The Olympic

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Defiant resture by Tommie Smith and John Carlos in 1968 whole attitude of the capitalist class and the Stalinist bureaucracies to sport.

The Workers Socialist League stands opposed to the boycott of the Olympics, as called for by Carter and Thatcher (noticeably leaving their final decision until February, in order to make it impossible for the USSR and East European countries to withdraw from the moneyspinning Winter Olympics, to be held at Lake Placid, USA).

But our opposition to a boycott does not mean we are pressing for athletes to go to the Olympics.

We do not endorse either of the two positions held, on the one hand, by the capitalist press and, on the othet, by the British Stalinist daily Morning Star.

No politics While the Tory press thunders the Carter/Thateher cold war line, the Morning Star pleads for "politics to be kept out of sport" ', publishing statements from sporting figures in Britain and the USA declaring their wish to take part.

What, then, is the "Olympic ideal"?. De Coubertin, founder of the modern games, described it this way:

"The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win, but to take part. The essential thing is not to have. conquered but to have fought well."

This vague, idealist sentiment is interpreted by the Morning Star into the Stalinist language of "peaceful coexistence":

"At stake is the most important of the Olympic principlesthe promotion of understanding, harmony, peace and friendship among the youth of the world, irrespective of sex, race creed or colour."

Such a statement sums up the Stalinist view that exploiters and exploited can simply coexist, so long as they come to "understand" each other.

From this standpoint the fight against racialism and sexism is simply a matter of "understanding"

But of course at the same time the Soviet and Eastern European bureaucrats lose no opportunity to exploit the rivalry of the Games to reinforce patriotic sentiment and national pride.

So, far from it being simply

Richardson

was, of course, the much-quoted 1936 Berlin Olympics, where Hitler used the Games not only to demonstrate his respectability, but also in an attempt to assert the supremacy of the "'master-race"

Impact

his black team mate John Carlos bowed their heads and raised their clenched fists in a "black power" salute.

Smith was vilified in the capitalist press for bringing politics into the Olympics-and never allowed to run for the USA again. But his symbolic gesture against US imperialism was the most powerful political statement at any Olympic Games.

In 1972 the Munich Olympics saw the massacre of Israeli athletes and of their PLO kidnappers in a conflict that highlighted the role of US imperialism in driving the Pales. tinians from their homelands and establishing the Zionist settler state.

Boycott

1976 saw a boycott by many black: :: African countries, demanding the exclusion of New Zealand after a New Zealand rugby tour of South Africa.

And the 1980 Olympics were already threatened with a renewed African boycott in protest at the British Lions rugby tour of South Africa.

The Russians. had declared they would not exclude the British team. And Thatcher, while asking the Lions not to tour South Africa, had refused to stop them, in order to "keep politics out of sport"

So how do we see boycotts of sporting events?

We are not generally in favour of the tactic. We do not see the actions of sportspeople as a decisive weapon in the fight against oppression, which must centre on the actions of the international working class.

But of course there are times when the actions of a regime, or the place or timing of a major event give the possibility of developing or assisting workers' struggles, of propagandising in opposition to a dictatorship, or place on sports people an obligation to dissociate themselves from particular acts of savagery.

One example of this would have been if a movement had developed for a boycott of the Mexico Qlympics.

Another, even. clearer example, was the occasion of the Scottish football team's visit campaign, which could obviously be utilised by all kinds of anti-communist elements.

Sure enough, this campaign, initiated by Ginsberg, Pyiusch and others, has now dovetaiied into the proposed boycott over the Afghan invasion.

But in opposing the boycott call, we are not urging athletes to go to Moscow at all costs. We oppose the political concept and exploitation of the Olympic Games, which, Ike all sport and recreation are used by capitalism as money-making events.

Despite the "amateur" facade of the Olympics many of the competitors are driven into the struggle not for any abstract love of sport, but through material financial and career pressures.

Italian high jumper Sara Simeoni, for instance, now no longer has to work. Successful Olympic athletes are generally home and dry financially.

While opposing the boycott, we do not endorse the Olympic Games.

In conclusion it is worth adding a word on the concept of competitive sports, which some socialists regard as morally wrong.

The urge to run faster, jump higher or dive better is, they say, a capitalist concept and an elevation of the individual.

I disagree with this. Why are the Olympics so popular? It is not simply nationalism. Rather it is because we can see in the Olympics the supreme develop ment of men and women's physical capabilities (sometimes of course artificially stimulated by drugs). * Just as a socialist society will take forward and develop the level of bourgeois art and culture, so a socialist society will build on the athletic and physical achievements established in sporting events.

The Olympics show what is physically possible for the fittest people in a woria where two-thirds of the people are undernourished.

When stadiums, pools, other facilities and liberated leisure time are available to the peoples of the world, as well as enough food, then sporting achievements will be raised, along with the general physical level of mankind.