Proudly Anti-Fascist - An Open Letter to Clapton FC's Chief Executive

Yesterday, Forest Gate based amateur football club Clapton FC posted a statement from its chief executive Vince McBean on its website saying that “over the last 48 hours” it had “received several emails from individuals stating their concerns about some of the supporters at Clapton” - notably, that Clapton's fans are left-wing, anti-fascist and that as a result, they might provoke “EDL style demos” at the club's home ground. McBean's response is completely appalling and so this is the letter I emailed to him this evening.

Dear Mr McBean

Today I saw the 'AntiFa' statement posted on Clapton's website and I was so appalled by it that I felt I had to write to you.

I am one of the new supporters who, as you mention, are joining the club all the time. I've lived in Newham, within walking distance of the Old Spotted Dog, for nearly 25 years but my first game was only a month ago. Like so many others, I found my way to the club through word-of-mouth, after pressure from an old friend who raved about the brilliant atmosphere created by the supporters. When I eventually made it to a match, it turned out that everything I'd been told – about how welcoming the fans are, about their principled stand against racism, homophobia and fascist extremism, about the wit and lack of bigotry in the chanting – turned out to be completely true. That's the reason why I now have a Clapton FC scarf hanging up the front door of my flat.

Your statement issued yesterday mentioned the club's “strong ethos... of not tolerating discrimination or racism of any kind”. It is an ethos I share: since 1992 I have been a management committee member of the Newham Monitoring Project, east London's oldest anti-racist organisation based just down the road from Clapton FC on Harold Road. Our work involves the kind of community-based advice and support for local people suffering racist hate crime that rarely receives enough publicity but it does mean that discrimination and racism are issues I feel extremely qualified to talk about.

And I can tell promise you this: when a bunch of far-right keyboard warriors start making unsubstantiated e-mail threats intended solely to provoke a reaction, the last thing you want to do is take them at their word and issue an apology over some non-existent 'offence' or inappropriate conduct you haven't even investigated.

Actually, that's not entirely correct – the last thing you want to do is to damage and debase your club's reputation by insulting, supposedly in the name of intolerance to “discrimination or racism of any kind,” your loyal and genuinely anti-racist supporters in an desperate attempt to try and appease some obnoxious right-wing extremists.

At the very least, your statement needs removing immediately and amending so that it makes clear that, as far as the club is aware, there is no basis for any of the malicious claims made in the emails you have received. However, I think you also owe an apology to Clapton FC's fans, old and new – the implication that there might actually be some foundation to these ludicrous allegations is an affront to all of us.

I look forward to the removal and amendment of the website statement as a matter of urgency.

Guest Post: Race To The Line - The Continuing Clash Between Race And The Olympics

This is a second guest post by the sports writer and Philosophy Football founder Mark Perryman. It also appears at Red Pepper.. John Carlos is at Stratford Picturehouse at 6.30pm on Tuesday 29 May in conversation with journalist Dave Zirin. Tickets are still available and I will post a report on the event next week.

With John Carlos, one of the Mexico ‘68 podium protesters, on a speaking tour of Britain, author of a forthcoming book on the Olympics MARK PERRYMAN describes the continuing clash of race and the Games

United on the Mexico podium by their fierce opposition to racism Tommie Smith, Peter Norman and John Carlos used the medal ceremony for what has become an iconic moment of public protest. Its durability as an image of anti-racism in sport and beyond is testament to the global platform the Olympics provided. Even before satellite TV and digital media, the dignified audacity of the three medal-winners became an overnight world-wide news story.

The Sydney Olympics in 2000 offered another iconic Olympic memory of sport and race. As the twenty-first century began Eric Hobsbawm’s description of the role of sport in providing a popular expression of national identity amongst the debris of globalisation became increasingly relevant: “The imagined community of millions seems more real as a team of named people.” As part of this process a sporting contest can sometimes crystallise social or political changes within a nation. When Cathy Freeman, the Australian Aboriginal sprinter, streaked around the track to win the 400 meters gold medal, kitted out in an all-in-one skin-tight green and gold Lycra suit complete with hood, she was chased every inch of the way by the light of thousands of camera flashes capturing her moment of glory. This was more than an instant of supreme sporting achievement. For Australia’s Aboriginal community it represented recognition and inclusion from the majority white population - however temporary it ultimately proved to be. Inequality, discrimination, racism, and disputes over land rights didn’t disappear just because Cathy was a national heroine. Her success was the exception, not the rule, but for a moment it pointed to a different version of Australia.

