Nicola Adams, left, celebrating her gold medal - Britain's first by a female boxer Photo: EPA
By Janet Daley
So tomorrow it’s back to reality. Will we wake up in a different country: one that is sadder, but somehow reassuringly familiar? I confess I was not, to put it mildly, an enthusiast for the idea of having the Games in London. This was primarily because, as a commuter, I was convinced that the city’s infrastructure – which breaks down roughly every 20 minutes under normal rush hour conditions – could not possibly cope with the pressure. What I had not anticipated was that the spectacularly effective campaign of advance warnings and threats to London’s travelling public would cause so much of its working population to abandon the capital. Thus the evacuation of traditionally depressive, harassed, exhausted Londoners made way for the arrival of a lot of rather sweet, smiley people who turned the city into a very jolly and, momentarily, carefree place.
By Janet DaleySo tomorrow it’s back to reality. Will we wake up in a different country: one that is sadder, but somehow reassuringly familiar? I confess I was not, to put it mildly, an enthusiast for the idea of having the Games in London. This was primarily because, as a commuter, I was convinced that the city’s infrastructure – which breaks down roughly every 20 minutes under normal rush hour conditions – could not possibly cope with the pressure. What I had not anticipated was that the spectacularly effective campaign of advance warnings and threats to London’s travelling public would cause so much of its working population to abandon the capital. Thus the evacuation of traditionally depressive, harassed, exhausted Londoners made way for the arrival of a lot of rather sweet, smiley people who turned the city into a very jolly and, momentarily, carefree place.
It was not just London, of course. It has become a truism to say that the mood of the nation has been transformed and that we must “learn the lessons” of the effect that the Olympic spirit has had on the populace. So what precisely is the essence of that spirit? What was it at the heart of this experience that generated so much bliss and communal good will? Have we, as everybody keeps saying, learnt something very important about the national character which will be worth hanging on to after the crowds have dispersed and the venues have been sold off? You bet we have. The Olympics were an unapologetic festival of competitiveness, pursuit of individual excellence, almost superhuman self-discipline, and uncompromising reward for merit. They were, in other words, a celebration of all those aspects of the human condition which the political fashion and educational ideology of the past 40 years has attempted to denigrate. And the country loved it. Indeed, it was ecstatically untroubled by the fact that some people – who were exceptionally talented and phenomenally dedicated – won, and some other people, with considerable courage and no dishonour, lost.
Just a thought: I wonder if this is why, notwithstanding Ed Miliband’s effusion in our pages, the rest of the Labour front bench have been largely invisible during the events. Was there something about the unashamed glorification of personal achievement – of winning because you were the very best that it was possible to be – that made them feel uncomfortable? The Left generally has not known quite how to position itself in all this. There was some rather mean-minded bleating among the Left-wing commentariat about “elitism” when there turned out to be a disproportionate number of private school people among the winners – but why should this surprise anybody? Since the collapse of standards in state education there have been a disproportionate number of private school people succeeding in every walk of life. Which brings us to the “lessons to be learnt”.
David Cameron has got characteristically bogged down in a squabble with the teaching unions over whose fault it is that sport has declined so much in state schools. Accusations about the Government selling off playing fields and abandoning targets for mandatory PE have been flung across the barricades only to be countered with evidence of the teachers’ refusal to supervise out-of-hours activities. It was all hugely unedifying and utterly beside the point. The “lesson to be learnt” is much bigger than the availability of sports facilities, although that – and the attitude of teachers towards competitive sport – certainly does come into it. What is at stake here is the transcendent question of what constitutes social virtue. The prevailing, quite explicit, theme disseminated by political and educational ideologues for more than a generation has been that no one should be encouraged to perform markedly better (or be rewarded for achieving more) than anyone else: that being an exceptional talent or a successful competitor was inherently unfair to those without the same advantages even if the “advantages” were your own character and motivation.
It followed that acknowledging such differentials of attainment was a form of civic crime, being divisive and likely to reinforce the inequality that had led to such disparities of outcome in the first place. This is what the absurd Labour slogan “excellence for everyone” was all about: no one may excel unless everyone else can – which neatly undermines the meaning of the word “excel”. Yes, the opportunity to participate in sport – specifically competitive sport – is important. It is especially vital for adolescent boys, who need a healthy, rule-governed outlet for their natural aggression. But it is all kinds of excellence and individual accomplishment that need to be celebrated once again. The prohibition on competition, or clear acknowledgement of superior ability, in primary school classrooms has been a horrendous handicap to the academic performance of boys for whom winning – coming “top of the class” as it was once known – is a major motivation. There has been much comment on the contrast between the Britain of the 2012 Games and the nihilistic violence which was parading across our television screens (or, if you were particularly unlucky, outside your front door) last year at this time.
Which is the real Britain, everybody wants to know: the mob of rioting delinquents or the wholesome, well-behaved crowds of the past fortnight? The answer, of course is both. (Maybe the “lesson to be learnt” from the one is relevant to the other: when young men grow up without acceptable outlets for aggressive impulses, they are likely to go to the bad.) However, there is a decision to be made about which of those two countries we will embrace and which we will repudiate. The riots were the final fruition of unchecked delinquency. In truth, the failure to control them was just a logical extension of the long history of self-inflicted failure to get to grips with lawlessness and anti-social behaviour.
By significant contrast, when the golden post box commemorating Jessica Ennis’s Olympic triumph was vandalised within 24 hours of its dedication in her home city of Sheffield, the civic authorities painted out the graffiti immediately. That was how New York’s police defeated their epidemic of graffiti: by scrubbing it off as soon as it appeared. It was one of the ways that they took their city back. Sheffield, inspired by the Olympic spirit, decided not to let the hooligans win. Is it too much to expect that the rest of the country might do the same?
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