The Government of India’s decision not to permit an Indian team to participate in the Commonwealth Games at Edinburgh if the impending South African cricket tour of England is not abandoned is in line with the stand taken by the majority of non-white member countries of the Commonwealth. The argument that politics should be kept out of sports is untenable in the case of South Africa for that country’s whole attitude to sport has been politics-ridden. Its Government regulates sport at home on strict apartheid lines and has had no qualms about extending that pernicious doctrine even to international sport. It refused to entertain the M.C.C. team which included the coloured cricketer, Basil D’Oliviera. The South African visit has raised a storm of controversy within Britain itself. There is so much opposition to it that, if the tour does take place, it seems a certainty that anti-apartheid groups will make an attempt to disrupt the games. The M.C.C., which is in charge of the tour, has therefore made arrangements for the matches to be played in grounds protected by barbed wire fences. If there was an easy way to do it, the British Government would probably have had the tour called off.
The Prime Minister and Labour Party leaders have publicly come out against the visit, Mr. Wilson going to the extent of asking the people to stage protest demonstrations. But the Government cannot officially ban the tour because that it will affect Britain’s economic relations with South Africa. Further, the Conservative Party has come out in favour of the tour, thus making it a domestic political issue. With elections due within the next year, the tour, whether it comes off or is cancelled, bids fair to become a hot issue.
For over a year, Mr. Wilson and his colleagues, particularly Mr. Denis Howell, Minister of Sport, are reported to have been trying to cajole the M.C.C. into calling off the tour but without success. The M.C.C. authorities have made it a matter of prestige and have taken the position that they will not yield to pressure from a minority group. A recent Gallup poll showed two out of every three Britons favouring the tour. The M.C.C. authorities are trying to make out that what is involved is only a law-and-order problem and it should be so dealt with.
This is unfortunate, for, as critics of the tour have been pointing out, if the M.C.C. persists with it, not only race relations in Britain look like being seriously disrupted but it may also drive a wedge between Britain and its non-white Commonwealth partners in the sphere of sport.
The late Lord Attlee, former U.K. Prime Minister, once cited cricket as one of the links binding the Commonwealth. It is ironical that this game should now threaten to become a source of strain within this unique international family. If only for this reason, the M.C.C. should reconsider its decision to play host to an all-white team from a country which has already been thrown out of several international bodies—it has also been barred from the Davis Cup and the Olympic Games —for its racialist policies.
