The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is not permitting companies sponsoring the London games to use the famous Olympic symbol. London has therefore been forced into inventing its own Olympic logo. This an example of how seriously the branding of the Olympics is taken. Marketing Olympics is not only about promotion though, it is also a political exercise of manipulating facts and hiding realities that could cause damage to the brand. It seems as much effort goes into the spinning of the Olympics as sweat goes into an Olympic athlete’s training, and in some cases the spin appears to be about completely misleading the public.

Some unpleasant truths about the Olympics that the IOC would rather you didn’t know:
according to the Geneva based Centre for Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE) some 1.25 million people have already been displaced to make way for Beijing Olympics, and in Seoul, South Korea, the Olympics made around 720,000 homeless. COHRE has also researched the effect of the Olympics in Barcelona, Atlanta, Sydney, Athens, and London. It makes depressing reading because in all those places large numbers of people, usually the poor, and/or minority groups, have been forced to leave their homes. In some of these countries those who have resisted or organised against eviction have faced violence and sometimes imprisonment.

London also has its Olympic casualties. Thousands of people were living or working in what will be the Olympic Park OP (many have already been forced to leave). Many business people have complained bitterly about the London Development Agency’s (LDA) (who are in charge of acquiring the Olympic park land) attitude, which they claim has been almost aggressive, they also complain about stingy levels of compensation, which some maintain are likely to put them out of business.

Of those that live in the London OP most are on low incomes and/or are from minority groups. Clays Lane is collection of shared housing that was home to some 450 people. It used to be a housing cooperative and for that reason had cheap rent. That is why many of the residents moved there. A room in a shared house on “the lane” was less than £50 a week including bills and council tax. Residents have to move because the place is being compulsorily purchased for the Olympics. Tenants are being offered alternative housing. However the cost of the new housing is 2 to 3 times greater than their old homes at Clays Lane. The compensation is barely enough to pay for the cost of moving to a council flat. Even if it was enough to pay for moving to, and furnishing a council flat, the compensation would soon be soaked up by the increase in rent. With many of the residents doing jobs such as care work at minimum wage they will barely be able to survive financially. The other issue is the Clays Lane Estate is going to be wiped off the map. It was an almost unique place were, over the years, single people have been able to find community and cheap housing.

Vulnerable people caught up in the London Olympic dragnet have often been treated with a contemptible level of care. All tenants of Clays Lane had a secure tenancy. One vulnerable young resident of Clays Lane with learning difficulties accepted a re-housing offer on a shorthold (insecure) tenancy. There are other vulnerable people in the OP area. There are, for example, people living in makeshift shelters. One of those, Ed, suddenly found workers building a fence, which was to put him inside the Olympic Construction zone. He was naturally concerned about this. In response to questions relating to Ed’s home-loss compensation and possible re-housing the LDA responded . . .

“By nature they [people living in shacks] are transitory and have no rights with respect to the land and therefore are not entitled to compensation. When the LDA closes the park we will offer to put any homeless people in touch with local support services."

"The man still has access to where he is squatting. He is sleeping rough next to a public toepath on land we will be taking control over in the next two months. In that time he will be given the opportunity to move his belongings and we will offer to put him in touch with support services."

The LDA took “control of this land”, not within two months, but within a few days and when I called next Ed was not there any more: his shack had disappeared. There is no way of knowing what happened to Ed or his shack, but the LDA’s comments are perhaps an indicator of their attitude towards those who do not have land, money, and access to legal advice. What has happened to Ed is perhaps symbolic of the Olympic Steamroller: little people can easily get crushed under its wheels, and the LDA/ODA do not seem to be taking steps to make sure the more vulnerable are not harmed.

Another piece of land the LDA want to take control of is the land Ron’s house stands on. It is a ramshackle, fairy tale place near the River Lee. The LDA want it for a wildlife sanctuary. The house is surrounded by bushes, brambles and on just a short visit you are likely to see all manner of wildlife including foxes. Ron is baffled by the LDA’s plans, because, as he says, “it is already is a nature reserve”. He has received a letter a telling him the LDA have the right to enter his house on or after 18th June, and a sheriff has been to see him to inform him they will be coming for the house soon. He is 73 and spent years working as a fire fighter, and with the emphasis on the word fighter; he is not going to be a push over for the LDA. He won’t go willingly. “They will have to march me out of the house” he growls. He is a man with high moral principles, and finds it difficult to understand how the Olympic Project can just order people out of their homes. It is not the sort of thing he would do.

The Manor Gardens Allotments also stands in the way of the Olympics. The land the allotments occupy was given to the gardeners of East London by Major Villiers in the early 1900s. Villiers was an old Etonian, friend of Winston Churchill, owner of Bearings Bank, and a Lord. He was an old fashioned philanthipist, some of the older gardeners still remember him visiting the gardens on a rusty old bike. He was a decent man who put considerable energy and resources into improving the lives of working class people. When the nearby OXO factory wrote to the Major and asked if they could buy part of the allotments to extend their works he was having none of it and wrote back suggesting he buy their factory in order to extend the allotments. But now the LDA want Manor Gardens for the Olympics. The plot holders are up against forces more powerful than OXO and the Major is no longer alive to fight their cause. Thomy Morris 83, plot holder, and survivor on the WW2 North Atlantic Convoys tells me he hopes the allotments get an extension so that he can harvest this summer’s vegetables.