These moments of opportunity provided by sport are vital in constructing any kind of progressive conversation around issues of race and nationality. Especially in the wake of London’s 7/7, one day after the city was selected to host the 2012 Games, a caricature of multiculturalism has been used as cover to break with the kind of celebratory diversity that the Olympics bid had seemed, at least for one of those moments, to represent. In Singapore, as the London bid presentation approached its climactic ending, Seb Coe welcomed on stage thirty youngsters, “Each from East London, from the communities who will be touched most directly by our Games. Thanks to London’s multicultural mix of 200 nations, they also represent the youth of the world...” And what a mix too. “Their families have come from every continent. They practice every religion and every faith.” Was there any box in the table of diversity these kids didn’t tick? It was a compelling image of London as a global city. But this was a flimsy populism, a kind of corporate multiculturalism, a presentation of a cosy team picture of unity through diversity which obscured the realities of representation.

As he paraded the youngsters ‘representing’ London across the Singapore stage it might have been useful to ask Coe, or even the kids themselves, a few questions: What was it like living in and growing up in Tower Hamlets, Newham and Hackney, among the poorest boroughs in the city? What jobs did their parents have, if they had jobs at all? What opportunities in terms of health, education and housing could they look forward to? How confident were any of them that they and their families would be able to afford the tickets to watch the Games they were on the stage to promote?

The forces of integration and difference reflect a set of power relations and consequential resistance which, like the national identities they help to define, are always in motion. These help to portray the ways in which all national identities are never entirely fixed but a process in motion. Sport plays its part, a very important part, in this process, but its role is partial and over-hyped at the expense of examining why the black athletes who represent Britain on the pitch, in the ring, or on the running track are not replicated in anything resembling equal numbers on Trade Union executives, or on the front benches, or on the committees that run sport’s governing bodies. Writer on race and sport Dan Burdsey provides a poignant and powerful observation of how the racialisation of sport is often experienced. Apart from the athletes on the track, “You will often see a significant presence of minority ethnic people in the stadium: they will be directing you to your seat or serving your refreshments. The racialised historical antecedents, and continuing legacy, of these roles - entertaining or serving the white folk - should not be lost within the contemporary clamour of positivity.” An Olympic Park built at the epicentre of three of Britain’s most multicultural boroughs which is experienced in this way will expose much of the inclusion and exclusion which persist in our society, or at least it should if anybody cares to notice.

Mark Perryman is the author of the forthcoming Why The Olympics Aren’t Good For Us, And How They Can Be available at a pre-publication 15% discount now from www.orbooks.com/catalog/olympics/

Who Gets To See The Torch? Who Gets To See The Games?

This is a guest post by Mark Perryman, sports writer and co-founder of the excellent Philosophy Football

As the Olympic Torch relay starts its route around Britain, author of a forthcoming book on the Olympics Mark Perryman questions the claim of a Games for all

Beginning its long route around Britain, the Torch Relay is one of the few examples of decentralisation and free-to-watch events that could have transformed the 2012 Olympics into a Games for all.

There is little doubt that the sight of the Olympic torch as it passes through a village, town or city up and down the byways, with photo-ops at famous landmarks will ignite popular interest and huge media coverage.

But the scale of that enthusiasm reveals the lack of ambition behind the 2012 model for the Olympics. In my new book Why the Olympics Aren’t Good For Us, And How They Can Be, I propose Five New Rings for the Olympic symbol. The first, and most important, of these is decentralisation. As a mega-event football’s World Cup has its problems too with new stadia sometimes built with no obvious future likelihood to be full again once the tournament is over. But the singular advantage for the hosts of a World Cup over the Olympics is it is spread all over the country, and sometimes more than one. In this way the global spectacular becomes not only a national event but a local event too. The Olympics is an entirely different model, apart from the yachting and the football tournament every single event is London-based, most of Britain will have no contact with the Games except a fleeting glimpse of the Torch relay as it passes through.

