is a strength and a virtue perhaps of anyone with confidence and self-awareness. to be able to tolerate and shrug off that offence. Sherbhert commonly repeats President Obama: “I accept that people are going to call me awful things every day, and I will always defend their right to do so.”
