THE COMMONWEALTH GAMES - A SPECTACULAR DELUSION?

This summer the 2002 Commonwealth Games, the largest sporting event ever held in the UK, takes place in Manchester. Athletes from 72 countries will compete in world-class facilities across the city. The purpose-built centrepiece, the Games stadium, is already an imposing addition to the East Manchester skyline, while the Spirit of Friendship Festival, a cultural and arts festival to complement the sporting competitions, has already begun. For Manchester residents, a percentage of event tickets being available at discount prices leaves little excuse for not joining in the fun. Beyond the 10-day spectacular of the actual competitions, the Games has provided the impetus for millions of pounds of regeneration money to pour into east Manchester in an attempt to tackle its poverty and reverse years of neglect. The spin on the project is that it will be a spectacular of unprecedented proportions: I won’t be surprised if the Games office announces that the event brings with it the technology to pin back the clouds over the Pennines and Peaks and allow the rays of heaven to shine forever more on God's chosen city. Hallelujah. For something to be heralded as such a panacea for all our problems makes scratching beneath the gloss entirely irresistable. Scratch I have done. This I have found.

MARKETING MANCHESTER
The Games-driven regeneration is not a recent invention. East Manchester was proposed as the site for Manchester’s 1992 bid for the 2000 Olympics. When the Olympic Bid failed the investment planned for the area did not happen, but foundations for the Commonwealth Games and associated regeneration were laid. The Olympic Bid was led by a coalition of the city’s movers and shakers, interested as much in urban regeneration as in sport, described by KPMG in 1993 as “a private sector initiative which has secured strong public sector support” and motivated, as described in The Guardian of the same year, by “the regeneration of a post-industrial city-economy”. However, the business people involved in the bid were not necessarily linked to traditional institutional bases such as the Chamber of Commerce. They were to be found within a range of organisations at, or near, the fringes of the state - Training Enterprise Councils, Unitary Development Corporations. This was a time when the boundaries between public and private sectors were up for re-negotiation, and these organisations spoke in the language of freeing private-sector initiative. This was a deliberate direction. In 1993 then council leader Graham Stringer stated, “Cities, like sprinters, can’t stand still. They have to make progress or go into decline … And that’s where the Olympic Games come in …It’s a calculated move capable of transforming Manchester.”

Marketing Manchester as a realistic runner for the Olympic Games involved playing to a set of globally defined competitive rules, for these spectaculars have never just been about sport. In 1993 one Manchester councillor described the Olympic Bid as a chance to “show all those strengths that there are in the Manchester economy to those people who can locate their newer industries anywhere they want.” This sentiment is echoed by today’s Council leader, Richard Leese, who claims that “as the stadium nears completion, confidence is rising … Manchester is reinforcing its position as a city where people choose to live and where companies want to invest.”

Manchester’s Olympic Bid team jostled the city, and its way of conducting politics, into line. Private sector partnerships became more than a framework for bidding for an international sports event - they increasingly set the agenda for local economic development.

Within Manchester, opposition to this process became increasingly marginalised. The bid slogan “We can win!” together with the feelgood rhetoric around the spectacle made its critics seem no more than a bunch of no-fun wet blankets. Meanwhile, the process being set in the context of sport made it difficult to oppose politically, and isolated it from processes of public accountability. And political debate would have been in order - Manchester City Council did incur costs. Unaccountable representatives of commercial organisations held power. And the ‘new money’ claimed to have been generated by the Bid committee was largely central government funding for urban regeneration - public money which already belonged in urban spending programmes.

The Commonwealth Games is an extension of this contested political project. It sits within a tension created by the demands of economic globalisation -selling your place in the correct way to get the market to come visit; and blurring the shape of your public authorities to get it to stay. Manchester, like many cities around the globe, is taking on these processes in order to stay in the game.

JOBS, JOBS, JOBS
Manchester City Council is communicating the Games’ economic benefits to the city’s residents in that four-letter word that makes all our tea cups rattle in anticipation - jobs. Again, debate is dragged down by politicians to a facile parroting of statistics. Yes, the Games will bring jobs to East Manchester. But questions are brushed aside around what sort of jobs are being created, at what cost, and whether flirting with the unpredictable needs of the global market will bring security and confidence to East Manchester’s residents’ lives.

