Fields of play ruled out of bounds for political protest

By Simon Kuper

Published: May 12 2007 03:00 | Last updated: May 12 2007 03:00

In August 1913 the British prime minister Herbert Asquith was playing golf in Scotland when two "well-dressed young ladies" allegedly ran on to the 17th green, knocked off his hat, and smacked him on the head with a magazine. The women were arrested, after which "Asquith apparently holed out and continued his round", writes Joyce Kay, sports historian at the University of Stirling.

The assailants were Suffragettes, campaigners for votes for women, and theirs was one of many attacks on sport. In 1913 the Suffragettes were constantly bombing or burning churches, businesses, stations and schools.

"But no one seems to have noted," writes Kay, that perhaps a sixth of their attacks were on sports venues such as grandstands or pavilions. Lloyd's of London even offered golf clubs insurance against Suffragettes, who liked pouring acid or inscribing "Votes for Women" on golf greens. The women were targeting "masculine pleasure-places", explains Jill Liddington in her book Rebel Girls.

But their campaign against male sport now looks like an historical dead-end. Today there seems to be no movement anywhere that targets sports. Yet our times cry out for one. Even someone like me, a minor cog in the sports-industrial complex, can see that.

It would be nutty to object to ordinary people playing sport for fun. The problem is big-time sport, which is taking over the planet. It is arguably the main global force for dumbing-down. It transforms hundreds of millions of people into hysterics. It is eating up the budgets of public television. It has turned many American universities into philistine playpens for subsidised jocks. It prompts countries and cities to waste billions on hosting sports tournaments, or, in the case of American cities, on issuing bonds to build stadiums for thuggish multimillionaire athletes. If a quarter of the energy that goes into football's World Cup were spent on things that mattered, we would have cured malaria by now. In short: where are the Suffragettes when we need them?

A few stray voices speak out against sporting hysteria. The Libyan dictator Colonel Gadaffi says in his Little Green Book that going to watch other people play sport is as stupid as going to a restaurant to watch other people eat. And Umberto Eco, the Italian author, has taken a brave stand against football, which he calls "a place of total ignorance", "a cosmic meaningless performance", and "the beginning of the dehumanisation of man".

But these are isolated individuals. The last regime to oppose sport, the Taliban, has departed the scene, and even they were more wishy-washy than they pretended. Plagued by uncertainty over what was and what was not Islamic, they swayed between banning sports and encouraging them. No religious movement now dares to say: "Instead of loving Manchester United, why don't you love God?"

The old left, which used to attack competitive sports as "patriarchal" training grounds for capitalism, has largely died out. The New Zealand Anti-Sport Action Group - and nowhere was it more sorely needed - appears to be defunct. And though there are a few anti-sports websites, by my count they are outnumbered by anti-Bayern Munich sites.

Sport has cleverly co-opted everyone by adopting as its ideology that it is open to anyone. When even the Queen turns out to be an Arsenal fan, as was revealed last month, you know that all barriers of gender and class have been dropped. Sport sells itself as a "universal language", which will bring us all together.

Nobody points out that the 20th century, when international sport took off, also happened to be the bloodiest century ever. Political movements now understand that you can lie to people, or blow them up, but that if you touch their sports you become a pariah. "There is one thing," writes Eco, "that no student movement or urban revolt or global protest or what have you would be able to do. And that is to occupy the football field on a Sunday."

The Suffragettes were foolish to try. As The Times had warned them, "attempts to spoil sport . . . are not likely to win favour for any cause from a sporting nation". Golf Illustrated denied that "the scratching and scraping of a few putting greens" was proof that women deserved the vote, because "on the same principle we ought to give votes to worms, moles, rabbits and other greenkeeping pests".

Even when the suffragette Emily Davison died under the hooves of the King's horse at the Derby of 1913, there was limited sympathy. During her funeral procession there were reported cries of "Three cheers for the King's jockey!" In any case, says Kay, Davison's act may not actually have been an attack on sport. It's quite possible that rather than "throwing herself" under the horse, she was simply trying to cross the track to get to the railway station.

British women eventually gained the franchise thanks to the first world war, which pulled them into the workforce. Kay concludes: "The most significant loss attributed to 'the wild women' was probably the goodwill of the British population, including sportsmen."

Nobody will make the same mistake again.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007