Action Replay: Icy conditions (2026)

The Action Replay column from the March 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

The 2014 Winter Olympics took place in the Russian city of Sochi (see Action Replay for December 2013 and April 2014). There was plenty of controversy attached to them, with environmental problems prominent and up to a third of the cost of staging the Games lost in corruption and embezzlement. Many cities are now reluctant to bid for the Games, because of the costs involved.

This year’s Games were held last month in Milano Cortina, meaning Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo (which, according to Wikipedia, is ‘an upscale summer and winter sport resort’). Again, there were problems with corruption (Guardian 31 January): in October three men were arrested and charged with controlling the distribution of drugs in Cortina, controlling some of the nightclubs and forcing the local council into awarding Games-related construction contracts (the bill for the Games will be well over £4bn). The methods of intimidation allegedly used included threats and beating people up.

The Open Olympics 26 report managed to get the Games’ organisers to publish their financial dealings online (see PDF – tinyurl.com/nczd45hp). This has shown that much of the money being spent will be on road projects which won’t be completed until after the Games are over.

And it’s not just in Cortina. A new ice hockey venue in Milan was still unfinished at the end of January, with the hospitality boxes and press area far from ready. There had also been complaints that the rink was too small and the ice was unsafe. Demonstrations took place in the city over the environmental impact of the Games, to which the police responded with tear gas and water cannons, and there were reports of sabotage of railway lines.

Another controversy has been over the role that the thuggish US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will play. Let’s ignore jokes to the effect that Trump misunderstood the kind of ice needed at the Games. Describing them as ‘a militia that kills’, the mayor of Milan said they would not be welcome in the city. It appears that in fact a separate ICE department, Homeland Security Investigations, will provide intelligence and so on, as it has done at previous large sporting events, but will not conduct any kind of enforcement operations (officially, anyway).

As at some previous Olympics, there will be a new sport at this one, ski mountaineering (skimo), a combination of skiing and mountain climbing. At least it’s more clearly a sport than breakdancing, introduced at the 2024 Summer Olympics.

Paul Bennett

Doping horses (1960)

From the November 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

On Monday, August 8th, five men were accused at Newbury of conspiring to administer drugs to racehorses so as to affect their performance and thereby cheat, defraud and give the run-around to owners, bookmakers and punters. Caffeine, it was alleged, was the drug used. Given between thirty and sixty minutes before a race, it was said to have jacked up the horses’ nerves, muscles and heart, made it more alert and stimulated it to a win. The timing was vital; given six or more hours before the race the drug slowed down the horse, because by then its depressing reaction had had time to work. The chemist who was said to have supplied the caffeine stated that doping of racehorses had been going on for years; he supplied the stuff in return for racing tips.

Of course, this carve up caused quite a fuss and many remedies were suggested. Some people thought that a Tote monopoly of betting would bring a clean up. Others wanted a list of drugs, as distinct from tonics, which it would be prohibited to administer to horses, the trainers to be held responsible for their animals’ conditions. One newspaper showed how deep its love of our dumb friends goes by hoping that, after the clean up has put racing and betting on a sound financial basis, the horses will no more be silent and helpless tools manipulated for sordid and undesirable ends.

Now all this is very touching, as anyone who has lost his lot on the horses will agree. But doping and racketeering are only two of the illegal wavs of making money, if the law can be successfully evaded. There are also legal ways. One is to work for it—not very fruitful. Another is to persuade other people to work for you and to exploit them during the course of production. This is respectable. It also produces some very large fortunes.

The set up here is that we workers work for the capitalists. The capitalists pay us our wages and sell what we produce; they also have to buy materials and machinery. When they have done all this, they have a surplus left over. They have profit. This process continually repeated makes for a fine accumulated sum and it is all fair and square. Not racketeering. Just good, plain exploitation.

When the goods arc produced we do not always find ourselves able to obtain them. They are whisked off to warehouses, stores, shops, and so on, and we can only get them out of these places if we have enough money to meet the price which is asked for them. There they lie in plenty, but alas! for sale only. When people try, by hook or by crook, by fiddle or diddle, to amass a lot of money, what they are really doing is trying to get the power to purchase a lot of these articles which make for a happier and more comfortable life.

Where does dope come into this? Why. for generations, the working class have been doped by capitalism's propaganda. Schools, churches, radio, television, newspapers, political parties—they are all in the act. The Labour Party dished out a large dose of nationalisation, which left the workers' situation unchanged. The Communist Party peddle the dope about the so-called Socialist class emancipation in Russia, which is in fact a ruthless capitalist dictatorship. The Tories tell us that we have never had dope so good.

