02.12.2004

No to imperialism's boycott

Well, even Lord Harris - convinced as he was that cricket’s noble and ‘timeless’ values were a glorious reflection of the British ruling class - might have problems applying this yardstick to the current England tour of Zimbabwe, which has been dogged by acrimonious disputes and controversies right from its very inception. To go or not to go?

Given recent events, you would be very hard-pressed indeed to find many people who consider the International Cricket Council and the England and Wales Cricket Board to be “free from anything sordid” or “dishonourable”. Then again, whatever the wretchedness of the ICC and ECB, or the Robert Mugabe regime, it does not automatically follow that we communists endorse or support the views or tactics of those calling for the England cricket team to boycott Zimbabwe.

Certainly, for many - ranging from the UK government, the Tories, the print media and campaigners like Peter Tatchell - it has been a source of outrage that the England cricket team has made its way to Zimbabwe and hence effectively, as they see it, given legitimacy to the regime of the ‘new Hitler’. In this bombastic vein, the preening Peter Hain, leader of the Commons and anti-apartheid activist wonder-boy of yesteryear, described the cricket tour as a “propaganda victory” for Mugabe, adding: “I wish we could have stopped the tour: so does Tony Blair and so does Jack Straw.”

Of course, the tour almost did not go ahead. Last week, the Zimbabwean government’s information minister, Jonathan Moyo, who has been Mugabe’s right-hand man since 2000 and chief architect of the country’s repressive anti-free speech laws (20 years for those who “publish or communicate falsehood”), refused to accredit 13 of the 36 British journalists who were due to cover the four one-day matches (the BBC has been totally banned from Zimbabwe for several years). In an official statement from the information ministry explaining the grounds for this partial non-accreditation, we are told: “Bona fide media organisations in the UK have been cleared; those that are political have not. This is a game of cricket, not politics. Those that want to bowl us out of politics will have to do so in the political arena.” Slightly curiously, journalists from The Guardian were to be allowed in, but not those from The Times or Telegraph (or the BBC).

Then, a mere two days later, the ban was lifted, almost certainly on the direct orders of Mugabe himself. There are strong rumours of a power tussle between Mugabe and the previously loyal Moyo, which saw the latter last month hold a clandestine meeting of six provincial chairmen of Mugabe’s ruling Zanu-PF, in a bid to form a new regional power bloc that would challenge the president’s stranglehold over the party. It is reported that an alerted Mugabe vowed to take “drastic measures” against Moyo and the six others for holding a meeting “convened without the mandate of the people”. So Moyo was slapped down, the ban on British journalists lifted and the green light was sent to the ICC and, more importantly, the hapless ECB.

Campaigners against the tour, naturally, leapt on Moyo’s initial decision as a heaven-sent opportunity to pull the England team out - that is, to declare a boycott of Zimbabwe. Surely, under pressure from the government, “the clodpoles who run world cricket” would now “snap out of their dream world”, raged The Guardian, and pull the plug on the tour (November 25).

After all, under specific circumstances, members of the ICC’s governing body are allowed to withdraw from a tour, which - under recently amended regulations - is normally an offence punishable by suspension from world cricket. These “acceptable grounds for non-compliance” without a penalty are either for safety and security reasons or if there has been a “clear direction” from government to abandon a previously arranged match or series. The hope was that there would be no repeat of February last year, when the England team found itself stranded for a week in a five-star hotel in Cape Town, only to eventually withdrawal from the World Cup match planned to take place in Harare.
But to the dismay of the ‘boycotters’ no such “clear direction” came and history did repeat itself, only this time, if possible, even more farcically. The ICC dithered and lawyers acting for ECB said that the above scenario did not apply to Zimbabwe.

Predictably, this unleashed a torrent of criticism directed against both the ICC and ECB. Des Wilson, who in April resigned as chairman of the ECB’s corporate and marketing advisory committee, venomously wrote: “What a triumph for the buffoons at the top of the ECB and the charlatans running the ICC. Our cricket team - the pride and joy of the English game - finds itself for the second time in two years adrift in a foreign country, not knowing where it will be tomorrow” (The Guardian November 25).

Wilson’s comments capture some of the chauvinistic and hypocritical nonsense spoken by many opponents of the tour. A sampling of the rightwing press from last Friday (November 26) reveals much: we had The Times complaining of the “anti-England tendency of the ICC”, the Daily Express bemoaning how the ICC is “effectively controlled by that powerful financial bloc of subcontinental countries, India, Pakistan and the rest”, and the Sun sermonising about how “the people who insisted that players must go to Zimbabwe apparently believe money is more important than morals”.