Decentralisation could have changed all this, and saved enormous amounts on new builds too. Glasgow and Edinburgh, Cardiff, Manchester, the North-East, Yorkshire and the Midlands all posses world-class stadia and arenas with huge capacities and multi-use possibilities. North Wales, the Lake District and parts of Scotland have the natural landscape perfect for events including the canoe slalom and mountain biking. Badminton is one of the finest three-day event venues in the world, its not in London so its not being used for 2012.

Avoiding those costly new builds by using existing facilities would not only magnify the Olympics’ local appeal but vastly increase capacities too. With imaginative reconfiguring Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium could have hosted the show-jumping, Manchester’s Old Trafford and Eastlands stadiums plus the MEN Arena the boxing, between Glasgow and Edinburgh share the Hockey tournament , the Midlands Stadiums host the Beach volleyball, the North-East already hosts the Great North Run, why not stage the Olympic Marathon there, give Yorkshire the Football tournament and so on.

Decentralisation enables this spread of venues with far bigger capacity than many hosting the events in London. And with Scotland, Wales, regions and cities hosting entire parts of the Olympic programme an effective campaign combining civic pride and participation in the adopted sport could have been mounted.

Decentralisation could also afford an extension of the Olympic programme to include events that are both nation-wide and free to watch. Why not an Olympic Tour of Britain multi-stage cycling race, and a Round Britain sailing race. The potential for crowds lining the streets and the quay-sides to watch , for free, as the Olympics comes to their town or port would have been huge.

The book that I have written is neither anti-Olympics nor it it against sport, I am a fan of both. But I am opposed to what the Olympics have become, the false promises made on their behalf and the chronic lack of ambition in the way they have been organised. My argument is that a different Olympics isn’t only possible, but better. If our only experience of the Games in this much hyped once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to host them is watching them on the TV, well they might as well be anywhere else but here, and a lot less costly too.

Mark Perryman’s Why the Olympics Aren’t Good For Us, And How They Can Be is available at a pre-publication 15% discount from www.orbooks.com

Mark Perryman is the author of Ingerland: Travels with a Football Nation and the editor of Breaking up Britain : Four Nations after a Union.

Mark has written for a range of publications, including the Guardian and The Times, and is a regular commentator on the politics of sport for BBC Radio 5, BBC TV News and Sky Sports News. He is a Research Fellow in Sport and Leisure Culture at the University of Brighton.

Council In Trouble Over Sport England Grant To Threatened Sports Centre

This week's Private Eye 'Rotten Boroughs' column reports:

"Eye 1301 reported on how Newham, London's 'Olympic' borough, plans to close the Atherton leisure centre - the only public sports facility of its kind in the 'Olympic zone'.

Newham's mayor, "Sir" Robin Wales, says the Atherton has to go because the council can't afford the £2.2m required to run it for the next ten years. Wales has promised a new "state-of-the-art" pool and sports centre, but no funds have been earmarked.

Campaigners who want to keep the pool open have discovered that Sir Robin hasn't done his sums properly. Back in 199 the council obtained a £2.36m grant from Sport England to refurbish the centre. One of the conditions of the funding was that the council had to keep it open for at least 21 years - ie until 2020. if not it would be liable to repay some or all of the £2.36m... over £100,000 more than it would "save" by closure. Brilliant!"

UPDATE

This information came from a Freedom of Information request made to Sport England by the Save Atherton Leisure Centre Campaign - see this press release.

UPDATE - 12 December

Papers for this Thursday's Newham council Cabinet meeting include reference to the grant and say that Sport England "are not currently intending to seek repayment of any lottery grant although this remains an option":

8.6 Lottery Grant repayment
The Council was the beneficiary of a £2.3m Lottery grant via Sport England in relation to the Atherton Centre. The grant agreement allows for Sport England to claw the funding back should the service no longer be provided. However, Sport England have been involved in early development of facility options and remain committed to working with Newham to secure long term sustainable investment in leisure. Sport England have confirmed that their priority is to secure this and welcome the Mayor’s comments about reproviding a new leisure centre. They are not currently intending to seek repayment of any lottery grant although this remains an option. Officers will continue to liaise with Sport England to mitigate this risk.