Amongst gamblers, doping is known as ”fixing ”; if you want to fix a racehorse, give it caffeine. In this sense, capitalists are not fixing workers under the wages system—the whole transaction is fair and above board. Nevertheless, the workers find themselves in a fix by their acceptance of the system. They are perpetually chasing the dream that, if only they can lay hands on a large enough amount of money, they will be able to get all that they need to make life pleasant. It is this bodily occupation and mental illusion that keeps the working class in political ignorance and. consequently, in economic enslavement.

But horses can run without dope and people can live without the artificial incentives of capitalist society. We only need the understanding that all social wealth would be better produced solely for use—made and used how we like. That is the key to the better world which we call Socialism.

However much horse-racing depends upon betting, capitalism is more dependent on the support of the world’s working class. When they have stopped allowing themselves to be exploited, stopped chasing after ephemeral remedies for the many, many unnecessary social problems of capitalism, they will have exposed capitalism's dopers. Socialism will be the surest walk over that ever was.

Joe McGuinness

Sting in the Tail: A sick society (1995)

The Sting in the Tail column from the February 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

A sick society

Dr. Ian Burns is Glasgow’s public health director. He has recently been commenting on the relationship between health and poverty in Glasgow. What he has to say applies to all cities:

“If we are going to do something about Glasgow's ill-health you have to confront the poverty. The Government have acknowledged there is a link between ill-health and poverty but they have always said we don't know if the one is caused by the other, ” he said.

"We are saying it is, the link is empowerment. If you are unemployed, have no educational background, and don't know where your children‘s next meat is coming from, you have the sense of the system doing things to you" (The Herald, 21 December).

The sad truth is that medical care is a commodity. If you can afford it you can get the most modern treatment immediately, but if you are poor you can join the waiting list to get treatment from underfunded overworked NHS staff.

Hard core

The term “hard-core” is popular with the press. We have read of “hard-core pornography” and “hard-core criminality”. Now the Government have found “hard-core rough sleepers”:

“In a statement. Environment Minister Robert Jones said the Government's winter shelter programme, with up to 350 places in Central London, made it unnecessary for anyone . . . to have to sleep on the streets this winter'. ”

"It is clear, ” the Minister added, "that street level agencies are finding themselves trying to help a hard core of rough sleepers ” (Observer, 18 December)

However, Homeless Network, an umbrella group of 30 charities, report that 288 people were sleeping rough in late November, a seven percent increase compared with May and estimate that during the past year 3,000 spent part or all of their time sleeping in the streets in the survey area alone.

Government ministers climbing out of their chauffeur-driven cars for a night out at the Covent Garden Opera may console themselves that the street-sleepers strewn around are “hard-core rough sleepers”, but socialists know that not only has capitalism a hard-core but that it is an extremely bitter fruit for the poor, disabled and homeless.

What a wally!

The shallowness and double standards of politicians were epitomised by John Major’s insistence that schools should conduct daily “acts of worship” on a broadly Christian basis.

"Mr. Major said daily worship for all pupils allowed them to explore their own beliefs and helped build community spirit and shared values, and reinforced positive attitudes" (BBC2 Ceefax, 17 December).

What that bit about acts of worship (ugh) allowing pupils to “explore their own beliefs” really amounts to is the attempted indoctrination of young minds, or what was called “brainwashing” when Nazis and the so-called communists did it.

And just how do these acts of worship build “community spirit and shared values” in, say, Northern Ireland? Mind you. Major will hear plenty of “positive attitudes” being reinforced by the hangers, floggers, xenophobes and other Christian worshippers at Tory conferences.

Whether Major thought up such rubbish by himself or merely parroted what some Tory hack told him, doesn’t matter, because he is damned either way.

A sorry sight

On BBC News (22 December) an entire workforce marched arm-in-arm through Liverpool streets singing “Here We Go”. So full of patriotic fervour were they that they waved and even wore the Union Jack. This was obviously a big celebration.

And what was it all about? Only that Bryant and.May, Britain’s last match factory, had closed down and this was the workers' way of marking the occasion.

Perhaps these workers will reflect on what good their patriotism did them when they signed-on the following day.

The sporting life

According to the dictionary definition, sport is “pleasant pastime; amusement, diversion”. So what are we to make of newspaper headlines that scream “Doping Ban”, “Bribery allegations”, and “Football Manager Took Bungs”?

Just as the financial pages are concerned with Insider Dealing, Dirty Tricks Takeover Bids and all the other skulduggery' of the City, so athletics, cricket and football reporters are as much concerned with cheating, doping and bribery as with reporting sporting events.