Finally, to add insult to injury, we had to endure the pontifications of former England captain Mike Gatting, who declared: “There has been a very serious dilemma about representing your country on the cricket field in a land where people are suffering so much at the hands of their government.” This, remember, from the man who captained the rebel tour to apartheid-ruled South Africa. It is remarkable how so many people, their consciences long dormant, if not actually extinct, suddenly become paragons of virtue when confronted by Robert Mugabe and his Zanu-PF regime.

Communists are clear. We thoroughly oppose the despotic and corrupt regime of the 80-year-old Robert Mugabe (who happens to be patron of the Zimbabwe Cricket Union). Last week the Zimbabwean parliament granted Mugabe powers to outlaw foreign-funded human rights groups and his government can now close down any non-governmental organisation, group or charity. Additionally, the new powers will allow the government to use army officers, police agents, security agents, etc to run the parliamentary elections scheduled for March next year. Obviously, the ageing Mugabe intends his Zanu-PF machine to win the elections - no matter what.

On top of government oppression, the Zimbabwean masses have also been battered by rampant inflation of some 200% and high unemployment. Despite the ‘official optimism’ of the Mugabe regime, whose proposed 2005 budget anticipates “bumper” harvests, it has quietly decided to allow the World Food Programme to distribute 60,000 tonnes of aid left over from last year’s assistance programme, after a parliamentary committee last month admitted there would be a massive maize shortage and an estimated 2.5 million people would be reliant upon food aid. Self-evidently, the Mugabe regime has brought nothing but oppression and ruination to the Zimbabwean people.

But the crimes of imperialism dwarf those of Robert Mugabe. Peter Hain’s self-righteous denunciations of Mugabe sound hollow from a representative of UK imperialism, which has enthusiastically collaborated with George Bush in imposing deadly sanctions and then bombing Iraq. The Lancet estimates that since the “end” of the war an additional 100,000 Iraqis have died. Members of sports teams throughout the world may as a result feel justified in calling for a boycott of any sporting event hosted by either the USA or UK.

Communists, unlike Hain and co, are consistent democrats. We do not pick and choose when it comes to which abuses of democracy we oppose. For example, Pakistan was until recently a military dictatorship. Unlike Zimbabwe, parliament was closed and elections were delayed until the military had put in place sufficient ‘checks and balances’ to ensure the ‘right’ result. Of course, the England cricket team is due to conduct a winter tour of Pakistan next year. Yet have we heard any strident calls for a sporting boycott from New Labour, the Tories or anyone else in the establishment? Maybe this has something to do with the fact that the Musharaf regime in Pakistan is perceived as vital and loyal ally in the global ‘war against terror’.

Nor does that mean, of course, that communists reject the boycott tactic in and of itself. For example, if in Zimbabwe there was a real movement from below - as opposed to the isolated calls from the pro-imperialist members of the Movement for Democratic Change - mobilising against the playing of a cricket match in Harare, as part of a working class-led series of actions, then of course that would be something we would feel duty-bound to support. In the absence of such a movement, to join in calls for a boycott would be to fall in behind the agenda of imperialism.

However, the boycott tactic should be employed only under certain specific circumstances. Rather, in general we are in favour of the greatest possible international exchange, trade and other contacts, in that this helps lay the basis for our own, proletarian internationalism and the strengthening of working class unity across borders (for the same reason migration must be considered on balance a progressive phenomenon).

So it follows that we do not back calls, made by some muddled sections of the left, to boycott US or Israeli-produced goods. If we were to do so, then surely we would also be duty-bound, if only by sheer logic alone, to issue a thundering call for the boycott of British-made goods, which would be an obvious nonsense and, if enacted, become a mighty inconvenience for workers in Britain, to put it mildly.

The whole kafuffle around the England tour of Zimbabwe also sharply exposes the profoundly elitist and undemocratic nature of sport under modern-day capitalism, almost perfectly embodied by the ICC and ECB. We call for the abolition of both bodies and for the players and fans themselves to take control of their respective national boards. Cricket, as with the rest of sport, needs to be fully democratised and fully accountable.

Communists say that sport, like art or science, is not the exclusive property of either the ruling class or of profit-greedy capital. Sport is, or should be, a creative means of self-expression and self-fulfilment - played, or watched, for the simple joy of the sport itself, not, as in the current alienated situation, for the very fat pay cheques and lucrative sponsorship deals.