Newham Council To Close Atherton Leisure Centre

More evidence of the true face of the Olympic "sporting legacy", as Newham council has announced that it plans to shut down the Atherton Leisure Centre in Stratford on December 31st 2011.

In a statement on the council's website, it says that the closure is the result of "spiralling costs for the repair of the ceiling over the centre's main pool and an estimated maintenance requirement of more than £2.2 million over the next ten years". Mayor Sir Robin Wales insists that the council is committed "to providing a new facility with a pool as quickly as possible and we want people to have a say in what else might go in it", adding:.

"We would like to have kept the centre open while we look at all the options but we simply cannot afford to do that. It would be foolish and a complete waste of money. We need to replace the leisure facility. Doing repairs is money down the drain."

However, minutes of a council meeting on 22 September [PDF] make clear that "at present there is no identified capital funding for the new facility [to replace the Atherton Centre], and no external investment has been secured". It adds that "here is significant risk that the capital financing will not be secured for a replacement facility".

Council officers also acknowledge that there is insufficient capacity within other facilities in the borough to cope with the closure of the Atherton Centre - there will be severe problems in accommodating the School Swimming Lesson Programme that currently uses the Atherton pool to full capacity, as well as 81 private swimming lessons and aerobics classes, fitness sessions and football clubs.

The Atherton Centre has approximately 240 000 visits a year, 23% of the borough total visits to Leisure Centres. Its loss, with no concrete plans for a replacement, will have a significant impact on leisure facilities locally and it will cost local taxpayers £80,000 to decommission the building. The planned closure also seems to have been in part influenced by the end of the current contract with Greenwich Leisure Ltd, who currently tun the centre. Meanwhile, the planned opening of the Olympic Pool to the public is not due to take place until 2014. So what happens over the next two years?

Tomorrow , a protest is planned to show the council that local people are not prepared to accept the closure of a popular community resource. Meet outside the Atherton Centre (189 Romford Road) at 11am.

Fire In Babylon

This is the trailer for the brilliant Fire in Babylon, which I saw last night at Stratford Picturehouse. It is the story of the West Indies cricket team's rise from nowhere in the 1970s, which was as much a blow against racism, colonialism and inequality as it was about sport. Check it out when it goes on general release:

West Ham To Win Olympic Stadium Bid Today

After the 14 members of the Olympic Park Legacy Company meet this morning, it will be time for Newham council to pull out its cheque book and write out a payment for £40 million of council taxpayers' money. Like other news sources today, the Guardian confidently reports:

It is understood that key figures on the OPLC board feel that only West Ham's bid fulfils the five criteria laid out in the tender document. And while [OPLC chair Margaret Ford] has insisted they will judge purely on those five criteria, others raised the emotional stakes. Interventions by the likes of Lord Coe and the IAAF president Lamine Diack, who said Britain's reputation would be trashed if the stadium was demolished, raised the political temperature. It became clear that neither the coalition government – who view the London Games as a potential turning point in their first term – nor London's mayor, Boris Johnson,, shortly facing his own battle at the ballot box, would want to become known for ordering the wrecking balls to go in weeks after the closing ceremony.

Meanwhile on Saturday, West Ham will continue their increasingly desperate attempt to become only the second club to stay up after being bottom of the Barclays Premier League on Christmas Day, with an away game against West Brom.

At least they'll have one full season to try and avoid bankruptcy and clamber back into the Premiership before the keys to their new stadium are handed over.

The Return of the Iranian Solidarity Cricket Match

This Sunday sees the return of the annual solidarity cricket match between Hands Off the People of Iran and the Labour Representation Committee in aid of the charity Workers Fund Iran, which is dedicated to raising much-needed funds for the struggles of Iranian workers. Last year's contest, won by HOPI, raised £1500 and this year they are hoping to raise close to two grand.

This year, the match has moved from Walthamstow to Victoria Park in Bethnal Green and starts at noon on Pitch 2, in the north east of the park. You can get to it from the Queens Gate on Victoria Park Road, just up from the Britannia pub. Look out for the banners or find more detailed directions here.

