WHEN social historians come to write about the emergence of Britain as a multiracial society, they will have to come to terms with sport. Sport is the single most important force in the establishment of the society we live in: tolerant, if imperfectly so; accepting, if imperfectly so; understanding, if imperfectly so.

Most people, if asked to make a list of famous black Britons, would produce a list with a disproportionate number of athletes. This indicates two things: the still imperfect integration of non-white people in British life, and the crucial importance of sport in that continuing process.

Daley, Denise, Big Frank — these are people who need no surnames: icons of modern British life. There have been four non-white winners of the BBC Sports Personality of the Year: Daley Thompson in 1982, Fatima Whitbread in 1987, Linford Christie in 1993 and Lennox Lewis in 1999.

When Ruud Gullit became manager of Chelsea in a typically audacious move by Ken Bates, then the chairman, all Fleet Street wrote about how wonderful it was to have such a sexy polyglot polymath managing a British football club.

Nobody even mentioned that he was black. Everybody had forgotten. Gullit had genuinely eradicated the colour bar. When Nasser Hussain, born in Madras, became England cricket captain, nobody bothered to point out that he wouldn’t have passed the racial purity laws that once existed in South Africa . . . yet a few years before, most of English cricket was supporting apartheid South Africa. Time passes quickly, especially in sport.

Thierry Henry is the finest footballer playing in England, and no doubt Europe and the world as well. He is expected to get the players’ Player of the Year award for a second year running. Nobody has pointed out that this is a great achievement for a black man. His skin colour is nothing to remark on.

Britain has advanced a very long way in a very short time and it is sport that has taken us there. So, therefore, it is only logical to look back to the people who were instrumental in opening sport to black people and to salute them as heroes. Heroes not just of sport but of society, people who have made decisive contributions to the world we live in.

The process threw up many heroes, most notably the black pioneer athletes who battered down doors by bloody-mindedness, strength of will and serious ability. But not every door had to be battered. Some doors were opened willingly and the door-openers must take their place among the heroes of the modern society.

And it is the purpose of this column today to sing the praises of one of these, a curious individual who did more than most people to open doors. If we can stretch the chain of logic taut — but not quite to breaking point — we can call Ron Atkinson the father of the racially tolerant society.

Atkinson’s contribution to modern life was genuinely revolutionary. In 1978 he became manager of West Bromwich Albion, a club that had two black players, Cyrille Regis and Laurie Cunningham, in the first team. The next year he bought a third, Brendon Batson.

An English side with three black men! It was unthinkable. The prejudice against black footballers went deeper than banana-throwing and monkey-chanting. Football insiders sincerely believed that black players (such as Pelé?) “had no heart”.

Still deeper was the prejudice that black players were incapable of leadership or responsibility. Black players were almost always wingers: fast, flashy, peripheral. They were never centre halves or playmakers or goalies. Atkinson was bold enough to build a team based around the power and industry and skill of his three black players.

They were nicknamed the Three Degrees, after the black singing group; a few years later the Middlesex cricket team had five black players and they were inevitably known as the Jackson Five. No one would think of employing such nicknames now. They betray the uneasiness white people felt about accepting non-whites, an uneasiness papered over with nervous, unfunny jokes, much as people do at a cocktail party when they don’t know each other.