The smooth running of the Games relies on people’s work primarily through the biggest single mobilisation of UK volunteers in peacetime - 15 000 will be donning the regulation tracksuits and flat caps. All volunteers will take part in a training programme that appears to genuinely benefit those who take part. It has a focus on empowering the volunteer, and developing their skills and confidence to fulfil their potential once the Games moves on. Individual success stories include a wheelchair user who felt that her life was going nowhere, until she was encouraged to take part in the volunteer programme. She has since returned to her previous career as a swim coach, and is due to take part in delivering medals to successful athletes - a prestigious role indeed. All volunteers can tick a box on their application form to have their details passed on to one of the event’s corporate sponsors, the giant employment agency Adecco, and on completion of the training programme all volunteers are guaranteed an interview with another of the event’s sponsors, Asda Walmart.

Asda Walmart has just opened its biggest store in Europe across the road from the Games stadium complex, Sportcity. By this June it had filled 750 of the 1000 jobs it is bringing to the area. Asda Walmart has brought jobs for local people. This is good. But maybe the people of East Manchester deserve better. Walmart has been criticised for destroying the economies of small towns in its home country, the USA. Walmart's founder, Sam Walton, writes in his autobiography ‘Made in America' that driving hundreds of family-run and other smaller businesses out of town in the creation of his retail empire "was as inevitable as the replacement of the buggy by the car… Some people try to turn it into this ‘Save the Small-Town Merchants' deal, like they were whales or something that deserved to be protected". The impact on local shops in the area in which this latest store has landed is unknown. It would have been interesting to see a study on whether regeneration funding could have gone into improving local businesses, and re-investing profits in the area, rather than supporting this US-based giant. Such a study has not been carried out or, if it has, has not been made public or open to discussion by East Manchester residents.

At Asda Walmart’s new store trade unions are not allowed to meet with employees until they have been in place for six months, undermining any potential for collective labour organising in that period. The store argues that it has its own version of trade unions, including its Law Club, which will recruit legal representation for disgruntled employees. This though leaves the resources, and the power, with the employer. A need for an independent body to deal with employee grievances has already come up: Asda Walmart’s night cleaners are being paid approximately half the rate of night cleaners at the stadium, just across the road. Dissatisfied employees have no independent channel through which they can raise concerns without fear of dismissal. This creates insecurity, not hope for a better future.

Other jobs that the Games’ regeneration programme is bringing are to be in the new industrial park. The park’s main occupier so far is ICL, which has moved into the Games regeneration area from Gorton, a few miles down the road, and an area equally in need of support. This part of Manchester has been in steady decline since the collapse of its manufacturing industry, when the pull of economic globalisation saw employers moving to cheaper land and labour elsewhere. Local educational institutions are meeting with representatives from the industrial park to see how young people can be properly trained to meet industry’s needs. But the unpredictability of global capital means that there is nothing to stop any corporations that take the bait for now moving on again when they spy better conditions elsewhere.

THE BUSINESS CLUB
The strategy of bringing jobs to Manchester by enticing international business to the city is ill thought through and is already showing cracks. The task of generating inward investment and international trade on the back of the Games has gone to the Business Club (www.nwbusinessclub.com). However, in a strange phenomenon for an outfit which has the aim of attracting capital and investment from overseas, the majority of its £120 000 marketing budget has gone on spending in the UK. This has included approximately £25 000 on a branded taxi cab which advertises the Club by driving around Manchester; £20 000 on a Commonwealth fashion show, to take place in Manchester Town Hall during the Games; and the production of a promotional video which had to be re-cut as overseas contacts considered it to have pornographic connotations and refused to show it. A month before the Games was due to begin out of 3 286 Business Club members only 117 were based overseas. The level of interest in the Commonwealth itself seems to be even lower than it is in the UK outside of North West England. British High Commissions based in Commonwealth countries requested updated press releases to send out to generate interest, but nothing was forthcoming from Spin Media, the contracted PR company for the Business Club (contract worth £20 000). Spin Media claim they have nothing to say - something quite remarkable for a PR company! And there is still no mechanism to record whether the Business Club meets its targets after the event. The only monitoring system appears to be snooping on emails - in the terms and conditions of registering on the Business Club website, registrants give the project supervisors the right to monitor the content of emails between members.

In its desperation for success stories the Club is trying to include as an output the company Ove Arup’s £10 million contract to build a velodrome in Germany. This is based on the grounds that Ove Arup has an office in Manchester, the Business Club chairperson works for Arup - and the Germans enjoyed their visit to Manchester’s velodrome.

