It is probably blasphemy, or sacrilege, or at least very rude, but whenever I see the Dalai Lama, I think of him as speaking in the voice of the late Mike Reid, who played Frank Butcher on EastEnders. It must be the tinted specs. ‘Look, me old China,’ he croaks, pinching at the bridge of his nose, ‘I know you got to look your best right now, what with them Olympics. I ain’t exploiting that. I ain’t orchestrating nuffin’. I’m only a monk, innit? Barry! Tell ’er!’
I’ll be eating my hat on this in a week or two, if the dusty Tibetan streets run red, but for now, hurrah for the Olympics. Suddenly, they aren’t just about reinforcing our stereotypes of east European women, or a dogged global refusal to concede that the Ancient Greeks didn’t have judo or bicycles. Suddenly, they are global macropolitics. China is playing nice. Or, at least, nicer. The Games are a force for good.
Maybe they always were, and I just wasn’t listening. There can be few words in the English language that benefit less from standing shoulder to shoulder than ‘politics’ and ‘sport’. (‘Human’ and ‘cheese’? I’ll keep thinking.) There is a sort of soul-sapping puritanical blandness about anybody who makes the transition from one to the other (Lord Coe, Sir Menzies Campbell) and, when pressed, they always drone on about the wrong bits. It’s all inspiration, going for gold, being a winner, as though they are deliberately churning out slogans for faintly sinister teenage Christians to print on their T-shirts. They never say, ‘Let’s deliberately give the Games to somewhere hateful, repressive and mad, so that they have a stark choice between getting their shit together or being a global laughing stock.’ They should.
Perhaps this was the thinking in 1980, when the Games went to Moscow. I doubt it, but I was three and I wasn’t reading the comment pages. I do know that Russia had just invaded Afghanistan, and the US called for a boycott. Half the world obliged. Britain predictably fudged it, with the government backing the ban and the athletes opting to go anyway. That included the young Sebastian Coe, interestingly enough, who went on to win his first Olympic gold. That is another bad thing about sportsmen who dabble in politics. They always seem to think that sport matters more.
If the tanks aren’t yet rolling into Tibet by the time you read this, it will only be the Olympics that are stopping them. If they are, expect boycott calls aplenty. Although not, I suspect, from the likes of Lord Coe. Or from Gordon Brown, what with London 2012 looming on the horizon. Being Olympic host nation is tantamount to handing the rest of the world a stick to beat you with. The games provide leverage, but only to everybody else. It is only in the past couple of months — what with Spielberg and Darfur, what with Tibet — that I have properly come to understand the true cynical genius in the decision to saddle them on China in 2008.
With that in mind, I’m slightly worried about why they are then coming to us. I don’t mean why we wanted the Games — I’ve given up wondering about that. I mean, why did the world agree to let us have the Games? What is in it for the world? Of what impending horrors do they suspect us? In 2012, who will threaten to boycott, and why? By then, could we face a boycott over Afghanistan, too?
No, probably not. More likely, Britain is just a safe option. If Beijing is a disaster, two disasters in a row would be a catastrophe. You need solid, reliable Olympics in places like the UK to make the nutcases like China covet them. I have a hunch that the widespread sneering at the idea of a British Olympics only goes to show how comfortable we all are about our place in the world. We don’t get the point. That’s not true everywhere. I recently heard it argued, in all seriousness, that the Irish economic boom wouldn’t have happened without the interval of the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest — in which Michael Flatley performed ‘Riverdance’. Sometimes, some countries need to make a splash. Ireland did, China does, we don’t.
Anyway, it is not boycotts that the Beijing gerontocracy will be worrying about. Not yet. They will be thinking about that Black Power salute in Mexico in 1968. What will it be this time? Tibetan flags fluttering from the podium? Pictures of the Dalai Lama on T-shirts under vests?
Even the monk himself isn’t proposing a boycott yet. ‘The Olympics uphold the principles of freedom of speech, freedom of expression, equality and friendship,’ he says, from exile in Dharamshala, India. ‘China should prove herself a good host by providing these freedoms.’ That could change. A week from now, he could be pinching the bridge of his nose, and peering out through his yellow lenses. ‘Have a heart, sunshine,’ he might say, in his gravelly Walford growl. ‘Leave it aahht.’ What then?
It is social awkwardness, I have always thought, that prevents Britain from being properly corrupt. Reading about these allegations of bribery against a potato supplier for Sainsbury’s, I found myself almost awestruck. Imagine having the balls for that. I find it hard enough to tip.
I bribed a policemen once, in a remote bit of southern Africa. I really wasn’t very good at it. I was in a car with my girlfriend, and we were motoring merrily along, and then there were suddenly police, everywhere. They waved a clearly decrepit speed camera at us, cited some implausible speed, and then showed us a handwritten chart that appeared to mean I had to send the government the local equivalent of £500. Then they just stood there, waiting.
It took me a while. The sun beat down, the policemen stared at their shoes. On the verges, cattle yawned. And even when, really after ages, it finally dawned on me what they were after, I still wasn’t entirely confident. So in a sentence laden with terrified double meaning, I suggested that I might be interested in paying a smaller fine, if I could pay it now, and they weren’t to write it down.
‘Eh?’ said the policeman, and above us, vultures cawed.
‘Do you want a bribe?’ I blurted.
‘Yes,’ said the policeman. So I gave him a tenner.
Hugo Rifkind Is A Writer For The Times.
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