Workers' Liberty

Small shopkeepers had a ball, right? All those extra tourists...? I restore and sell furniture to a shop in Sydney's inner west that has never known such poor sales. Coffee shop owners in Leichhardt were panicking because takings were down 20-30%. Outside the CBD, there were no tourists. A large number of Sydney families left town. And those who remained had had their pockets drained buying Olympic tickets ("only happens once in a lifetime... got to take the kids"). Credit card transactions in Australia were up two per cent in August. How much more did they go up in September, the month most people bought tickets? And how long will it take average families to pay off these debts? With the Australian dollar dropping 20 per cent in the past year, imports have become more expensive which will lead to significant price rises in department stores and supermarkets. On top of this, interest rates are rising every other month.

Ah... it can't be all that bad, you say. What about the tens of thousands of extra jobs? While a few hundred full time workers undoubtedly built the venues and a few hundred more handled the huge crowds using trains and buses, a staggering 40,000 Olympic jobs were done by volunteers... like teachers and public servants who were on holidays and getting paid anyway (a guy I know of was engaged by SOCOG to chauffeur an IBM executive around for 12 hours a day. Wage? Zero bucks).

I guess one bright side for Australian workers and students who can't afford to travel but who managed to buy tickets to an event or two and were part of the huge crowds at Homebush was that for a few days we played host to people of many cultures from all parts of the world. I'll never forget the crudely lettered name tag around the neck of a young spectator I saw at the track and field events. It read... "I am not an important person. But say g'day anyway".

Corruption and corporatism versus a positive social role for the Olympics

by Mike Marqusee (from Action for Solidarity, UK)

The received wisdom, the liberal view of sport, has been that everyone may not be equal elsewhere, but on the field of play everyone is equal and therefore individual merit can overcome racism: that's certainly the myth about sports in the United States. Most of the British sprinters at the Sydney Olympics are black. And there is no doubt that Linford Christie's career has been an important episode in black people staking a claim to be part of this country. These sorts of things, of course, have some positive effect. But the problem is, as we can see particularly from the experience in America, that it's quite possible for black people to secure a very prominent presence in sport but still be marginalised and excluded in the rest of society. The last 20 years has seen the most extraordinary rise of black basketball players in the United States. They have dominated the sport - most famously Michael Jordan. These guys are making mind-bending sums of money. But the period in which black players have become the wealthiest athletes ever in the history of any sport anywhere in the world coincides with a period of immiseration for most of the black community. So in one way we want sport to be a mirror of our multi-racial, multi-cultural society - but in fact sport, in showing a world where everyone is equal and where black people have overcome the obstacles of the past, is propagating a lie about the society we live in. I'm also cautious about black people having to gain acceptance by plastering the Union Jack on themselves and winning for England. What happens if you don't win? Does it mean you're less of a Brit? It does to the Daily Mail. Some of the greatest performances at the Olympics will come from the Ethiopian and Kenyan distance runners. These guys, people like Haile Gabre Salassie, are some of the greatest athletes in history. But they won't be able to make the big money, because the part of the world they come from is utterly poverty-stricken, and they are not exploitable by multi-nationals to the same degree as Western athletes. One positive thing is that the Olympics structure forces the media to cover women's sports more than it would normally do. Women's sports remain unbelievably discriminated against, and it's very hard for even top women sportspersons to get the kind of sponsorship needed to pursue a serious career. Britain's women athletes in particular suffer from this: they have to go to American colleges or to Europe for training facilities. The Olympics gives a passing spotlight on women athletes and that's very welcome - although, of course, that spotlight leaves them unless they happen to win a gold medal, and only a handful of people can do that. I grew up loving the Olympics but now it's entirely an orgy celebrating nationalism on the one hand and multinational capital on the other - and I don't really see any other values reflected in it. But you never know: maybe someone will get up on an Olympic stand and make a statement, like Tommie Smith and John Carlos giving the Black Power salute from the winners' podium in 1968. That would be great: you have the most fabulous platform to address hundreds of millions of people - and people have never forgotten what happened in '68. The Games in their current form should be abolished. To meaningfully reform the Olympics you'd have to start by abolishing the International Olympic Committee and founding a democratic association of the sports men and women of the world. There is obviously no chance of that happening, all things being equal - there's just too much at stake, the vested interests are too huge. I also think that lumping all the sports together is a big problem. Remember that the Olympics were originally set up not as a competition between nations but as a competition between individuals. I love the idea of an international sporting meet - it's a beautiful idea. In that sense the clichˇs about the Olympic Village have a potential positive side: of course it's great for people from all over the world to meet as equals. But I can't see the power of big business being beaten unless the Olympics is broken down into its components, so I'd rather each individual sport - as football does already - ran its own world tournament. The Olympics may well be tainted beyond reclaim - but we do have to demand its reform because it has such a huge influence on the shape of the world we live in. The left should not be hesitant about talking about the democratisation of the Olympics. It can't be stressed enough that it's essential to end people competing under national flags. The idea of getting just getting 300 or 400 of the best athletes in the world together to compete and push themselves to deliver the best possible athletic performance would be great - everyone wearing their own personal uniform: no logos, no national flags.