Boycotting Zimbabwe

Much fuss has been made in the press recently about the proposed Cricket World Cup to be hosted in Zimbabwe. Strangely, attention has been primarily focused on whether the England cricket team should compete, rather than on the dubious decision to host the event there at all. England's participation, it has been claimed, would serve as a legitimisation of the Mugabe regime, while their withdrawal might serve as a catalyst for other countries to boycott.

While there is general agreement that the England team's participation in an event staged in Zimbabwe is distasteful, no one is willing to take responsibility for the decision. Nasser Hussain has quite rightly resisted pressures to place the decision on the players' own shoulders. An individual cricketer refusing to play would be an effective protest, and any player making such a stand should be supported, and protected from any adverse consequences of his decision. However, that decision is a personal one, not one that should be forced on the individual. Democracy breaks down if individual conscience is subordinated to either media or government. If the England team is to withdraw, that is a decision for higher powers to make.

Equally, this is not a decision for the government to make. If the government believes that Zimbabwe should be isolated, that British representatives performing their normal jobs legitimises a regime they perceive as corrupt, the government should move to impose sanctions. Sanctions, supported by UN resolutions, are the correct mechanism for governments to require their citizens to boycott a regime. Since the British government has refused to impose sanctions, they have no authority to decide whether the England cricket team will participate in the match or not.

Instead, the choice to participate or not falls squarely on the shoulders of the ECB. They alone have the authority to make a moral choice for English cricket. Unfortunately, their choice is not straight forward. Money complicates the decision. The Cricket World Cup will raise money - ticket sales, merchandising, television rights, advertising. Without England, the broadcasters and sponsors will not gain the product they have paid for. Someone will have to pay the bill, and that someone is likely to be the ECB. The ECB faces a heavy financial penalty for making a moral decision, and they are quite correct to include this in their decision making.

One problem for the ECB is that such a moral decision is unlikely to be unique. If playing in Zimbabwe legitimises the Mugabe regime, what about playing against Zimbabwe in another country? What about Pakistan? Life is full of moral ambiguities. As individuals, we all have the opportunity every day to make some small protest against some individual, company, or country whose behaviour we disapprove of. However, we cannot protest everything - the personal cost would be just too high. Instead, we choose our fights, performing the protests that gain most for the cost to us. As with individuals, so with organisations. While it would be ideal for the ECB to refuse to play against representatives of oppressive regimes, they must consider the damage to English cricket of doing so.

Seen this way, there is little reason for the ECB to withdraw England from the World Cup. England's withdrawal will be a small, entirely symbolic protest. They will achieve no change of regime, draw no new attention to the country's inequalities. The withdrawal will be an empty gesture, laudable but ineffective. If the government and media seriously believe the gesture is worth making, it is up to them to remove the cost that gesture will incur. The newspapers demanding England's withdrawal are often owned by the same companies that hold the broadcasting rights. While they are happy for their newspapers to call for England to boycott the World Cup, they are not willing to foot the bill. Equally, what seems a large sum of money to the ECB is loose change to our national government. The government has rightly said that the decision of whether to withdraw belongs to the ECB, and that the government's role is to advise and support the decision. The best support they can offer at this point would be to underwrite the costs that decision will bring.

If both government and media are unwilling to place their money where their mouth is, there seems little choice for the ECB but to participate. While large British companies are freely trading in Harare, any protest by cricketers will only be a token. For the ECB, that token protest comes at far too high a price.

There may be one final option for English cricket. While they are contractually obliged to appear, their performance will be harder to legally enforce. A campaign of minimum performance could be as effective as non-appearance, and would be likely to be far cheaper. The only problem would be whether anyone would notice, given England's recent performance in Australia.

Graham Robinson. 1st January 2003.

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