Sportswashing needs to be called out for what it is

JUST this month, Cork city librarian David O'Brien announced that the city library will no longer host the Texaco Children’s Art competition.

Given its longevity – Texaco plans to celebrate its 70th anniversary next year – and revered status – past winners include former Labour party leader and government minister Ruairi Quinn as well as artists Dorothy Cross, Graham Knuttel and Robert Ballagh, fashion designer Paul Costello, broadcasters Thelma Mansfield and Terry Prone, ICTU General Secretary David Begg, novelist Clare Boylan, actress Jean Anne Crowley and musician Ethna Tinney – the decision is a remarkable break with tradition.

Uillinn, West Cork Arts Centre has also indicated that it will not participate in the Texaco Children’s Art competition. Last November in correspondence with your columnist Uilinn Director Ann Davoran wrote: ‘Our policies, operations, partnerships and programming must align with sustainability, with justice and fairness for people and nature at the core, therefore we would not develop programme or sponsorship arrangements with fossil fuel companies such as Texaco or other companies that do not align with this goal.’

Sports laundering, money laundering, institutional laundering, domestic laundering. Someone always pays the price.

Sports laundering or sportswashing. The attempted cleansing of corporate stains through sport. Another deception. Qatar’s 2022 $200 billion World Cup in a human rights wasteland.

Much brouhaha has been attached to the decision of the French-based multinational telecommunications conglomerate Orange and current sponsors of the Rugby World Cup to manufacture World Cup medals from more than 200,000 recycled mobile phones. Almost three thousand kilos (2,953) kilos of metal were recovered from the 31 tonnes of mobiles collected to manufacture these medals. All 1,491 participants will receive these medals in ‘an eco-friendly case, surrounded by a ribbon made from recycled material’.

Between audacity and tradition, between references to its history and its avant-garde spirit, this medal embodies France and rugby at their strongest, its public relations department gushed. To what extent these medals will provide any consolation to Inishshannon’s Jack Crowley and to the 32 other Irish rugby players is a moot point.

Perhaps not worth the effort. Except as a public relations exercise.

No mention to what happens to the remaining millions of phones into which their built-in obsolesce is engineered.

Texaco’s sportswashing agenda is not confined to children’s art competitions. The Texaco Support for Sport initiative, worth a paltry €130,000 was launched in 2021. Maximum €5,000 per club. Talk of bang for your buck. Fronting the Texaco initiative is Corkman and former rugby international Donncha O'Callaghan.

‘I’m very excited to take part as I truly believe that a fund of this size can make a very real difference to the betterment and running of any in this country,’ Mr O’Callaghan announced at the launch. Only 26 clubs were that lucky in 2022.

In 2004, I travelled to Lago Agrio in Ecuador where 40 years previously Texaco oil company began drilling for oil. Notes from my diary describe the scene: ‘All around us is scarred land. Smoke and balls of fire bellow into the air. Rivers and lakes shimmer in an unnatural kaleidoscope of rich oil-slick colours. Sludge oozes up from the ground at every twist and turn caking our boots in its black debris.

Texaco’s footprint on what was once unspoiled forest. The company that is the face of Ireland’s children’s art competition. The indigenous people of Lagio Agrio hung out to dry.’

Put simply: it is not possible to serve the interests of Texaco oil company and the rights of children of indigenous people or the rights of children everywhere. It really is that simple. We have to choose.

Sportswashing needs to be called out for what it is. A deeply cynical attempt by fossil fuel companies, big pharma, dictatorial regimes and other corporate behemoths to distract people from their real purpose. Profiteering at the expense of some of the most vulnerable people on the planet. And at the expense of the planet itself.

Women in Ireland and elsewhere were duped into thinking that the washing machine would transform their lives and reduce their labour Betty Friedan told us 60 years ago.

Sportswashing seeks to do just that. Dupe us. Twenty-first century style.

Not so Cork city librarian David O'Brien and Uillinn director Ann Davoran.

In confronting the Texaco sportswashing agenda, they have done us all some service.

Maybe now we will be able to see sportswashing and arts-washing for what they are.

• Colm Tobin is on holidays