The truth is that capitalism is a social system based on profit, greed and deceit. Sport inside capitalism is big business, so it is no wonder that it reflects the chicanery of the system.

In a socialist society human beings would be able to enjoy sport as a “pleasant pastime”; amusement; diversion". That is impossible inside the present production-for-profit system.

Canadian capers

Some Canadian students have invited Tommy Sheridan of Scottish Militant Labour to Canada to speak about socialism.

At the Euro-elections last June Sheridan’s manifesto, besides being full of pictures of himself and claims that he is “the people's champion”, “hammer of the Tories”, etc., carried an article entitled “What Is Socialism?”.

According to this, production will still be for sale on the market and money, banks and finance will remain. What it all added up to is capitalism’s buying and selling system along with the usual idealist’s illusion that it can be “planned and run for the benefit of everybody”.

If those Canadian students want to know about socialism then Sheridan is the last one to tell them.

Action Replay: Fair play and profits (2024)

The Action Replay column from the June 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Over the decades a number of professional football teams have been referred to as ‘the Bank of England club’, meaning they had masses of money to spend on transfers. This applied, for instance, to Sunderland in the 1950s.

But with the enormous rise in income from TV coverage, shirt sponsors, kit sales and season tickets, and the ownership of a number of clubs by wealthy individuals and multinational companies, it is recent years that have seen the rise of barely-credible transfer fees (£100m and more) and wages. The wealthier a club is, the more it can spend and, they hope, the more success and trophies they can achieve (or buy).

The football authorities, in both the UK and Europe, have felt obliged to regulate what happens, in order to prevent it just being a matter of the richest clubs winning more or less everything and a self-perpetuating elite emerging (money leads to success leads to money). Hence were developed the Financial Fair Play regulations (FFP), now in the Premier League termed Profitability and Sustainability Rules. A club can lose a maximum of £105m over a three-year period, and infringing this can lead to a points deduction, though special consideration was given to losses incurred during the Covid lockdown, and also investment in women’s football and community work. UEFA has a rather different system, whereby expenditure on transfer and wages cannot exceed 70 percent of revenue. This may be adopted in England, but not yet, and a different kind of spending cap has now been provisionally agreed by Premier League clubs.

Details aside, it is the less successful clubs that have suffered so far. Both Everton and Nottingham Forest, in the lower reaches of the Premier League, have had points deducted, though neither will be relegated as a result. Chelsea, on the other hand, have spent £1bn on transfers under their new owners (after Roman Abramovich was removed because of his Kremlin links). In the last financial year their losses would have been a cool £166m, but they avoided a penalty by selling two hotels for £76m to a firm owned by the same holding company.

As for the current top club, Manchester City, they have won the Premier League for the last four seasons, and in six of the last seven, plus other trophies too. But they have been handed no fewer than 115 charges for breaching FFP rules, going back to 2009. The case against them may not be heard until October and could even then take months to be resolved. In the meantime, City can carry on spending the money of their fabulously-wealthy owner, Sheikh Mansour of the UAE.

So the restrictions have not been all that effective, and as so often, capitalist concerns get round rules relating to taxes and profits by exploiting loopholes and playing (!) for time.

Paul Bennett

Voice From The Back: Not too blessed (2001)

The Voice From The Back Column from the July 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Not too blessed

From the pulpits at the Church of England, the passionate clergyman thunders on about the Sermon on the Mount. The hushed congregation hear the famous words “Blessed are the poor…" ; but not too blessed, apparently. “More than half of the Church of England clergy feel that they are not being paid enough, with one in ten demanding an increase in their stipend of up to 50 per cent according to an independent survey…" A spokesman for the Manufacturing, Science and Finance Union, which represents 1,500 clergy said: “We have never said that the majority of vicars are on the breadline or are having to sell the Big Issue. But they are not being remunerated according to their professional status…”, Times, 16 May. How far from selling the Big Issue can be gathered when the same report informs us that the Archbishop of Canterbury has a salary of £57,000 per annum.

