Mark Perryman - Why The Olympics Arent Good for Us, And How They Can Be

2012 Mark Perryman

Published by OR Books, London and New York.

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First printing 2012.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher, except brief passages for review purposes.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data:

A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress

British Library Cataloging in Publication Data:

A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-935928-83-6 paperback

ISBN 978-1-935928-84-3 e-book

Typeset by Wordstop, Chennai, India.

Printed by BookMobile in the US and CPI Books Ltd in the UK.

The US printed edition of this book comes on Forest Stewardship Council-certified, 30% recycled paper. The printer, BookMobile, is 100% wind-powered.

For Edgar, with the hope there will be better Olympics to come

Contents

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

AFTERWORD

FURTHER READING AND RESOURCES

Acknowledgements

Garry Whannels Blowing the Whistle and Alan Tomlinsons Five Ring Circus, co-edited with Garry, first convinced me as an aspiring Gramscian that sport was something I could not only watch and do with a degree of political legitimacy, but write about too. I am most grateful to you both for your inspiration and to Alan for your continuing support.

Alan and his co-editor John Sugden must also both be thanked for pestering me to write a chapter for their book Watching the Olympics. I was in South Africa for World Cup 2010, looking forward to writing a book on Englands trophy-winning campaign. In the event I had plenty of spare time to write their chapter instead, and this more than anything convinced me to write a book of my own on the Olympics. Thanks.

It was after reading Garrys and Alans books that I wrote my first article on the politics of sport, on the jogging boom and the London Marathon, for Marxism Today. Martin Jacques was the kind of editor to take a risk with an unproven writer and subject. Many thanks Martin. More recently thanks to Philip Oltermann on Comment is Free at the Guardian, Comment Editor on The Times Anne Spackman, Greg Leedham on the Morning Star sports desk, Jonathan Rutherford of the journal Soundings, Andy Newman at www.socialistunity.com and Mel Gomes of the blog The Substantive for providing me with the space to write on various sporting themes over the recent period, articles that have helped me formulate some of the ideas which now appear in this book.

Students on the Sport and Leisure Management, Sport Studies and Sport Journalism degrees at the University of Brighton have listened with sufficient interest to my lectures on the Olympics to convince me I have something worthwhile to say. Tim Vyner, Rupert Bassett and the final year Graphic Comunication class at Bath Spa University also provided an audience for my ideas on reforming Olympism. The fact you laughed at my jokes gave me further encouragement to write.

George Galloway, Kevin Ovenden, Rob Hoveman and Tower Hamlets Respect Party gathered an impressive crowd of local activists in the basement of Georges then-constituency office to listen to my impassioned argument that the Olympics that would take place on the edge of their borough mattered politically. The enthusiastic response to my presentation was another further factor in my deciding to write. Thanks again.

Brighton University students Ollie Miller and Tom Glenn carried out research projects under my supervision on race and the local impact of the Olympics, which also featured at this evening in Tower Hamlets. Your youthful appetite for the investigation, even though you might not have known it at the time, would inspire me to find the energy and commitment to write myself.

Thanks to Colin Robinson of OR Books, with whom I expected to discuss the dual crisis of global capitalism and Liverpool FC, but who ended up convincing me I could write a book on the Olympics in an unfeasibly short time. Colin and his colleague Alex Nunns have provided invaluable editing advice, which has turned this book into something immeasurably better than the one I would have written without their help.

Various earlier versions of this book never went much beyond the planning stage. For showing enough faith in the idea to persuade me to eventually write a book I am grateful to Tariq Goddard of Zero Books, Sally Davison of Lawrence & Wishart and Neal Lawson of the campaign group Compass. Sorry I couldn't deliver for any of you but I hope you nevertheless like what Ive ended up writing.

The business I co-founded, Philosophy Football, apart from selling more than a few T-shirts, continues to provide all sorts of ideas of how sport could be reorganized on an ethical and democratic basis. An invaluable experience. Thanks to my co-founder Hugh Tisdale for being generous enough to allow me the time to write alongside my responsibilities to the company.

My main involvement in sport over the past sixteen years has been via the LondonEnglandFans group and the fan-friendly activities we are part of organizing wherever the England football team play abroad. Being involved in a fan-led movement that is both proudly for England and at the same time immersed in the popular internationalism that a Euro or World Cup campaign at its best is has taught me plenty about the potential of sport to unite, as well as divide.

My partner Anne has lived with this books sometimes painful evolution from idea to research, via writers block, loss of faith in the project and eventual acceleration to completion. Thanks for the enduring patience. Our three-year-old son Edgar meanwhile has, through his swimming lessons, hurtling around the skateboard park on his scooter, and kicking of a football with wild abandon, successfully warded off any loss of faith in sports ability to give endless pleasure and sometimes pain.

Finally, thanks to a place, not a person or persons. The South Downs, just above the village of Kingston in East Sussex. A devilishly steep climb to run up, with wild ponies grazing at the side of the stony track. Running along the ridge as I completed this book has convinced me that whatever the corporations, bureaucrats and politicians might do to ruin our enjoyment of London 2012, the simple appeal of sport can never be extinguished. For that I will always be grateful even if any dreams of winning a medal, of any description, are now long gone.

INTRODUCTION

Ever Fallen in Love With

something you shouldnt have fallen in love with, to misquote the late 1970s punk band The Buzzcocks. This is not an anti-Olympics book, nor is it against sport. Rather it is about the process that has changed the Olympics into what they have become: a Games that is commercialized and commodified and built on promises that are almost never fulfilled to aid regeneration, boost participation in sport and leave a legacy of well-used facilities. This is not a process that is irreversible and if the Games were organized on a different basis, which I outline, many of those broken promises could instead be kept.