Olympic Torch
Watching the Olympic Flame make its way through London today, I couldn’t help but wonder what on earth the point was. If China hoped to win favour by parading a candle through a foreign city, they would have been bitterly disappointed by the scenes from the UK. You could barely see the torch at all as a swarm of police officers surrounded the inner circle of Chinese officials, with some B-list celebrity or athlete buried somewhere in the mix. The event was so hideously over-policed, it is little wonder that the images displayed on Chinese state TV were of Steve Redgrave inside the secure confines of Wembley Stadium.
The torch relay is an unnecessary part of the Olympic process. The nation identifies with the “Olympic spirit” (such as it is) at the games themselves, and the opening ceremony is something of a spectacle of internationalism. The torch relay is nothing but a propaganda event, and the London leg failed to help either China or its games.
With the world’s media focused on the relay, though, London was given the opportunity to show a fantastic part of its culture to the rest of the globe. Key flash points were thousand-strong with protesters campaigning against China’s occupation of Tibet and their rock-bottom human rights tradition. Watching the protests (not the frankly uninspiring jogging police officers) made me rather proud to live in London, showing the world that we are less interested in some feeble flame and more concerned with human rights, democracy, and occupation. I think the slant of media reports has been absolutely spot-on today: this was a day of protest against China’s record - note, not against the games - rather than a cheery love-in with the Chinese propaganda machine.