Hit for six

In our youth we used to thrill to boys stories of “sizzling sixes over the tuck shop roof”. The game of cricket, we were led to believe, was the embodiment of sportsmanship and decency. Alas, like everything capitalism touches, cricket is prey to corruption and deceit “Lord Condon’s findings on corruption in cricket, published yesterday may come as a nasty shock to lovers of the game, but hardly a surprise. Ever since Hansie Cronje, the former South African captain, admitted taking money to fix matches, there has been a cloud over the game. Australia, Pakistan and India have had to deal with allegations touching some of their leading players. In asking a former Metropolitan Police Commissioner to look into this, the International Cricket Council took an unprecedented step, but it plainly had no choice. The findings, bluntly, are worse than most people expected. According to Lord Condon, allegations already in the public domain represent only “the tip of the iceberg”. He declares that some players are still acting dishonestly and to the orders of the bookmakers. He links a murder and a kidnapping to cricket corruption, and reports that some witnesses were evidently afraid to speak out. Daily Telegraph 24 May.

Filthy lucre

Socialists are always arguing that capitalism with its wars, poverty and insecurity has outlived its usefulness; but we’ve just found another reason to get rid of it. “US dollar bills are home to dozens of potentially dangerous pathogens. Most US dollar bills are bacteria farms, cultivating dozens of potentially dangerous pathogens, a study in Ohio has revealed. The findings raises the possibility that paper money could be transporting antibiotic resistant bacteria from one area to another, say the researchers.” New Scientist, 24 May.

What is socialism?

We thought our readers might be interested in our socialist email discussion forum, so here we give you a little taster It is from a comrade in New Zealand referring to a comrade’s ideas in the USA in reply to an enquirer in the UK. The American Harry Morrison, writing for the Western Socialist, explained some years ago what socialism is not. “If workers work for wages, it is not socialism. If goods are bought and sold in a market, it is not socialism. If the world is divided into countries, it’s not socialism. Unless every man, women and child has free access to the means of living, it is not socialism.” The comrade in New Zealand, Bob Malone, makes a good point, when he says, “Socialism will only be realised when the majority of people realise that our quality of life is not improved by just how much wealth can he consumed, and that collectively we can build a much better society based on co-operation within and between communities.” (See page two of this issue to get involved).

Soliciting solicitors

The heartfelt cry of the butcher in Shakespeare’s Henry VI — “First thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers” — would seem somewhat severe, but maybe Old Will had a point when we read about the goings-on in modern Israel. “Israel brothel keepers have the right to buy and sell prostitutes in the same way that football clubs transfer players, a lawyer claimed last week. ‘There is no difference between trading football players, hi-tech programmers, or surgeons, and selling women for purposes of prostitution’, Yaacov Shklar, who specialises in defending pimps, told a Knesset committee.” Observer 10 June.

Intensive mortality

“Thousands of people are dying because they are being moved out of intensive care too quickly, according to a study by two London hospitals. Just two more days in intensive care would be enough to save many seriously ill patients, researchers from St. Thomas’s and St. George’s found after analysing the cases of almost 14,000 patients from across Britain". Times 25 May. So, next time that you hear that a friend or a relative is being moved from intensive care into the general ward, don’t heave a sigh of relief, be worried — very, very worried Unless of course your friend or relative happens to be a millionaire receiving the best medical care that money can buy; in that case the move has been dictated by best medical practice and not, as the report says, for purely economic reasons. “One in four of the patients identified as being at greatest risk died on the ward after being released from intensive care. Using a computer, the research team concluded that 39 per cent of these would have survived had they been given two more days special care. But that would require a 16 per cent increase in intensive care beds, which would cost more than £100 million a year.

Football Bungs & Sleaze (1995)

From the May 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is so much money involved in football nowadays — not only from takings at the turnstiles but from sponsorship of everything from trophies to televised matches — that the actual playing of the game seems to be a by-product. Is it any wonder that capitalism's business 'ethics' has permeated every aspect of the sport?

It barely makes the headlines if politicians are involved in bribery or corruption, and certainly no-one reacts by saying how unexpected or out-of-character it all is. But rumours of bribery and back-handers in sport still bring out shocked responses of the “I can’t believe it” type. People just don’t want to admit that sporting stars could stoop so low as to accept under-the-counter payments or even fix results. They are supposed to be on a pedestal, role models for the young and modern-day folk-heroes. Yet the last few months have seen a parade of accusations, arrests and sackings, all centred around sporting sleaze and corruption of one kind or another.

Salim Malik, former Pakistan cricket captain, risks being banned for life after being accused of attempting to bribe two Australian players to lose. The biggest scandals, though, have been in football— and this is in addition to players appearing in court on assault charges or admitting to drug-taking. In February Arsenal manager George Graham was sacked for allegedly receiving £425,000 as part of a transfer deal (paid by a mysterious “agent” out of the difference between what Arsenal paid for a player and what the selling club received), and there are many rumours about other managers expecting such pay-offs as a matter of course. In March three Premiership footballers were arrested and questioned about match fixing, though not charged. The story runs that bookmakers in Malaysia, where gambling is illegal but big business, have attempted to rig matches (including even a couple of World Cup games) so as to engineer results or scores favourable to themselves. It is hardly surprising that two of the arrested players are goalkeepers, who are naturally best-placed to affect results by letting in an easy goal or two. Even if all the rumours and scandals turn out to be baseless—and it has to be stressed that at the time of writing nothing has been proved—football’s image is bound to be tarnished.

