The fragile society
Sir: The central issue on the South African cricket tour controversy is expressed in your leader of 21 February. Cancellation, you say,
would be 'a victory for violence . . . and . . . a signal for its use in any other cause in
which strong feelings are aroused . . . Ours is a society in which we have agreed not to settle our differences by violent means'.
But South Africa is not such a society arid when we in this country appear to support the power structure of that society by invit- ing here its sportsmen, whom virtually every South African sees as representatives of that power, we oblige those who support the powerless in South Africa to respond strongly against the team's presence and its hosts' actions.
The truth is that we cannot have our civilised government-by-consent and eat it in the form of support for South Africa's un- civilised government-by-violence. The main reason we in particular cannot do this is that we are so close to South Africa. This country created modern South Africa and handed it over, by Act of Parliament, to white rule.
Today we are more involved, socially and economically, with South Africa than any other nation. What happens there is very much our business and it is our condoning of South Africa's government-by-violence (sym- bolically, by this cricket tour) that has threatened our own 'fragile society'. The threat is at present a mild one: one can call walking on to a cricket field and so disrupt- ing the game violent or non-violent depend- ing on which side one is on. But increasingly, as we symbolically condone government-by- violence in other countries (especially in one such as South Africa, with which our ties are so close), so do we threaten government- by-consent in our own.
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