Anyone who is interested in playing can get in contact with Ben at HOPI at ben@hopoi.info or on 07792 282 830. Sadly, the nasty shoulder injury I received after getting hit by a car in March continues to affect my graceful bowling action (!), but I'll be taking photos again this year (see last year's pictures here).

For more information see the Cricket for Iranian Workers website.

Camaraderie Continues As England Delay The Inevitable

So England have scraped through to the last 16 of the World Cup and it's a measure of their indifferent performance so far that a decidedly average match (better than some of the ground-out goalless draws I've seen so far, but still uninspiring) is likely to be hailed as a triumph by the press. James Corden's unbelievably shite post-match programme on ITV will be even worse than it usually is.

Even though I'm a neutral, I made time today to watch the game with work colleagues and I still find it hard to understand the vitriol expressed by some on the left against supporting England, whether it's an ill-judged rant or dubious Marxist analysis against football in general, complete with a typically authoritarian assertion that "nobody serious about political change can shirk the fact that the game has to be abolished".

Football may well, as Terry Eagleton claims, have replaced religion as a new 'opium of the people', at least in more secular societies, but we live in a world where the vast majority crave the ‘spiritual aroma’ that only sport, and football in particular on a global level, can begin to provide. Anyone who loves the game will understand that it does, albeit briefly, often seem like "the heart of a heartless world and the soul of soulless conditions". So yes, modern football has undoubtedly been shaped and distorted by capitalism, but it's hard to think of anything in society that hasn't. But puritanically lecturing people that they are wrong about their illusions, as Eagleton does, isn't going to help change the world and creating conditions where illusions are no longer necessary doesn't happen without convincing alternatives - which Marxists like Eagleton have repeatedly failed to offer.

Gary Younge is, I think, right to acknowledge how much football has changed over the last thirty years and I can completely understand why most of my Asian friends have no trouble reconciling support for India or Pakistan cricket teams with cheering on England in South Africa. I'm not convinced by arguments that say this reflects a need to prove an affiliation with 'Englishness', which is still probably the most difficult cultural identity anywhere in the world to accurately define with any level of agreement. But even I can see that supporting England is undoubtedly about camaraderie and a sense of togetherness, as even the most jaundiced observer must have noticed over the last couple of weeks if they don't inhabit the world of either the media or academia.

Moreover, supporting England definitely seems like an entirely familiar, everyday expression of collective solidarity in the face of adversity, not least because most supporters know perfectly well that the England team - this one as much as others before it - are middle rank at best and extremely unlikely to win the World Cup.

Based on the three games of the first round, it is only a matter of time before the England team are on their way home. At that point, my guess is that much of the the camaraderie will remain, the period of mourning will be brief and we will see far less of a drop in interest in the remainder of the tournament than there has perhaps been in previous years. That's undoubtedly what a more globalised world has helped create. At that point, I'm looking forward to welcoming a new and much larger group of neutrals to the debate on the best team playing in South Africa.

And if possible, I hope that Argentina meet Brazil in the final. That would be a great reminder of how football can occasionally represent heart and soul in the midst of a heartless and soulless world.

Why I Love The World Cup

Ah yes, the World Cup. It's impossible to avoid - and it seems to have drawn out the worst in some people.

Writing about her reasons for hating the World Cup, Laurie Penny in the New Statesman has written perhaps the worst comment piece I have seen so far on the contest in South Africa. Even she is obviously aware of the derision that her article would likely elicit: she attempts to pre-empt it by calling herself a "humourless, paranoid, liberal, feminist pansy" before diving like the Italian centre-forward of stereotypical legend into an attack on the way football excludes women, is dominated by marketing and, in England at least, is only inches away from the off-side trap of association with racism.

Laurie Penny is usually an interesting writer, but the problem with her piece is not the writer's humourlessness, much of which could be just as easily directed at any communal activity that isn't concerned with the fascinating subject of working out who the next Labour Party leader might be. Let's face it, the Glastonbury Festival is a distraction from the budget deficit too, is it not? No, it's the shaky arguments she presents. Frankly, there is so much that is wrong with her piece, so much that demonstrates the rule that you should never write about a subject you know absolutely nothing about, that it bears comparison with the stunning ignorance of today's hilarious New York Post front page (above).