The shock felt by football supporters is no doubt based on two considerations. One is that footballers and managers earn what are, by most people's standards, fairly high wages. If you are getting £100,000 or over a year anyway, why should you look to dishonest ways of making even more? But one thing that is always at the back of players’ minds is the relative shortness of their careers, the ever-present risk of serious injury, and the prospect of a drastic fall in earnings, once their playing days are over. And as the world of business and politics will show, however much you may have, you can still want more. A taste for the high life can easily develop among those who weren’t born to riches. The other point is the feeling that how dare anyone who has the privilege of playing professionally, something that millions aspire to but few achieve, betray their sport, their club and their supporters by throwing a game. Those who follow a team through lean years and downpours, spending considerable sums of money in the process, expect the players always to be doing their best, even if they can’t all be great players. But sport of course is a business and its practitioners sell their skills just like other workers, so selling a game is really only part of the same logic, the logic of capitalism, where everything, including sincerity and commitment, is for sale.

Nor can it be argued that in the good old days such things never happened, that before the days of the Premiership, live TV, sponsorship, replica shirts and so on, there was a time of innocence untainted by commercial considerations or any whiff of bribery. In the mid-sixties a dozen players, including some internationals, were convicted of match-rigging and banned for life. In 1927, the chairman of Arsenal was suspended for illegal inducements to players to join the club. Back in 1905, Billy Meredith of Manchester City was suspended for attempting to bribe an Aston Villa player; it subsequently emerged that City had been making illegal payments to players: several were suspended for a year, and two directors banned for life. There never has been a golden age when football was just football.

Professional sport is part of capitalism, and cannot be expected to operate on a different basis from that of society as a whole. If it is run by money and considerations of profit. It’s because that is precisely the basis on which capitalism works.

Paul Bennett

Inside the sports industry (2001)

Botile and Ingle

From the April 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

On the night of Saturday 16 December 2000 the crowd at the Sheffield Arena must have been stunned when Paul Ingle’s corner forced him back to the centre of the ring to be savagely crushed by his opponent Mbulelo Botile of South Africa. Even one of the commentators remarked that the decision of Ingle’s managers was shockingly unreasonable. Not unexpectedly, Ingle was carried unconscious to hospital with brain injuries. At the end of round 11 everybody, more especially Ingle’s corner, knew he had lost the bout.

The question on the lips of many was why the towel was not thrown in. But how could they do that when they were playing according to the rules of today’s international sports—the cash and fame first before the contender. In fact Ingle’s corner callously hoped that their man could miraculously pull a knock-out.

Gone are the days when games were organised with a view to merely entertaining the audience. In our day the motive behind any activity sports included, is profit. If, in the process of any sporting activity people get entertained, it is an unintended outcome of a purely business-oriented venture. In reality sport is now a multi-billion dollar industry masquerading as an entertainment agency. It has become an industry dominated and controlled by corporate bodies.

Sporting activities are organised mainly by IOC, FIFA, CAF, JBF, WBC, etc. The funds with which these bodies organise games are provided, in the main, by big business. Since business concerns will only spend money if they will make a profit, one can easily understand why they provide the funds—they are financially interesting.

Advertising is an essential ingredient in all profit-oriented activity. Getting people to become aware of one’s products is a vital competitive move. Corporate groups sponsor IOC and Co in exchange ttr the right to advertise their products on radio, TV jerseys, shinguards, gloves, and soon that is why you can never see World Socialist Movement or World Of Free Access or SPGB printed in bold characters and lined up around playing fields on stadiums. What you see is Coca Cola, Amstel, Visa, MasterCard, Western Union Money Transfer, Motorola, Ericsson, etc.

In the same vein other businesses deeply involved in the promotion of commercialised sports are the media houses. TV magnates are able to pay and have a stranglehold monopoly of coverage. They reap huge profits when they “sell” their “product” to other media groups.