SUPPLY SHAMBLES
The SRB-funded Supply Chain Development Project had similarly aspirational objectives - its task was to arrange introductions for businesses from England’s North West with big contractors and the Commonwealth Games office. Even though the Supply Chain Project had no contractual links with the Games office the commitment of its staff led to them building up good relations with the Games office, to pass on lists of North West companies that met the Games office’s procurement criteria. However, the lack of structured commitment of the Games office to local supply undermined the Supply Chain Project’s good intentions at several points. Firstly, little continuity in Games staff undermined the personnel relations that were key to the project’s effectiveness: short-term contracts that were due to finish the day after the Games, and secondees from the Town Hall with little experience of major project delivery, and with permanent jobs to fall back on, meant a high staff turnover in the Games office. Secondly, in its eagerness to get something for nothing (value in kind), by January this year the Games office was missing procurement deadlines for goods and services and was in a rush to secure anything at any cost. As this procurement panic got into full swing at the Games office, the Supply Chain Development Project was winding down - its funding was due to end in March. Even when the two projects did manage to cover the same ground, communication breakdowns carried on: the Games office procured things without the Supply Chain Project knowing that they had been looking; and, while Sodexho was unofficially given the catering contract for the Games late in 2001, between that time and the announcement of Sodexho’s position in February 2002, the Supply Chain project held two events for potential catering suppliers. The Games office appeared reluctant to give out information at these events - it is now clear why.

THE STADIUM DEAL
And now we come to the most obvious, and possibly the most permanent element of the Games legacy - the bricks and mortar of the sports venues themselves. The development of these world class facilities will give Manchester cultural capital as an international sporting centre. In other cities that have hosted international sporting events, the venues have had the potential to be an albatross, as a drain on resources through ongoing maintenance. Sydney’s Olympic facilities, for example, were still empty at the end of 2001. Manchester City Council has come up with a cunning plan to avoid such a scenario. Keen to stop the Games stadium becoming the Dome of the north, the Council’s plan is to simply give it away. And, there being few parties interested in such a unique facility, and thus little negotiating power on the Council’s side, the recipient, Manchester City football club, has got a bargain. The Club is due to move in in 2003. Conversion costs, including ripping out the athletics track and some seating, are being covered by the Council.

The Council claims that there are potential revenue streams from its deal with City. It is thought to have a deal based on a share of the income from ticket sales after costs, above the capacity of the current stadium. However, there is no guarantee that City can attract more than 35 000 fans (its current attendance) on a regular basis. Nor is there any evidence that there will be money left after costs, particularly given footballers’ increasing wages. The council gets a share option in City but football shares are doing badly. The council would only make money if City floated but football clubs simply aren’t going this way. Moreover, the extent to which Manchester City Council had the authority to make such a deal is unclear. One of the stadium’s funders, Sport England, is part funded by the Lottery. Sport England has put £135 million of Lottery funds towards Games facilities, and a further £30 million towards running costs. Lottery money is not supposed to subsidise private companies, such as Manchester City football club, but effectively this is what is happening with any money given for the Games stadium, as the stadium moves out of public hands and into private.

Last July Sport England handed over an extra £20 million for the Games. At that time the Games looked like it might collapse without extra funding. Under Trevor Brooking, the then Chairperson of Sport England, the final vote over whether or not to give the money was incredibly close. The money had to come directly from Sport England’s budget for grassroots and community-based sporting initiatives. It meant these initiatives losing out to fund a grand spectacular, continuing community involvement in which was unclear. Manchester City football club, the stadium’s proposed occupants, have a good reputation for community relations in their current home. Let’s hope this reputation will mean East Manchester residents having involvement in, and access to, the stadium on their doorstep.

INVISIBLE COSTS
Within Manchester City Council’s accounts the cost of the Games to the city is hardly visible. Another part of the incredible Games mirage? The Council has agreed that the city will underwrite any cost overruns from its hosting of the Commonwealth Games. This is a very different stance to Barcelona which, when it won the hosting of the 1992 Olympics, went straight to central government for money, pointing out that hosting the Olympics was great PR for the country as a whole, and recognising that it would cripple Barcelona if the city was left to pick up the tab.

The costs of the Games impact on a city’s resources in a number of ways. Manchester’s Chief Constable at one stage described a scenario of sweeping cuts in the police services unless the Government stumped up more cash for Games’ security. Unmarked cars are already sitting on the city’s street corners to fend off flyposting - but the drivers will not specify the budget that their wages come from. Seconding of staff from the Town Hall to the Games office puts pressure on those remaining behind, both in terms of work load, and in terms of having to work with temporary or less experienced staff. Departments across the Council are having to take on some Operational Services duties, with each Department being responsible for overseeing recruitment of volunteers and carrying out of the task of litter-picking in three wards of the city each. And each Council Department has been instructed to promote the Games to its staff -departments are given the opportunity to spend their budgets on Games merchandise such as tie pins and badges. This in a Council where the Social Services Department (responsible for litter in Old Moat, Fallowfield and Withington) is desperate for cash, just to deliver social services.

