Olympic Games 2012: Legacy

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 24th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, on bringing this debate forward. What attracted me to it was that broad lessons will be learnt from this, one of the primary lessons being that you can bring people from different, often self-defined, groups together and make them work effectively.

The first point at which I really had doubts about the process of doing this, but knew that the challenge was there, was at a dinner I was asked to many years ago, which first brought people from the arts world to speak to people from the sports world, at the start of the planning. A few parliamentarians were there as well. As the discussion got going, after people had swapped pleasantries during the meal itself, I felt that I was looking at a sort of peace conference between the Martians and the Venusians, where they were talking together for the first time. The look of total blank astonishment when it was actually suggested that they might have matters in common was quite comical. However, it was also ridiculous, because they do have very similar attitudes.

At grass-roots level, what is the difference between somebody trying to get a play together—finding the people for it, getting somebody to run the finances, organising it and finding venues—and somebody trying to run a sports team and get people to training and to turn up on time, and get coaches together and run the finances? It is exactly the same dynamic going on. The fact that they were brought together to create one thing that worked well is one of the broad lessons that can be taken on into the future: you do not have to just talk to your own people about your own subject. The noble Lord, Lord Mawson, suggested this in terms of planning: certain people, such as central government and local planning, must learn to understand and trust each other. It is something that must happen.

The Games have shown us how to bring these two together. They have also probably shown us the limitations of this at the moment. The Cultural Olympiad was very important, because something other than just the Olympics had to bring people in. Effectively, I felt that the Cultural Olympiad was a little like a Christmas present: it was that very important, enticing bit around the outside—the wrapping—that made it look good and gave you the buzz and excitement beforehand. The fact that there was something going on was very important: the Olympics were happening and there was something coming. That was so important to the general feel of the Games for such a long time. However, it was not the Olympics themselves. The hard core was the sport. If we can take that model, for instance, when sport provides some wrapping for a cultural event, we will at least have achieved parity between these two worlds. We must look at how we integrate them to bring more of the same process.

We have talked about the creativity of the opening and closing ceremonies for both Games, which was one of the aims of the Cultural Olympiad. However, unless it goes beyond saying, “Wasn’t it great?”, which we have all done and which I did when I saw them, you have failed to work on the initial steps that have been taken here. We learnt to do it in the planning. The political parties had a common goal in the preparation and planning—or rather they learnt and then continued to remember that they had a common goal—which is why the bid was successful and why we were able to take it forward without the normal position in politics of simply opposing and backing, to make sure we had something coherent in the planning stage. That is what allowed us to win in Paris.

Unless those outside the core activities are prepared to buy in, and buy in to something that they do not regard as their own, we will have lost something here. We gained something very important: the chance to say that it is not just somebody’s—ours or yours—but co-operation at various levels. Learning to buy in to something that you do not have control of is probably one of the signs of growing up. I hope that both the arts and sport have done some growing up and seen that the world is slightly bigger than just them. There is always a temptation to say, “Mine” and not talk.