I haven't the time to fisk the entire article, as I'm writing this while watching the Germany v Australia game, but lets briefly address a couple of issues. Penny says:

"Football is no longer the people's sport. Just look at the brutal contempt that the police reserve for fans, or count the number of working-class Britons who can afford to attend home matches, much less the festivities in South Africa".

The idea that football has abandoned completely its working class roots and surrendered to what Roy Keane famously called "the prawn sandwich brigade" has at least a grain of truth, but only if you believe that the Premier League is the only football that matters (as a non-fan like Penny might, for instance). But there are 72 professional football clubs in the Football League and not that many middle-class liberals who fashionably turn out every week to support the likes of Doncaster Rovers or Hartlepool United.

That's even more true when it comes to the tens of thousands of fans, predominantly working class, who support teams in the Conference National and amateur leagues, teams like Barrow or Mansfield Town, which takes the kind of commitment that few middle-class, fairweather fans could ever muster. Fair enough, there may have been a few prawn sandwiches for a match between AFC Wimbledon (who I support) and Crawley Town (my brother's team), but the genuine Dons are also far from being "wealthy misogynist jocks tossing a ball around" (that should be kicking, surely) - the club is run as an Industrial and Provident Society, exactly the kind of mutual ownership that any lefty should applaud.

As for the policing of football diminishing it as a working-class game, it is precisely because football fans aren't seen by the police as the kind of people who might pop up at Henley or Glyndebourne that they are treated so badly on occasion. It doesn't matter that the vast majority of fans have no intention of causing public disorder - the state's fear of the working-class crowd means that football fans are stereotyped just as automatically as Penny's "boozy, borderline misogynist" slur chooses to paint them.

When it comes to shamefully downgrading women's football, look at the figures: according to the FA, 260,000 women and 1.1 million girls play some form of football in England, there are over 16,000 women who have successfully attained FA coaching qualifications and 1,300 women referees. How many other weekly collective activities can say the same? Once again, the idea that women's involvement in football is nothing more than the demeaning role of the WAGs shows another fundamental ignorance about the sport. Moreover, like the men's Football League and the Conference, women's football is played not for the huge financial rewards but for something more important - just a real passion of the game.

There are, of course, many important concerns that need raising about the World Cup in South Africa, not least the ruinous expense and the way that thousands living in informal townships have been treated. Penny hasn't touched on any of these. And as for the welter of England flags, perhaps I'm lucky - living in one of the most ethnically diverse areas in the country, I can choose to support Cameroon against Holland or this week, the Ivory Coast against Portugal, surrounded by football-mad Africans.

That's really why I love the World Cup. It's not because of England, whose fortunes I could care less about. It's because of the tournament's ability to make the rest of the world, represented so comprehensively in London, start to talk to each other.

And even if the conversation is about the impact of Michael Essien's knee injury on the fortunes of the Black Stars, it's still got to be more interesting than discussing the relative merits of Labour's Monobland brothers.

South Africans Resist World Cup Evictions

When I visited relatives in South Africa in September 2007, each day we drove back and forth between Cape Town and Somerset West along route N2, passing the vast Khayelitsha township in the Cape Flats, the fastest growing in the country. To the horror of my aunt, my Dad and I even made the journey together down to Cape Point via the False Bay coast road, passing Mitchell's Plain and the city's biggest informal settlements. One thing hasn't changed in the twenty years since Mandela's release - white South Africans are still terrified of the townships.

This summer South Africa hosts the 2010 World Cup and has spent 33bn rand (about £3bn) on stadiums, tourist facilities, airports and hotels, whilst millions of South Africans continue to face appalling living conditions. In informal townships across the country, whole communities are being denied access to essential public services. And next to route N2 between Cape Town and Somerset West, a massive new housing project near the airport has been speeded up to 'beautify' the city and hide informal settlements from the tourists. This has led to mass evictions of 20,000 shack dwellers from the Joe Slovo Informal Settlement and their displacement to isolated transit camps like Blikkiesdorp - whose tin huts and strict rules have been compared to the alien internment camp of the science-fiction film District 9.