Since today’s sports is a matter of business due to its profit-oriented nature, it is always spiced with the not uncommon shady deals. Business is nothing but legalised stealing. Its main rule is “grab-as-much-as-you-can”. International sports is therefore plagued with such inevitable phenomena as bribery, corruption, match-fixing, gambling, betting, pools, etc. In fact most many sports ministers, members of IOC, FIFA (the chief organisers of international sporting activities) siphon away huge sums of money in the process of organising games. A typical example can be seen in the famous Salt Lake City scandal which not only exposed but also shattered the credibility of the IOC and blew apart its five interlocking rings. Again, quite recently some German sportswriters have alleged that the German government and some corporate groups bribed Thailand, South Korea and Saudi Arabia to vote for Germany to host the 2006 World Cup. The multinational corporations mentioned were Daimler Chrysler, Bayer, BASF and Siemens (Gambia Daily Observer 21 November 2000).

Wealth (goods and services) is created by labour. In the sports industry the creators of service (entertainment) are the sportsmen and women. These (mostly) youth are by no means different from workers in the factory; clerks in the bank; teachers in the classroom, etc. Sportsmen and women sell their labour power (i.e. their ability to run, jump, kick, swim, etc) to the owners of the means of production and distribution of the services produced. In sports the means of producing and distributing entertainment include the stadiums, the factories the assorted sporting gear, the media houses, etc. These are owned by corporate bodies, states, local councils and the like. The youth use these facilities to entertain society, who pay money that goes to the owners of these means. The sportsmen and women arc then paid wages by the owners (the employers).

It is a common business practice to fire workers who are considered to be not too productive. In the same way sportsmen and women who do not move mountains to prove, maintain and improve upon their competitiveness risk being booted out of employment. Even the language used by employers, especially owners of football clubs, clearly smacks of the business element in sports. Football clubs who hire the services of footballers are often heard talking of “buying”, “selling”, or “giving out on loan” such-and-such a player. Indeed one sometimes gets the impression that the players are not just wage-earners but real commodities! In one report by Reuters carried in the 6 November Daily Observer (Gambia), entitled “Pele attacks ‘slave trade’ in young players”, the Brazilian Sports Minister decries the almost slave-like ownership of young footballers from Africa, Brazil and Argentina in particular. A very recent example is the case of Kanu Nwanko whose masters, Arsenal, refused to release him (from their bondage) to go to play for his “national” team during the just-ended Sydney Olympics.

Consequences

Having been considered as “commodities” whose price is influenced by market forces, sportsmen and women are constantly engaged in fierce competition with each other. Competition is an unhealthy phenomenon but in sports it is even worse. The use of drugs to enhance performance is a direct result of the unwholesome profit-oriented practices. In the final analysis these people who use the drugs suffer and get disgraced when they test positive. By contrast the organisers and drug dealers, sitting behind their dark sunglasses at the VIP stands get away with their dirty profits.

But perhaps the most serious effect of this dubious U-turn in sports from entertainment-oriented to profit-oriented can be seen in the growing number of serious and in some cases fatal incidents involving sportsmen and women. The story of the British boxer Paul Ingle has already been mentioned. No-one is unaware of the world-famous pugilist, Mohammed Ali. There is also the tragic fate of Michael Watson, another British boxer. A Colombian defender, Escobar, was gunned down in Bogota when he inadvertently scored an own goal during the 1994 World Cup. He met this unfortunate death not because Colombia could not go ahead to win the cup but because, as it was generally believed, some big business people had lost huge sums which they staked in a betting game.

Sports and politics

Another interesting aspect of sports is that it is very much encouraged by governments especially in poor countries. The main reason for this support is the mind-numbing power of sports. A lot of money is spent to get people hooked to and addicted to sports. In fact sports plays the same role as religion, alcohol and the like. Commentators, sportswriters and the like are trained to be able to present the dullest of events or matches to appear to be the most interesting ones to listeners and readers. Sporting activities, as such, are organised constantly and at short intervals—from community through national to international levels. As people’s interest in games soars so is their attention diverted from the mismanagement of social wealth that goes on in the corridors of power. In fact the revolutionary consciousness of people addicted to sports is usually completely blunted.

On this same political front, one notes the narrow-mindedness of so-called sports analysts when they opine that sports encourages togetherness and even has the magic of bringing peace to rival nations. This view dates back to the days of the “Cold War”. These analysts considered the participation in international games by the “West” and the “East” as a positive step towards defusing tension in their world. But a deeper insight into the role of sports in the relations between nations or countries reveals the exact opposite of the claims of these sports experts. Modern capitalist sports is organised with a view to realising profit. Profit-making thrives best when people are kept divided. There is no way then that sports as it is organised today can bring peoples of the world together as one. In reality sports entrenches petty, myopic nationalism and chauvinism. Witness for instance the violence of the famous “English hooligans” during football matches in Europe. There are always running battIe in the streets of towns and cities all over the world during games especially football. Each country sees the other as an enemy. People competing under national flags only helps in keeping them disunited. But we need a single world without boundaries.

