Opinion: Why do we see so few British athletes act as activists?

First published 17/12/24

                                                   

Marcus Rashford collecting his MBE in 2020.

 

During the COVID-19 lockdown of 2020, England footballer Marcus Rashford teamed up with poverty charity FareShare, and delivered meals to children in the Greater Manchester area who were unable to receive free school meals due to the pandemic. Throughout the months in which the pandemic was rife, Rashford, who himself grew up in poverty in Manchester, provided more than four million meals to children around the country and, after shaming the British government for their policy for free school meals, eventually teamed up with them to help tackle child poverty and was subsequently awarded an MBE for his efforts.

Not only has Rashford been a leading figure in helping millions of British children in poverty, he has also become known for his campaigns against racism and discrimination. He became the face of the UK’s fight against racism when fans left messages of support after a mural of him in Withington, Manchester, was vandalised when he, along with teammates Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka, missed penalties in the final of Euro 2020 against Italy. Rashford has become a household name for not just his skills on the pitch, but his contributions away from it.

Athlete activism has been a feature of sports in the United States since Jack Johnson, a black boxer from Texas, won the heavyweight world title in 1907. This was taken further when Jesse Owens, a black American track athlete, famously defied Hitler’s white supremacist views in the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, as well as Muhammad Ali being a source of racial pride in the 1960s due to his conscientious objection of the Vietnam war. Most recently, in 2016, San Francisco 49ers teammates Colin Kaepernick and Eric Reid chose to kneel during the customary playing of the national anthem before an NFL game, to raise awareness of police brutality and racial inequality. The story made worldwide headlines and inspired athletes of different sports to take a knee before matches, including in Premier League football matches.

Rashford became the first high-profile British athlete to demonstrate activism and help with important social issues, and it was expected at the time that his actions would pave the way for many other like-minded athletes from Britain.

But why has this not been the case?

Firstly, Rashford’s push to provide free school meals came at a critical time for so many during the pandemic. Many children relied on schools to provide healthy, nutritious meals due to issues that they faced at home, such as being part of a low-income family with little to no ability to provide meals. However, due to the closing of schools to control the outbreak of COVID-19, children were unable to be provided with meals and, due to the critical situation, Rashford, who knows the struggles of being from a low-income family all too well, was able to use his position as a successful footballer and a highly-paid athlete to provide over four million meals to children across the country, having surely felt that someone had to help at such an important, unprecedented time.

Rashford’s actions subsequently defied comments made by notable politicians such as Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Matt Hancock, regarding the lack of contributions towards social issues by sports stars. Such comments are justified on paper, but when we delve deeper into work done by British athletes, we find that they are somewhat untrue.

Tennis star Emma Raducanu, for example, also recently volunteered at a food poverty initiative, but her voluntary work failed to make national headlines. Similarly, England captain Harry Kane, an international teammate of Rashford, is an advocate for mental health and launched his eponymous foundation in 2022 to raise awareness, again with little recognition in the media, despite being a household name for his footballing ability.

In this age of social media and digital influences, social media is an effective platform for sharing and reacting to news. Too often, negative news stories are seen and shared more widely than positive, uplifting stories. The racial abuse suffered by Rashford and his England teammates following the Euro 2020 final can be considered a strong example of a negative news story fuelled by social media – a powerful reaction from the British public against such acts was prompted.

It is clear that the fundamental problem is not the fact that sports stars are not contributing towards helping with social issues, but that they are getting little to no recognition for their efforts. In Rashford’s case, his calling out of the UK government may well have been the deciding factor in the global recognition of his actions, given that the government at the time were under intense scrutiny from different people at a decisive time. More needs to be done to promote sports stars in a positive light when they have contributed to a charitable cause, or spoken up against a significant social issue.