Labour London Assembly Member, Jennette Arnold AM, argues that you cannot divorce sport from politics. 

I had planned to join the celebrations welcoming the Olympic torch to London but in the end GLA campaign work took over.  Reflecting on the debate and the protests during the day (the torch relay that is, not the GLA campaign!) I was left feeling that most of the coverage had missed the point.

We cannot divorce sport from politics and should not try. People often confuse ‘politics’ for the knock about of Prime Ministers Questions. Real politics is a serious business; it’s about values and choices. It leads to decisions about how we educate our children, care for our elders, look after the environment – and it provides the context in which we live our lives, and establishes the rights and responsibilities we have as citizens.

Sport, especially international sport, shares this context. That is not to suggest that everything that happens in a sporting context is right. Just looking at the Olympic context, who can excuse the murder of Israeli athletes at Munich in 1972? Equally, who could not be cheered by Jesse Owen’s success in Berlin 1936 – a black man beating the so-called ‘master race’? Black civil rights issues reached the medal platform in Mexico 1968 and an American led boycott in 1980 resulted in over 60 countries not sending athletes to Moscow. There are many other examples outside the Olympics and the sports boycott of South Africa is only one.

I judge the merits of these individually, not from the premise that is is essentially wrong to mix sport and politics.

In the case of the 2008 Bejing Games, sport is being used as a carrot – China has been awarded the games with the expectation that the current dictatorship will change its ways. The demonstrations supporting Tibetan autonomy and reminding us about human rights outrages in China quite rightly used the  opportunity to get their message over.

Jennette Arnold AM is London Assembly Member for Hackney, Islington and Waltham Forest.  She is Deputy Chair of the Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust and Chair of the London Health Commission.  For further information log on to her website – www.jennettearnold.com.