Interview with Henry, a resident of Cape Town's Blikkiesdorp [source: War on Want)

This interactive map of Cape Town produced by War on Want explores in depth the issues facing the city's residents in the lead-up to the World Cup. Click on the icons below to learn more about the neighbourhoods, settlements, townships and geographic markers that define the city's landscape – as well as the expensive construction projects developed for the World Cup.


The plight of the poorest in South Africa has grown worse as the World Cup has drawn nearer - but they are fighting back, aided by social movements like the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign and shackdweller organisations like Abahlali baseMjondolo.

The World Cup kicks off on 11 June and on Thursday 17 June, War on Want has organised an event on its impact on South Africa's communities:

Who’s going to win the 2010 World Cup?
7 pm – 9:30 pm
Toynbee Hall,
28 Commercial Street, London E1 6LS

Map | Facebook

A panel discussion including:

• Ashraf Cassiem, Anti-Eviction Campaign (South Africa)
• Phineas Malapela, Anti-Privatisation Forum (South Africa)
• Caroline Elliot, War on Want (UK)

This will also be an opportunity to discuss the effects of other mega sporting events on host countries, including the London 2012 Olympics.

POSTSCRIPT

The World Development Movement has set up Who Should I Cheer For?, a website that ranks all the teams playing in the World Cup to find the most supportable on the basis of their efforts to eradicate poverty and social injustice. England are 27th out of 32...

Photos from LRC vs HOPI cricket match

A couple of photos from the cricket match yesterday between Hands Off the People of Iran and the Labour Representation Committee in Walthamstow.

Some New Things We Know About The Olympics

We know that the Beijing Games was probably the most orchestrated attempt since the Berlin Olympics in 1936 to show that a nation is a rising power that should command respect.

We know that a country can secure an enormous return by spending $41 billion, including more gold medals than any other nation and the attendance of world leaders at the Olympics despite their apparent misgivings about China’s human rights record.

We know that the worldwide Olympic torch protests seem like a very long time ago now…

We know that during the 2008 Games, there were 53 detained pro-Tibet activists, 77 rejected protest applications from 149 individuals, at least 15 Chinese citizens arrested for seeking to protest, about 10 dissidents jailed and at least 30 websites blocked. At least 50 human-rights activists were expelled from Beijing, harassed or placed under house arrest during the Olympics, according to Reporters Without Borders. There were 30 cases of government interference in the reporting work of foreign media, included 10 cases of journalists being beaten or roughed up by police who sometimes smashed their cameras, according to the Beijing-based Foreign Correspondents Club of China. While bidding in April 2001 for to host the 2008 Olympics, the Executive Vice President of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games Bid Committee Liu Jingmin said that "by allowing Beijing to host the Games you will help the development of human rights. China and the outside world need to integrate. China’s opening up is irreversible. The Olympic Games is a good opportunity to promote understanding."

We know that Liu Jingmin is not someone that we'd want to buy a used car from...

We know that the International Olympic Committee sells sponsorships in four-year increments to cover both Winter and Summer Games and twelve companies paid $866 million, or an average of $72 million apiece, to sponsor the Turin and Beijing Games. That's almost one-third more than the $663 million total paid to back the Salt Lake City and Athens Games in 2002. Hilariously, we also know that a survey of 1,500 Beijing residents in early 2008 by Fournaise Marketing Group found that only 15% could name two of the 12 sponsors and just 40% could name one sponsor: Coca-Cola.

We know that there were 313 British athletes in Beijing but more than 600 publicly-funded employees, including government ministers, press officers, local councillors, police officers and 437 BBC staff.

We know that the number of medals won in Beijing by “Team GB” has led to a call for pushing Britain into third place in the medal tables in 2012, meaning that the chances of funding elite athletes by cutting community sport is now even greater.

We know that the organisers of London’s contribution to the closing ceremony in Beijing had even less of a clue about how to symbolise cosmopolitan Britain than the government had when struggling to work out what the hell to put in the Millennium Dome.

