1948

"This is a long satirical poem that has been recently published, obviously with an Olympic theme in mind. The backdrop is the 1948 Olympics. It’s an alternative universe in which Britain is on the Soviet side in the Cold War and the Americans are the ones boycotting the Games. It’s also a take on George Orwell’s 1984 . It’s a very amusing narrative poem and the story is not hard to follow. It has this nice conceit in it that one of the characters finds a 1984 -style book written in 1948 imagining a dystopian future. This dystopian future, imagined in communist Britain in 1948, is of Britain as it is now – a corporate, free-market-world-gone-crazy Britain. Reading it did just slightly capture the feeling that I have which is though there is nothing particularly bad about the 2012 Games, and one wouldn’t want anything bad to happen during them, they do have this slightly dystopian feel to them – the blanket corporateness of it and the fact that they are being guarded by thousands of soldiers. Sure, you can’t be lax with security, but this event has acquired a sort of life of its own which means that almost everyone involved in it is operating to these imperatives over which no one seems to have any control – they have to defend the corporate sponsors, you have to bring the army in because you can’t risk anything going wrong. It just has that feel to it. This poem is just a nice juxtaposition of a more poetic universe in which the future we live in now is actually the dystopia. It’s really hard to know. The really interesting political Games in a way, though nobody talks about them much, were Athens in 2004. Those Games, in a small way, helped to undermine the finances of the Greek state, which may still come to undermine the public finances of the world. But at the time no one had any idea that this was going on. If in 10 years’ time something catastrophic happens to the British or European economy – it probably won’t happen, but if it did – people would probably look back on these Games as an absurd folly. On the other hand, if they pass off successfully and the British economy turns a corner, people may look back at these Games as part of the turning point. But that’s assuming that nothing happens to overshadow them. If that happens, that is what they will be remembered for. Whatever else was going on at the time, Munich 1972 will always be remembered for terrorism. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen this time."