The way in which the London Games are being marketed is occasionally a work of genius. David Higgins (boss of the ODA) used an Olympic Road Show to support his argument that the games are democratic. During the road show what Higgins called a public consultation was carried out. As part of this a document was circulated asking people what they would like from the legacy. The document invites you to tick a multiple-choice section … What features would like in the Park after the Games are over? The choices you are given to tick are:

Canals
Woodland
Riverside
grassy areas
quiet areas
ponds
picnic area
tree-lined avenues
wetland
nature reserves
meadow, wildlife
allotments

This is interesting because what they are offering you in this document is what was there in the area already. The reason this is what was there is that many of these facilities have already been destroyed, or are soon to be destroyed, by the LDA/ODA’s contractors.

In another section of the have your say document titled … what type of facilities might you and your family use in the area, they ask if “you and your family” would like a velodrome (cycle track). However the Eastway Cycle Circuit was already there. It was a 1 mile tarmac circuit, in more that 10 acres of quiet land covered in trees and was also ideal for mountain biking and cyclocross. It has now been destroyed.

Tower Hamlets, an Olympic borough hosted one of David Higgins’ road shows, Kelly Holmes, and an army of staff in red t-shirts were there to promote the Games. I did not ask Holmes (an ex Athens gold medallist) how much she was paid to be there, but as well as listening to all the spin I did ask her if she could see any negatives to the Olympics. She replied that she could not. When I asked her about issues surrounding housing and the Olympics and the fact that there had already been an increase in house prices in the area she seemed unaware that this was a problem even though she was in one of the poorest boroughs in the country, where few people could afford decent homes even at the pre-Olympics prices. She did however tell me that the Olympics would create 9,000 new homes in the Olympic Park. This was a statistic I heard the LDA’s Gareth Blacker cite in a planning meeting and also in at the public inquiry over the Compulsory Purchase Order served on the owners and tenants of land required for the Olympics. This figure is not correct. 6,000 of these homes were being built as part of the Stratford City Development, which was already underway regardless of the Olympics. The LDA are demolishing homes for over 1,000 people in the Olympic Park. The true figure once adjusted for the Stratford development and the housing they are destroying is less than 2,000 new homes, quite a serious “error”, especially when quoted to quasi-judicial bodies such as the Public Inquiry and the Waltham Forest Planning Committee.

The ODA awards planning permission to itself for construction work inside the Olympic Park. However outside the Park they have to go before the various borough planning committees. So far they have got a mauling by 3 of these committees who have rejected unsuitable and badly thought out plans. The OP area is criss-crossed by waterways and in the borough of Tower Hamlets councillors were angered when it was discovered that the LDA, trying to sell their plans to the borough, had exaggerated the area of open space created under their plans. They had included the area of the existing waterways.

The Olympic budget is another subject, which is being spun faster than a Las Vegas roulette wheel. The original estimate for the cost of the London Games was £2.38 billion. The Athens Games cost the Greeks £9 billion. It is not rocket science to figure out that, in one of the world’s most expensive cities, the Games would cost more in London than Athens. Yet the powers that be are currently (June 2007) sticking with an estimate of around £9 billion. It is not only the expensiveness of London that will add to the cost, there are severe problems with contaminated land due the chosen site’s industrial history. Disposing of contaminated material off site is hugely expensive and estimates of the amount of material to be removed have nearly quadrupled so far. Also Britain is at war. Our soldiers are killing people in other countries. There is no sign of the war in Afghanistan or Iraq abating and there is every sign that new fronts are opening, in Somalia in particular. Over the next 5 years before the London Games fears over security are likely to increase adding still more to the cost policing the event. The initial estimate of £2.38 billion is so low that seems incredible anyone could have taken it seriously. But would it have been possible to convince the public to host the Games if the cost estimate had been £9 billion, or higher?

The Olympics, its branding, its glitzy marketing and public relations are deceptive. Ron, Ed, and Tomy, etc are just a few examples of what the LDA do not want you to know about. Once the veneer of glossy brochures and so-called public consultations are peeled back, it becomes difficult to see what ordinary Londoners have to gain from the event.
What those marketing the games wish to avoid is any debate over what we have to go without in order to finance the Olympics, perhaps 10 new hospitals or the building of youth centres all over the country. The government is already making an Olympian raid on the National Lottery’s good causes fund, with many charitable oganisations feeling the pinch. The London games, like the games in cities all over the world, inevitably become an excuse for huge land-grabs. Property speculation in the area has already begun, and the price of housing risen to yet more ridiculous levels, putting it even further out of the reach of ordinary people. The OP and its surroundings will be home to the rich, and the families who currently live in the area will be forced out in a socio-economic cleansing caused by property price increases. The real Olympic winners will not be seen on the podium taking gold, they will be the property developers, construction companies and senior staff at the LDA/ODA and the Geneva based IOC. While the taxpayers fork out for dinners put on for “invited guests”, locals won’t even get a free ticket to see the games. If Major Villers was still alive he would most likely have a few things to say, his bank destroyed by an irresponsible rouge trader, and his allotments destroyed by an irresponsible and badly thought out Olympic project.

All images and text © Mike Wells