There is a sea-change across London: watching the Games on the big screen in Hyde Park, at Wembley, on the banks of Eton Dorney, there is a new mood of optimism and unity. It’s like the entire city is pleasantly drunk; everyone’s in a good mood – just yesterday, I had a conversation with a complete stranger on the Tube – and everyone’s smiling. Sport may well be the opiate of the masses, but it seems everyone is much the happier for the odd sporting toke now and again.
Nowhere sums up the transformation better than Stratford itself. I and an old schoolfriend had a pair of Olympic Park tickets, and we wandered round it in a state of disbelief. Growing up, Stratford was a complete dump; it could have been a textbook example for substandard regeneration. Two high-tech transport routes, the Docklands Light Railway and the Jubilee Line extension, came to an embarrassing and anticlimactic halt at Stratford, a place there was no reason to visit unless you wanted to loiter in a grimy bus station or attend a cold and largely deserted art-house cinema. Westfield has transformed Stratford from a particularly tatty bit of Gotham City to the heart of Metropolis, and it means that Stratford will be visited and loved long after the Games are over.
And that’s before you get to the park itself: a triumph of modern architecture to go alongside the redevelopment of South Bank or the Tate Modern, and an atmosphere that has the conviviality and bonhomie of a music festival. But it’s not just London that feels revivified and unified by the Games: a glut of British victories, with Olympians from everywhere from Bedfordshire to Liverpool to Dunblane wowing the crowds, means that, for the first time in a long time, people from all walks of life and all places feel a genuine sense of pride and belonging.
But, as with almost all highs, there is anxiety amongst the euphoria, anxiety that it’s just all too good to last, that we can’t keep smiling at each other on public transport, that the effective suspension of party politics has to give way to important battles over the economy, over Europe, over the constitution, that with the resumption of club football, we all have to go back to hating each other, that the economy’s still busted and the government’s still broke. We’ve lived so long with the prospect of the Olympics coming to Britain – barring a miraculous set of bids from Athens and Paris, we will be waiting a long, long time before we can host it again – and it’s been better than even the most Pollyannaish observers could have hoped for. We worry that the passing of the Olympics will leave a void that cannot be easily filled. Can it ever get better than this?
The honest answer is: of course, it can’t. Noam Chomsky once said that the reason why people are more excited by sport than politics is that we don’t write as excitingly about politics. That’s partly true, but the other reason is we don’t have – and never will have – politicians in the mould of Jessica Ennis and Mo Farah. We can’t defy technology, or the economy, or globalisation, in the way we can defy distance or water or gravity out on the field. But, hopefully, we can, at least, remember how we felt for these heady summer weeks, keep smiling at each other on the Tube, and remember that Stuart Pearce should never, ever, be put in charge of a penalty shoot-out.
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Stephen Bush writes a weekly column for Progress, the Tuesday review, and tweets @stephenkb
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oh yes and perhaps if this mood was around a few years ago we could have stopped them selling half of Holland Park School playground ! to give way for uber luxury apartments.The Tories did not need the cash to provide new facilities as they had plenty tucked away.When we think of that terrible cockroach infested
swimming pool they had allowed to fall into disrepair simply that they might profit ,shocking lack of social
care ,responsibility and foresight.
I’ve now seen this story/fiction/narrative/spin several times. How the Olympics and team GB and the feeling in the Olympic park show London/Britain at our smiling/relaxed /friendly best And how the warm welcome/admiration/cheers/for the whole world’s athletes demonstrate the unity/optimism/ of Londoners/Brits of every age/colour/ethnicity/religion/tax-bracket/shoe-size.
And gosh, is is only a year since the little disturbance/unrest/unpleasantness – and other words we won’t mention. All behind us . . . going forward.
No use permitting
some prophet of doom
To wipe every smile away.
Come watch the sport and cheer when you ought
Life is a Cab, Hooray old chum!
Stephen as a local lad shame you forgot to mention the Theatre Royal Stratford a longtime bastion of excellent theatre and well supported by the locals since the days of the great Joan Littlewood. I must say as a West Londoner that was my reason to visit the area many years ago. I now look forward to trying to get into the Olympic Park.Pity this Government sold 20 school playing fields and they have no record of achievement with sports and arts etc.