Yet sports, at all levels, can be made to achieve its original objective—to entertain both participants and spectators. This however can only materialize when it is freely organised by all persons interested in it—and not only by those who have money. But this possibility is itself dependent on the level of consciousness of humanity When the majority of people come to understand that a society that undertakes every venture with a view to making profit is bound to he plagued with shortcomings. “Money is the root of evil”, as the saying goes. So it is only when the stadia and the factories producing sports-ware are commonly owned by all people, and when the present artificial boundaries dividing them and nations are dismantled that the present violence-prone, drug-infested activity called sport coupled with the slave status of most sportsmen and women can be eliminated. Then sports and games in general can play their unalloyed role of entertaining humankind free of charge.

Suhuyini

Action Replay: Bastia Disaster (1992)

From the June 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

“I have done it again. 

One year in every ten 

I manage it.” (Sylvia Plath).

Sadly, one year in ten is not frequent enough for the exploiters of the public’s taste for football to draw blood in their pursuit of profit. Three years, almost to the month, after Hillsborough we have what appears to be an action replay. Once again a cup semi-final; once again avoidable casualties; once again preposterous attempts at victim-blaming; once again inadequate medical provision.

Let us make no bones about it—the Furiani stadium bloodbath in Bastia was caused by the profit motive proving too strong for the authorities to adequately consider safety aspects which most of us would regard as more important. Like the ram-raider who causes damage ten times worth what he steals, they couldn’t resist the temptation to sell 10,000 more tickets even though they must have known there was a grave risk in erecting a temporary stand for such a game.

That they knew is (at least circumstantially) evidenced by the fact that warnings were given to the crowd not to stamp in unison in that stand. The outrageous suggestion that you can expect a cup-tie crowd to behave like a chamber concert audience insults the intelligence of all but the dourest apologists for unbridled capitalism.

The parallels with Hillsborough continued when we saw the players taking down the perimeter fencing which, if there had been a quite understandable panic in the crowd, would have prevented their escape to safety.

The emergency services, to their credit, were fairly quickly on the scene at Furiani but hospital facilities for the dying and injured were far from close to hand. The nearest hospital was five kilometres away in the mountains and utterly incapable of coping with the scale of the disaster.

Again, as at Hillsborough, the dignity of the plain people of Bastia made a sharp contrast with the posturing of those in charge. The same newspaper which shows a crippled victim of the disaster attending the funeral of one of the dead reports that efforts were being made to stage a makeshift cup-final between Monaco and Marseille. The chief consideration in the timing of this event appeared to be when it was convenient for Mitterrand to grace the proceedings with his presence.

Have we learned nothing? Socialists would argue that we should have learnt never to trust a capitalist who is in a position to make a few bob. Have the capitalists learned nothing? We would argue that the rules of capitalism don’t permit them to learn any more than they need to know to make a profit.

John Usher

Action Replay: Meanwhile . . . (2012)

Deid.

The Action Replay column from the September 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

While the world has been focusing on the Olympics and the European Football Championships, plenty of other sport-related events have been taking place:

• International football transfers fell in the first half of 2012, their total financial value going down by a third. So perhaps even the super-rich owners are beginning to feel the pinch.
• The head of the Professional Footballers’ Association called on players at Portsmouth to accept less in past (so far unpaid) and future wages to keep the club from going under.
• In Glasgow, Rangers have been forced, in effect, to start again as a new club (or, in some views, an existing club but a new company) in the Third Division after owing massive amounts in tax. There have been claims that there is an ‘anti-Rangers agenda’ in many parts of Scottish football (Daily Record website, 8 July); presumably these are people wanting to get their own back at a leading club.
• The National Football Museum (for England, that is) used to be at Deepdale, the historic stadium of Preston North End. But Preston is a small city, a long way from anywhere, and after financial muscle from a bigger set-up, the museum has now transferred to Urbis in Manchester, a building which had spectacularly failed in its original use as a ‘museum of the city’. Big-money transfers aren’t just of players.
• The Brazilian congress passed a bill allowing the sale of beer during matches in the 2014 World Cup there (beer sales are otherwise illegal at football matches in Brazil).
•  In English rugby there has been a spat between clubs in the Championship (the second tier) and the Rugby Football Union, with the clubs claiming the RFU owes them money. A number of clubs are already in financial difficulty.
•  Trainers withdrew their horses from a hurdle race at Worcester, as a protest against inadequate prize  money, partly caused by bookmakers locating their online business offshore and so reducing the amount of betting levy paid to the racing industry.