We know that the government’s fixation with defining national identity will have become even worse with the tabloid stories about ‘British heroes’ and the slapping down of Scotland’s First Minister Alex Salmond

We know that winning a gold medal isn’t always enough. Swimmer Rebecca Adlington’s desire to follow Olympic success with appearances on Strictly Come Dancing and Top Gear says as much about Britain’s obsession with celebrity as David Beckham’s appearance at the closing ceremony next to a London bus.

And we know that a 2012 Olympics involving Boris Johnston adds insult to injury...

PS: we know that 'The Great Escape' plans for getting out of London in four years time have already begun: visit Escape2012 for more information.

Bollyline: Cricket, racism and hypocrisy

So the Indian cricket team’s decided to suspend their current tour of Australia, because of a three-match ban imposed on spin bowler Harbhajan Singh (left) for alleged racist abuse. But is India the victim of a "blatantly false" judgment and an "unfair slur" as it claims?

Well let’s get one thing from the start. Those who have tried to claim that calling Australia’s only black player Andrew Symonds a "monkey" might be some kind of cultural misunderstanding, because Hindu mythology venerates the monkey god Hanuman and therefore calling Symonds a monkey cannot be considered a racist term, are liars and apologists for racism, whether Harbhajan Singh ever uttered the insult or not. The ‘monkey’ chants that that Symonds endured from sections of the crowd when he toured India in October 2007 were clearly not meant as a compliment on his god-like qualities either.

The claim that the Australians misheard a less explosive insult in Hindi or Punjabi (and there must be doubts they are expert in either language) and that match referee Mike Proctor therefore unfairly treated Singh without sufficient evidence is at least more credible. But the point is that the second Test was a bad-tempered affair with insults flying back and forth, and what is perhaps more surprising is the level of sympathy that the Indian team has received from some in Australia. Commentators have accusing the Australian team of creating a poisonous atmosphere of abuse, with the Sydney Morning Herald accusing captain Ricky Ponting of damaging the reputation of the country and of presiding “over a performance that dragged the game into the pits. He turned a group of professional cricketers into a pack of wild dogs.”

On the face of it, it seems hypocritical that the very national side that has elevated the ‘art’ of sledging – abusing the opposition to bring about what former captain Steve Waugh called “mental disintegration” – should protest when its dubious tactics are turned against it. Clearly when trading insults is tolerated, it will inevitably escalate until the abuse becomes racially motivated. And it’s not as though Australia has a blameless record when it comes to racism – witness the guilty-verdict against batsman Darren Lehmann for racially abusing Sri Lankan players outside their dressing room in 2003, which led to a ban from 5 one-day internationals.

But that doesn’t mean that black cricketers, whether international players or in a local team, shouldn’t demand that racism is never tolerated. It may be true that Australian sledging created the conditions for abuse that could easily cross into racist taunting, but that is an argument for cleaning up the game, not for ignoring Andrew Symonds because of the macho culture he plays within. Cricket’s apparent acceptance of sledging at an international level trickles down to every level of the sport, increases the chances that it will be emulated at a national and local level, that any black player will face racial abuse and that nothing will be done. Attempts to tackle racism head-on in other sports has started with a clamp down on the general acceptance of abusive behaviour and the International Cricket Council needs to start following the same path.

What can be seen as an over-reaction by India to the charges against Harbhajan Singh, which have been presented as an insult against the entire nation, are a result of the rancour and ill-will that the tour has generated and perhaps in part because of a sense of grievance about a number of poor umpiring decisions against it. India feels like the victim. But it would nevertheless have been better for the world’s most powerful cricketing nation to have maintained its insistence on a fair process whilst vigorously condemning racism and calling for tougher action against sledging. If nothing else, the ‘Bollyline’ row has forced the international cricketing authorities to start addressing racism rather than pretending incidents like those involving Darren Lehmann, or South Africa’s Herschelle Gibbs racially abusing Pakistan fans a year ago, are isolated cases.

But will the ICC act? Claims by its President Ray Mali that it has defused the row by removing umpire Steve Bucknor, whose decisions were criticised in the second Test, suggest that it has little interest in looking for anything but short-term solutions.