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But James McClean is not the Irish Colin Kaepernick, even if he
staged an anthem protest of his own in 2015. Kaepernick incited a movement, one that continues across the NFL today. He inspired others to follow his lead. Five years after McClean’s initial statement, he remains an isolated insurgent in a desert of obedience, and the exception to an unwritten British sporting rule: “We’re not supposed to have an opinion on these things,” an anonymous Premier League player
said of political expression last year. Indeed, in the U.K., “stick to sports” almost invariably carries the day.
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John Kelly, a sociology of sport professor at the University of Edinburgh, has noticed a parallel trend: More and more, Great Britain is starting to follow the United States’ lead in promoting patriotism and the military alongside sport. “God Save the Queen” isn’t played before Premier League or rugby league matches, but, Kelly says, “the British military have been much more prominent at sporting events;” veterans are now routinely honored at games; and the proliferation of the poppy has extended to sport. This is all part of what Kelly calls the incorporation by proxy of sport. “The official representation [of a symbol] is often presented as non-political, when it ultimately is political,” Kelly explains. “And even if you don’t agree with it, it’s very difficult, when you’re an athlete, to opt out of that without doing it publicly. If you don’t do it publicly, you’re assumed to support it. So you’re left in a double bind. You’ve got little choice. You either allow yourself to be presented and interpreted as supporting [the cause], or you speak out very publicly. And when you do that, you risk being symbolically annihilated, as Kaepernick and James McClean have.” Those athletes have both withstood that backlash. The difference is how their protests developed. Kaepernick’s, a call to attention of police brutality toward racial minorities in America,
has spread; McClean’s hasn’t. Part of the deviation can be explained by obvious differences in the causes at the hearts of their respective protests. But part of it must be explained by the belief that sports and politics shouldn’t mesh, and the ferocity with which that concept is defended in the UK. After McClean sent out what some saw as an incendiary, politically charged tweet in 2013, a member of British parliament, Gregory Campbell, offered an ironic example. “Three simple words should suffice: stick to football,”
the politician said of McClean. “If he doesn’t heed this then a final three words should be given: pack your bags.”
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That sports-and-politics-don’t-mix myth is problematic because it’s a paradox, one that ties back to Kaepernick. “It’s OK to delegitimize sportspeople from being political because you want to make them marketable,” Kelly says. “But it’s actually very revealing that it’s not seen as a danger to marketing them to get them to support the American military, and the American flag.” Or the British military. Or the British anthem. Or the poppy. “So let’s just not pretend sport and politics don’t mix,” Kelly says. “Of course they do. Let’s actually have some proper, mature discussion and be open about it. But that doesn’t seem to happen. That’s the nature of power.”
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