04.07.1996

Three lions on your shirt

The 1996 European football championship has ideologically represented a cultural counterrevolution, or, in the words of James Connolly, a “carnival of reaction”.

Euro 96 has expressed the necessary ideological pretext for the cultural class unity of the white collar wimp (‘Men behaving badly, Baddiel and Skinner, Chris Evans) with the lumpen football hooligan. What was previously only hinted at has now become fully apparent, in that the deep emotional passions released by Euro 96 have become the vehicle to show the similarity between the supposed gentility of middle England with the xenophobia of the tabloids and the Trafalgar Square mob.

In his Friday Channel Four show Chris Evans summed up this ugly chauvinist mood when he shredded some Euro 96 tickets, and triumphantly proclaimed in post-modern mode that the final had already taken place because England had been knocked out, and therefore didn’t exist in terms of its actual occurrence. Evans’s promotion of the new ‘unofficial national anthem’, entitled ‘Three lions on your shirt - football’s coming home’, is the most specific and precise indication of this mass rightwing populist convergence, given that the song has been written by a member of the Lightening Seeds, who are an archetypal middle England indie band.

In this political context, the glib assurances of The Guardian about the overall good natured character of the sporting nationalism of Euro 96 only goes to show that bourgeois liberalism is another side of the move towards the consolidation of the most reactionary political forces on a nationalist and xenophobic basis.

The mythology of a ‘new national spirit’ is in the process of being re-created. The previous mistrust of football crowds has ·given way to televisual scenes of prolonged crowd sequences reminiscent of the last night of the proms. Crowd singing is now presented as a new form of community spirit, and the mass expression of ‘happy patriotic fervour’. Tabloid nihilistic culture is given the nod of acceptance by the BBC establishment, in relation to the prominence given to those individuals wearing pseudo-bowler hats advertising The Sun.

Yet continually this seemingly jovial atmosphere is challenged by the real nasty face of national chauvinism: the regular booing of the national anthems of opposing teams, and the arrogant refusal to accept the technical and organisational merit of a German team which lacked the presence of Klinsmann.

Similarly this narrow and one-sided attitude was vividly illustrated in the sentiments of the banner which proclaimed: “No Ginola, no Cantona, no support.” In other words only the selection of a French squad as demanded by the ‘British public’ will represent a team worthy to win the championship.

The biggest irony of all this is that the very merited success of the English team was due to its adoption of the patient ‘continental’ passing game. Terry Venables and his managerial successor, Glen Hoddle, are the proponents of a modern type of football in comparison to the previously insular reliance on the hopeful long ball tactic. The actual expression of sporting brilliance relies upon an internationalist understanding of learning from others, and the connected necessity to constantly challenge the nationalist ideology of the excluded other. This point has long been understood in the world’s most international of sports, athletics: eg, long distance runners are constantly trying to learn from and emulate the considerable achievements of the Kenyan runners.

However such technical considerations are deemed insignificant to the new-born and trendy nationalists. Those formerly embarrassed by previously plebeian expressions of ‘Englishness’ and who have now undergone a similar conversion to patriotic pride can only treat with scorn any serious consideration of the finer technical merits of football. Indeed such a process of reflection is obviously an anathema, and to be condemned as ‘negative thinking’, in comparison to the negative and psychological projection of ‘national well-being’ brought about by sporting success. For what is actually being celebrated is not the intricate skill of the professional football team, but rather what is being fetishised is the emotional capacity to momentarily overcome a sense of social and political powerlessness through alienating and projecting mythical power onto 11 sporting individuals. Thus it is the spectacle that is being worshipped and glorified, just as in the period of the declining Roman Empire the mass carnage of the gladiatorial games was able to provide a ‘suitable’ ideological and cultural diversion, and so undermine the development of oppositional political forms.

In this modern instance the mass sporting spectacle is being utilised to replace the exhausted and uninspiring imagery of the past in order to construct and consolidate the contemporary form of British imperialist ideology. So whilst the reconstruction in the opening ceremony of Saint George killing the dragon only attracts bemused and apathetic acknowledgement, Stuart Pearce’s suppression of his own ideological dragons, through his successful penalty kicks, acts as a form of national catharsis for the loss of past greatness.

How should revolutionary Marxists respond to these new reactionary ideological developments? Firstly, we need to be aware that this is the first serious attempt by the ruling class to use post-war popular music for its own ideological agenda. This involves the attempt to suppress the spontaneously proletarian and internationalist content to creative musical forms, and to try to culturally reduce music to an exclusive, particularist, white and suburban expression, whether it be gentle indie tunes, or laddish guitar music - eg, Lightening Seeds and Oasis.

Secondly, we need to develop theoretical criteria through which we can identify the most progressive and proletarian aspects of modern music and sport, and which oppose the reactionary attempt to interpret music and sport in narrow nationalist terms.

In summation, we have to be ready to understand the important political significance of cultural and sporting events, and be ready to elaborate a Marxist response.

Phil Sharpe