Many of the above could be anecdotes from within the Town Hall. Individually they are the moans you get over a pint, or overhear on the bus on the way home. Together they illustrate that the Games is putting an incredible strain on the local public authority, and lacks realistic funding. Manchester residents and local authority services should not have to meet the hidden costs of an event that aims to promote national prestige. In March 2001 a Commons select committee told the government that “If Manchester and the nation cannot rise to the challenge, fundamental doubts will be raised about our ability to secure and deliver the most important national events.” If this is the case then let’s see central government cough up.

CORPORATE HYPOCRISY
The themes of the Games are community, sport, friendship. Everywhere that Games’ publicity appears, the logos or brand colours of at least one of its sponsors or official partners appear too. Yet while these huge corporate sponsors are handy in bailing out resource shortfalls for the Games, they are not necessarily checked for their commitment to the values that the Games promotes. Games publicity claims of its partners and sponsors that “We share the same vision, we work together to create mutually beneficial partnerships and we blend our resources to bring the vision and passion of the Games to the nation and the Commonwealth.” One of the official partners, United Utilities, isn’t acting quite in the spirit of things in a dispute taking place just one and a half miles down the road from the stadium. United Utilities has been pushing a proposal to sell off a well-used community sporting facility - Fairfield Golf and Sailing Club - and replace it with a business park. The golf club and area under threat sits on land that used to belong to a public water works, but the land fell into private hands when the water industry was privatised. The land’s new owner, United Utilities, was a key player in Kingswater Development - a consortium that declared the area a development site, even before any public enquiry into the proposed change of use had taken place. People living in the area who use the land for recreational activities have strongly opposed the development plans. Sport England gave its support to the development’s opponents when it realised the extent to which community and youth groups used the facilities that would be closed if United Utilities’ proposed development went ahead. Ironically, the club is due to be used during the Games - to host a reception for Team England the night before the Games starts, and as a leisure facility for athletes on their rest days. Maybe Team England and Games participants have the influence to pressure United Utilities to leave the club alone.

The Games could have been a lever for more responsible corporate behaviour, not just through pressure on its sponsors, but also through the Business Club. However, when such a suggestion was made - that there should be a stand at Business Club events to promote social responsibility - it was met with the response that corporate social responsibility “fits uneasily with the Business Club objectives.”

THE MAYBELLINE EFFECT
Walking around East Manchester, the hub of the event, changes due to the Games are visible. Houses have had a lick of paint, people are engaged in various ways in Games delivery, new housing is proposed (including the local housing estate, the Cardroom, which has been allowed to run down over the last 10 years as people have been refused properties there. The estate is to be rebuilt as New Islington, featuring a mix of social and private housing - with a clear dividing line in between, mind). A few streets leading up to the stadium have had a £2million facelift - just one element of a makeover of the routes to the stadium, a ‘boost the highways and byways’ effort costing approximately £5million. Meanwhile a spoof Games leaflet has appeared in cafes and pubs around the city - ‘Maybe it’s Manchester, Maybe it’s Maybelline’ - highlighting the Council’s obsession with image.

This light-hearted lambasting has a point, for if the regeneration strategy is based on image-changing then there will be a bias towards everything being seen to succeed. Flaws in the master plan will be an embarrassment to be covered up, rather than a chance to learn, and question whether the current patterns are working. After all, regeneration set in the economic patterns of free trade makes the gap between image and practice inevitable, for free trade has such a split at its core - far from being ‘free’ it has its rules set by corporations rather than democratic institutions, and its ecological downside and poor labour conditions are hidden the other side of the globe, or in the declining quality of air, water, land. The mirage that social problems can be solved through quick-fix change is not helpful, and distorts policy-makers’ views of what needs to happen. The Council needs to be able to admit that it, along with many other public institutions, needs new ideas for developing relevant, democratic regeneration programmes. There have to be ways of channelling resources towards building up a local economic base, rather than fitting into an unstable global one. This means accepting that decision-making for the city is political - it’s more than a management issue. Manchester’s citizens have already given the world interesting political ideas: both the co-operative ideals of the Rochdale pioneers, and the free trade dreams of nineteenth century reformers came out of this city. A local authority prepared to work with, rather than over and above, its citizens may find that moving beyond the failed free trade project isn’t so impossible after all.

See www.nato.uk.net for more on radical arts and resistance during the Games, including ‘Agitate’, an art show from the political underground. See www.commonwealthgames.com for the other side of the story.

An edited version of this article will appear in Red Pepper - www.redpepper.org.uk