Pidcock and Bull Story

The game lies equal at 1–1. Paul Gerrard — Everton’s keeper — is injured on the floor. A cross comes in from the the right. Seemingly, the only choice for Di Canio — West Ham’s striker, who is prowling just inside the box — is whether to head the ball into an empty net, or to take it on his chest and rifle it home on the volley. Instead, he opts for the third way, and catches the ball and gestures to the referee to ensure Gerrard gets treatment. It was a stunning display of sportsmanship. It is perhaps particularly feted in England because it confirms many of the lies we tell ourselves. Here was this fiery Italian, who had learned what “just not cricket” means while living in the country of cricket. The incensed response to foreign players diving shows how highly sportsmanship is valued in our country. (The silence when one of England’s own take a tumble — Michael Owen against Argentina, Steven Gerrard against Milan, to give two examples — indicates that a great deal of wilful blindness and hypocrisy goes into sustaining this national myth.)
Sportsmanship in sport is good. Swapping shirts, helping an opponent stretch out a cramped leg, chatting amicably to an opponent after the game, all these things make sense when it comes down to football: the most important thing that doesn’t matter. Yet, you cannot apply this to other areas of life. When Laura Pidcock, the Labour MP for North West Durham, gave an interview in which she said she had no wish to be friends with Tories in Parliament she received an avalanche of haughty moaning from balding middle-aged white men with blue ticks in their handles. Every single one of these dullards was furious that a working-class woman dared to view politics not as sport, but as a battle to secure the best possible living chances for people like herself.
Of course it is sometimes necessary to work with Tory MPs on cases where there is overlap between yours and their interests. To not do so would be churlish. But Pidcock has made it clear she is willing to work in a professional manner with her adversaries if it is in the interests of her constituents and the country. So what’s the big outcry?
For the privileged few with columns in Very Serious Newspapers politics is just a game and incivility is about the worst infraction of the rules imaginable. For the comfortable centre-left writer, with a pension and a nice house, the Tories are just opponents, because they will never feel the wrath of Tory policies. None of these people have ever seen their benefits cut, their local refuge shut down, or their nan lying on a trolly in an underfunded hospital.
Politics allows people to distance themselves from the social harm they are causing. None of us would be friends with someone who stole from a disability charity, yet a young socialist is shamed for saying she won’t be friends with people who got into politics to do just that. From Grenfell to Yarl’s Wood, people cause immense suffering, and even kill, with a flick of a pen; they should be held accountable for that, not joined in the members’ bar for drinks.
The temptation of becoming friendly with the enemy can also not be ignored. Many a firebrand shop steward has been seduced by management not with bribes, but proximity: after a while it becomes easier to see management as your peers than to maintain solidarity with the mass of workers you emerged from. Few Tories are stovepipe hat wearing villains — though some are! — most of them are personally capable of being charming. Mostly this is due to background, public schools don’t so much teach you history or geography, but rather charm, confidence and connections. No-one is better at winning friends and influencing people than a well-spoken, slightly self-deprecatory public school boy. On the flipside, MPs like Dennis Skinner are pilloried for carrying the plainspoken manner of the pits to parliament.
The biggest problem with the obsession with civility is it is perfectly possible to be both civil and monstrous. After leaving England to return to his native Italy Di Canio made the headlines not for his goalscoring, but for performing a fascist salute by way of celebration. Sportsmanship can go hand in outstretched hand with fascism very easily.
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