After a week away I returned to catch up on the previous weekend’s newspapers and a full page Saturday interview in The Daily Telegraph with former cricketer Michael Vaughan caught my eye. I wish it hadn’t.
Vaughan, as many will know, was at the heart of a race row storm in Yorkshire cricket over inappropriate comments allegedly made to one of his teammates Azeem Rafiq who is of Pakistani origin. The comments, which were not to my knowledge substantiated or admitted were to the effect that there were ‘too many of you lot’. The context and intention of the comment, allegedly made in 2009, were not clear and how many of us could recall a comment we made over ten years previously? However, the bottom always feels pain much longer than the boot and Rafiq said that this was only one of several comments made to him based on his race. Naturally, the only amount of racism that is acceptable is none, but it should work both ways and Rafiq himself got off relatively lightly for his own racist outburst when he made an antisemitic comment. His apology seems to have been sufficient as, indeed, should be the case. On the other hand his allegations have led to an investigation and the resignation of the then Chairman of Yorkshire Cricket who was not, to my knowledge, accused of anything specific. The case rumbles on and Rafiq continues to make accusations and bemoans not receiving apologies for comments which—and I stand to be corrected—have not been substantiated.
Michael Vaughan’s interview in The Telegraph is a sickening account of how far someone accused of racism, and who clearly and publicly regrets any offence caused by his comments, must go and how worthless an apology is. He was sacked from his cricket commenting job by the BBC—something described in The Spectator as ‘gutless’—but now seems to have gone over the top having attended a 20-hour (yes…20 hour!) equality and diversity course from which he claims to have emerged a changed man. I must say that I would be tempted to say the same if it gave me any chance of getting back a prestigious job. Apparently, he is now fully aware of a non-existent concept called ‘white privilege’, and to have discovered that he is in an ‘embedded system that we need to change’. Dear Michael, please note that ‘we’ does not include me. Vaughan continues to say that ‘recollections differ’ regarding the events with Rafiq but he did send some tweets in 2010 that were intended as jokes, one asking if anyone at Directory Enquiries spoke English. I must have missed what the answer was, but I’ve been asked the same thing about my native country of Scotland. One grows up and grows a pair (I’ll apologise for my sexism in a future article).
Vaughan does exemplify ‘white privilege’, presumably drilled into him on the equality and diversity course, saying he has never been asked when arriving at a conference if he is delivering the food or had a woman move her handbag to the other side of her body on a lift to keep it away from him. Really? I have been asked something like the former in a joke at a party by someone who knew I was working class. But I would not dream of ruining that person’s life. I have also experienced the latter and have done the same with my own briefcase; it makes more room for goodness’s sake.
Absolutely the worst thing about Vaughan’s interview is not just all the above. Near the end he says that he will confine himself to comments on cricket on social media. He will not make any political comments or express his opinion on any other matters. So, not only has he been cancelled and defenestrated, but he has also been silenced. He is now on a mission to share his newfound knowledge with others and says he is still the same ‘fun guy’ he always was. Somehow, Michael, I doubt that.
Roger Watson is a retired academic, editor and writer. He is a columnist with Unity News Network and writes regularly for a range of conservative journals including The Salisbury Review and The European Conservative. He has travelled and worked extensively in the Far East and the Middle East. He lives in Kingston upon Hull, UK.
