The Euros final is coming up. Everywhere I go I see St George’s flags, “its coming home” social media posts, and general celebratory sentiment. But as a second generation Cypriot migrant, I do not have it in me to support the team of my coloniser, nor to take part in these celebrations.
I grew up hearing my dad express his dislike of English and American foreign policy numerous times, and how he questioned the lyrics of the English national anthem and what they represented. At the time, I didn’t understand why. And to be honest, I’m not sure my dad fully understood why, on a conscious level at the very least. The more I think about it, the more I understand.
But first, a bit more about my dad. My dad was born in Cyprus in 1957, three years before Cyprus gained its independence from Britain. He grew up in Cyprus, witnessing the violent after-effects of British divide and rule policies, the racialisation of Muslims and Christians into “Turks” and “Greeks”, the inter-communal hostilities and the rise of Greek and Turkish nationalisms on the island. He was 16 when the Turkish invasion, covertly backed by England and America, happened. Had he been a bit older, he would have probably been called to fight against the invading Turkish troops: and he would have probably died or become a “missing” person, never to be seen again until his bones were found 40 years later under the Turkish flag on the Cyprus mountains. This is actually the fate that befell my mum’s cousin, whose bones were found decades after he was called to fight and went “missing”.
My dad came to the “colonial motherland” to study in the 80s, and is now a public servant with a thick Cypriot accent. He has told me that he deliberately never tried to change his accent, and told me about the racist and xenophobic abuse he sometimes received from the people he was serving.
So I think that given his life experiences, my dad has always, on a subconscious and embodied level, felt colonialism and Empire to be antithetical to justice. And it is with this upbringing that I write this piece. I was never political growing up, a testament to my various levels of privilege, but I think this sense of knowing and feeling injustice has always been in my bones and my lineage. It just had to be searched for.
Colonialism, racism and football
“We like migrants when they are convenient to our sporting success – but then treat them like sh*t”.
–Kim Foale
There are many Black players in the England football team. Out of the 26 members of the full England squad, 11* have heritage from “former” colonies, almost all of them British: Jamaica, Congo, Angola, Gambia, Ivory Coast, Montserrat, Ghana and Nigeria. Anti-Black racism in (British) football has been well documented for years, no matter how well the players perform, highlighting the fact that Black people are viewed as perpetual outsiders in the UK and across Europe. But Black players certainly face heightened levels of racist abuse when their country loses, since their country’s poor performance is blamed on them. Football doesn’t unify in general, but it certainly doesn’t unify when England loses either. Fleeting “love” and “celebration” towards England’s Black players is retracted as soon as England lose, and are replaced with racist abuse. The “love” and “respect” shown is a faux kind of love that is only shown if the Black players meet certain conditions i.e. win. The Black players deserve better than to be the punching-bag or scapegoat for England’s defeat: and they also deserve better than mere conditional “love” from England’s White fans. Telford Vice also comments on this faux love, writing: “Were [Raheem Sterling] not useful to England as one of the best players on the planet, Sterling could be relegated to the kind of second- or even third-class citizenship that has led to Jamaicans being dehumanised and deported”.
I also wonder what the experience of these Black players was like growing up in the UK. I wonder what their ancestors’ experiences were like migrating to the UK. I think about this all in the context of how racism is deeply embedded in British society, the prevalence of stop and search, deaths in police custody, racist abuse, and the history of racist, anti-migrant legislation in this country, designed to keep out or suppress non-White populations. I often think about the phrase “we are here because you were there”, and how migration is inherently linked to the debilitating conditions of colonialism that ravage “former” colonies. And so I view the diversity of the English football team as a product of colonialism.
What does the England football team symbolise for me?
“People around the world, and especially in the English-speaking world, are constantly assaulted with British and English self-portrayals that many times run counter to their lived experiences of domination and colonisation”.
–Patrick Gathara
I understand the very powerful allure of representation, of seeing people who look like you play for the English national team. But I also question the limits of representation, since representation is always inclusion on unequal terms, on the coloniser’s or oppressor’s terms. The notion of Englishness was never meant to serve racialised communities: its foundations are inherently exclusionary. Representation is not liberation, and never will be.
And so I view the England football team, or any English sporting team, as a representation of Englishness, and colonial legacies. These are not things that I can reclaim. Watching England play makes me think about “sportswashing”. In this case, I think about the diversity of the English football team being weaponised in a really insidious and delusional way by people to say “look, our country isn’t racist any more”. I think about people weaponising that diversity to engage in historical revisionism, by presenting an innocent inclusive England. This is a whitewashing of our violent history, but also our violent present, as is exemplified by the Hostile Environment, deportations, detentions and increasingly reactionary anti-migrant policies. The migrant experience has always been marked by race-based exclusion and marginalisation, and so this weaponisation feels like gaslighting. It dismisses the very real racism people experience as non-existent.
I cannot identify with the entitled arrogant celebrations surrounding Englishness at sporting events. I don’t feel pride at being British, or pride at the Union Jack or St George’s Flags, which I view as symbols of Empire and fascism. My country, Cyprus has been decimated by British divide and rule, the legacies of which still last to this day. When I hear “it’s coming home”, I think about the people displaced from their homes by colonialism, who come to the UK to build a new home, and who are subjected to violence because of it. As Patrick Gathara writes, these chants “sound even worse in the context of a nation that steadfastly refuses to re-examine its past conduct and instead appears to glamorise “Empire”, while its political leaders encourage fans to boo players for taking a stand against systemic injustice”.
Whilst I don’t want England (or any country for that matter) to lose because I don’t want Black football players to be subjected to (even more) racist abuse, I also cannot support England at the same time, because of what England represents to me, and what it always will represent to me.
by Anastasia Gavalas
Notes:
* For instance, Kyle Walker, Ivan Toney and Ollie Watkins are of Jamaican descent, Joe Gomez and Jude Bellingham are of Gambian descent, Eberechi Eze and Bukayo Saka are of Nigerian descent (Igbo and Yoruba respectively), Ezri Konsa is of Congolese and Angolan descent, Marc Guehi is of Ivory Coast descent, Trent Alexander Arnold is of Caribbean (Montserrat) descent, and Kobbie Mainoo is of Ghanaian descent.