Kneeling

 

Wayne Rooney and other disciples, terrified of offending woke orthodoxy and anxious to signal their virtue, were quickly off their marks to condemn the Millwall football supporters who expressed their disagreement with their players “taking the knee” before their recent game with derby County.  Most football fans, Newcastle United fans in particular, have experienced the utter desolation of relegation from one league to another - from being the centre of attention in the Premier League of football consciousness to the also-rans of the Championship, League One and below.  Its not a nice feeling as over-paid ex-players explain your demise in patronising clichés.  Neither is it, I suppose, particularly comfortable being white working class in post-industrial Britain – feeling a stranger in your own land and pushed to the fringes of political consciousness by the relentless woke agenda which doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the values that, hitherto, have shaped your life.  It could be that, far from disagreeing with the concept of equality, the Millwall supporters, probably mostly white working class, were simply expressing their own frustration and sense of victimisation at the swing of the political pendulum?