Читать книгу No Win Race. A Story of Belonging, Britishness and Sport онлайн

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You were in or out. Immigrants, well, those of colour and/or those who spoke a different language, were out. You want in? Shut up, be happy. Be grateful that Britain has given you a safe place, safe from the police, safe working conditions, safe housing. Safe. You are here because we saved you, not because you are helping the British economy, not because of slavery, not because the Empire had left your country in ruins through colonialism. Don’t worry about the fact that Britain compensated the slavers and not the enslaved, justified oppression in the name of God, in the name of science, in the name of the arts.

I had for many years understood that for any outsider Britain would always promise more than it could deliver. You achieved despite the system, not because of it. Yet the eighties appeared to make an already unequal society even more unfair, even more divided.

Later that evening, while reading Handa’s Surprisessss1 to my son, Turner Prize-winning artist Jeremy Deller’s Joy in People exhibition popped into my head. At London’s Hayward Gallery I had seen, amid the colours and the quirks, amid the joy and the pain, the joy in pain, images of the Miners’ Strike and police brutality. It brought the eighties back to me again and revealed just how many people across the UK Thatcher had displeased. Yet she remained in power for such a long time. Three election victories, remember? Impressive. Why did so many people vote for someone deemed so divisive? Must have found a way to appeal to the true blue within, right? Must have played patriotic games better than any other politician. Enough, therefore, for people to forget what the policies and the economy had really been doing to them all along.