ABSTRACT
In 1990, Norman Tebbit, a senior politician in Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government, made a statement in an interview with the Los Angeles Times that was to bring sport to the heart of race and ethnicity politics in Britain. Introducing his so-called ‘cricket test’, Tebbit argued that if a British immigrant, or one of his or her descendants, chose to support a team such as India or the West Indies when that team was playing cricket against England, this could, and indeed should, be used as a gauge of his or her patriotism and thus acceptability as a British citizen. Whilst Tebbit argued that the comments were designed to promote national integration, they effectively forwarded the argument that assimilation (i.e. that immigrants should forsake their ethnic roots and be subsumed into the culture of the host nation), as opposed to multiculturalism (i.e. the celebration and promotion of ethnic diversity within a nation), should form the basis of British race-relations policy. Tellingly he felt that sport, and cricket in particular, offered the most vivid illustration (and provocative example) of his argument.
