ABSTRACT
The first volume of the Handbook of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games has endeavoured to capture the key players and processes involved in making the 2012 London Olympic and Paralympic Games from inception to its staging. To that end, 21 contributions have analysed various aspects of London 2012 under three broad headings, including bidding, delivering and engaging with the Games. This concluding chapter provides a summary of the main lessons learned so far and outlines the issues to be addressed in the second volume of the collection. The London Games has been won and organised in testing political, economic and social times. For the first time in history UK debt soared through the trillion barrier, reaching £1,003.9 billion or 64.2 per cent of GDP, coupled with an unemployment rate of 8.3 per cent, the highest for 17 years (the introductory chapter written only a few weeks ago reported a figure of £966.8 billion, or 62.6 per cent of GDP). As a result, the UK government has implemented a programme of drastic budgetary cuts, which have been impacting adversely on the ability of the main sport and leisure providers – local authorities and sport organisations – to deliver on the main promise of the Games to leave a lasting sporting legacy. Many groups and individuals are set to miss out on the unique Olympic opportunity as well. According to many commentators, including British Prime Minister David Cameron, we have been living through a deep material and moral crisis of capitalism. Against this background, the government has tried to frame the Games as a counterpoint to the ‘gloom and doom’ of daily life, but it would be naive to assume that even the world’s greatest sporting festival could rectify the deeply rooted social divisions and economic inequalities of British society. The idea of an Olympic Games in London has appealed equally strongly to the three main political ideologies in the UK. When it was first articulated in 1995, the bid had the support of the then Conservative government, led by John Major, with its belief in minimal state and more market. The bid was won in 2005 by the Labour government of Tony Blair, which subscribed to the philosophy of the ‘third way’ or social development between the state and the market. A strong commitment was made to tackling social inequalities and to expanding democratic governance. The Games will be delivered by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government, led by David Cameron, with its visions for ‘big society’ and moral capitalism. Hoberman (1984, p. 17) has this to say about the link between political ideology and the Olympic Games:
‘German Nazis, Italian Fascists, Soviet and Cuban Communists, Chinese Maoists, western capitalist democrats, Latin American juntas – all have played this game and believed in it’. It is this broad political appeal of the Olympic Games that gives it the power to affect social change, and that simultaneously makes it vulnerable to criticism. As an educational ideology, Olympism seeks to address a range of social, political and cultural needs, such as equality, education, respect and excellence. It is a reformist ideology (i.e. favouring gradual change), advocating change by advancing a system for restructuring society through sport and education. In particular, Olympism incites young people around the world to join the Olympic Movement in order to realise this ideology. The British government has played its part in promoting Olympic ideology, first by making a commitment that ‘we will transform the lives of young people through sport’ (DCMS, 2008: 3), and second, by inviting them to embrace the Olympic values and to participate in the Games. The former Olympic Minister Tessa Jowell stated in the foreword of the government action plan for the implementation of the five promises made for the Games: ‘This plan is an invitation to get involved and a challenge to everyone to show just how much can be achieved through the Games’ (DCMS, 2008, p. 2). Thus, similar to political ideology, which Macridis (1989, p. 3) observed ‘involves action and collective effort’, Olympic ideology has also been used to bring visions, actions and collective efforts together. Therefore, an examination of the bidding, delivery and engagement with the London Games represents, amongst other things, a practical test of the educational and intercultural meanings of Olympism. It should be remembered that the ideas of Olympism, as politically appealing they may seem, have hardly ever been comprehensively tried out in any country, and definite claims about the role of Olympism in modern society have inevitably been limited to suppositions. London is striving to achieve exactly that – to put the aspirations of Olympism in Britain to the test. The Games have also provided a rare opportunity for collective reflection about the kind of society we live in and our sense of direction; and in the case of London the two previous occasions for hosting the Olympic Games in 1908 and 1948 allow for an examination of the changing relationship between the Games and society. The London Olympic bid has been in the making for some 20 years, which is a long period for any project. During that time, significant changes have taken place, both in the domestic and international environments within which the Games are planned and delivered. There has also been a long and controversial learning curve, which has seen changing political visions about the role of potential Games and the involvement of different institutional and individual actors. For example, the word ‘legacy’, which largely defines what the London Games stand for, does not appear in any of the earlier unsuccessful bids (Girginov and Hills, 2008). Changes in visions and personnel make long-term strategies difficult and uncertain. This is why the London bid is to be best seen as an evolving and socially constructed process. What has made the London bid both appealing and successful has been a combination of a strong national and city-level political support and strategy for the regeneration of East London, and a clear vision about how the Games were to enhance the Olympic ideals. It was clear to Games proponents that no city regeneration agenda alone, no matter how ambitions and important, was going to win over the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) vote. It had to be accompanied by an equally strong commitment for sports development and contribution to the Olympic Movement. London was able to capitalise on the IOC’s growing concerns about the disengagement of the younger audience with the Games. This was reflected in the core messages of the bid designed to engage young people with the Games, nationally and internationally. To that end, a group of young people from East London were flown in to Singapore to help present the bid to the IOC session.