Westfield, the Olympic stadium, velodrome and aquatics centre have been welcomed additions to Stratford. But let us not forget at the heart of thi regeneration has been the local community who after a long themselves being neglected are seeing our area transformed and brought into the modern architecturally innovative era. A local Stratford boy myself I’ve seen my “anti-climatic” stop at the end of the DLR and Jubilee line reshaped before my eyes into a tourist and iconic location that will benefit the local area and easy London beyond the 2012 Games. We should trumpet the success of the last government who not only brought the Games to London but have successfully regenerated and long neglected part of London.
I lived from the age of 4 years to 14 years in North London (N13 then) and knew little of Stratford and still do but I did go to Enfield Technical School in Ponders End which is fairly near to the Olympic Park.
I moved to Derby in 1955 and have never regretted it – Derby is a city to be proud of because its people always re-assert their values despite the aberrations of Tory political control of the City Council and more occasionally of the former County Council.
Stephen Bush’s article is a disgrace for its patronising tone about Stratford in the past – a place is about its people only – not its architectural landscape. How can Westfield be something to be proud of? We have one in Derby of course.
I am definitely not New Labour and Stephen’s article tells me that is true!
I am on the right in the picture with the group I encouraged to form.
The real message of the Olympics is that we don’t need to buy life over a counter to get our kicks. In an age where getting and spending has passed its sell-by date and could actually destroy our planet if it continues this message needs to be encompassed in Labour’s policy programme if we are are to play a part in improving the human condition.
Its a bit of a London Thing you know 🙂 Up North we had just had the footie…. nothing unusual about that,,, 70000 crowd no military, normal police,, except they were paid for like they are for Euro Cups and Internationals. I noticed no screens, and no one stopping in the TV shops to watch, or glued to their phones. That was even though the bike riders are ‘made’ here in a velodrome. This now is widely used publicly, along with the swimming pool and the small ‘successor’ athletics stadium while Manchester City owns the City of Manchester Stadium. Social Housing was built at Main Road. So the Commonwealth Games 2002 worked with no fuss’ no jams and no Boris. It had 10000 volunteers which formed a legacy organisation MEV which continues to provide volunteer resources Up North, run by one guy in the Town Hall.
Lets see what the London Thing really leaves behind.
The reason that people take to sport more than politics partly has nothing to do with the fact that we write more excitingly about the former than the latter. It is that sport is far easier to appreciate – you win or lose; you appreciate, even among the losers, the effort, energy and enthusiasm. Yes, there are problems with drugs etc, but sport has none of the appalling taint which is now, alas, part and parcel of politics. It is untrue to say that we have not had politicians in the mould of Ennis and Farah – it is just that even those have often had
deep flaws in a way which sports people do not have (or at least their flaws do not follow them on to the pitch or track).
Sport is the new opium of the masses – the whole pitch by Cameron is that this is some great turning point, where the country will never be the same again (remember, the death of Diana?!). This is utter nonsense. For all the gold medals, the pride, the
inspiration, the coming together – in a week or so’s time there will still be homeless people, there will be the
deficit, the Coalition will still be screwing the poor, and the rich will still still be immune. We may “all be in it together” so far as the Olympics is concerned but, despite what Cameron says, there’s, alas, no translation of that to society as it is.
As one of the 70,000 volunteers assisting at the 30th Olympiad, I am struck by the coming together of different people involved in the ‘Games Maker’ initiative. My default mode is one where the glass is half empty, but even I have to admit that the coming together of people with the Olympics as the catalyst has been an eye opener and somewhat refreshing. People are being pleasant to each other, people of different classes are rubbing along side by side. It does seem that we are having a commercial break from the recession. Our newspapers are not worth buying as the back pages seems to have spread to fill the remaining content. Reality will resume with a vengeance no doubt many nursing a hangover of credit card debt used to splash out on over priced tickets – but for many myself included I have to admit these games have been inclusive – there have been numerous opportunities to be involved and to play a part, however small, without spending loads of money and the Games Maker initiative despite my scepticism has provided that opportunity.