In other words, sport, and business, as usual.

Paul Bennett

Action Replay: Pressure to Compete (2012)

The Action Replay column from the October 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

Lance Armstrong was never actually caught taking performance-enhancing drugs. Rather, the cyclist simply gave up fighting the allegations that he had done so. Regardless of the truth of the situation, this latest development is a reminder of the role of drug-taking in many sports.

There were plenty of earlier examples, but large-scale taking of drugs to improve performance probably goes back at least to WWII, when many soldiers took amphetamines and anabolic steroids to boost their alertness and aggression. It did not really become an issue in sport until 1967, when the International Olympic Committee began to ban drugs, though full-scale testing only started in 1972. In the former state capitalist countries of Eastern Europe, doping had become a kind of standard procedure.

Of course, you might well ask the question, what is wrong with doping? And how does it differ from following an appropriate diet, consuming energy drinks, using the very latest kit and clothing that are intended to make you run faster, and so on? The official answer is that, quite apart from wanting sport to look ‘clean’ for spectators, many drugs are dangerous. Cycling, which as an extreme endurance sport is particularly open to doping, has seen a number of deaths from taking erythropoietin, which increases the red blood cell count. Anabolic steroids can have side effects such as acne and impotence in men, and hair loss in women. Some Paralympic athletes actually give themselves electric shocks to boost their blood pressure. However, even legal gym supplements that boost your protein may lead to kidney damage.

As for why athletes risk their health and even their lives by taking drugs, the answer lies in the money and the fame, not to mention the pressure from coaches and national associations. There is an ongoing race between those who organise doping and those who devise new testing procedures, with neither side able or willing to stand still. The priorities of a system based on competition speak for themselves. And, as so often, human intelligence and ingenuity are put to ultimately pointless uses.

Paul Bennett

Brief Reports (2012)

From the November 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nick Clegg has urged the Liberal Democrats to show “courage and vision” by not sacking him. The call comes after his apology for failing to fulfil his pre-election promise to fight any increase in university tuition fees. Mr Clegg also said there could be “no question” of further lowering the top income tax rate of 45%, which will come into force next April, “and you can take my word for it”. A spokesman for the CBI, the bosses’ union, reported that his members were ‘jubilant’ at the news, and many were already splashing out on extra yachts in anticipation of the further tax cuts.

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Ministers need to choose their special advisers carefully or they may end up in situations worthy of the BBC satire The Thick of It, MPs have said. The TV series, which is basically Yes Minister! with swearing, highlights the role of dodgy special advisors or Spads, temporary government employees who are not bound by the same rules of impartiality as civil servants and who may be following their own agenda. Recent scandals have shown spads to be deceitful, venal, corrupt and incompetent. Labour leader Ed Miliband and Prime Minister David Cameron are both former special advisers.

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In the wake of the Lance Armstrong drug scandal, the company Peddle-It.com has launched a new performance enhancer called Placebonite, which it says is guaranteed to be a top seller: ‘The industry dilemma is that none of the legal products work, while all the ones that do work are illegal. In fact, for a product to work would necessarily make it illegal. You can’t stop athletes pumping themselves with something, so we’re giving them the perfect product. It’s legal, and they think it works, so it does!’ Economics analysts are studying sales, with a view to applying the rationale to other areas, like economics.

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Unemployment fell by 50,000 to 2.53 million between June and August, official figures show, as more people died, left the country or went off benefit to become burglars. “It’s proof that the government’s policy is working’, said a spokesman for the DWP, “People would rather turn to crime than endure the abuse we dish out in the Work Programme.’ The figures follow the announcement of a new government scheme to employ disabled people as motorway bollards.

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The “worst may still be ahead” for the banking system, the Bank of England’s deputy governor has told a gathering of leading bankers. Paul Tucker said reserves held by banks were still not calibrated for the “end-of-the-world risks” that remained a possibility: ‘If you’re buying that yacht, now might be a good moment to fit it out for a long sea voyage. There are lots of islands going cheap in the Caribbean.’

Profit the goal (1985)

From the August 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

From the Report, published on 6 July, of the Special Commission set up by the Belgian Parliament to investigate the incidents that led to the deaths of 38 football supporters at the European Cup final at the Heysel Stadium on 29 May:

Further, the immediate cause of these incidents is to be found in the fact that English and Italian supporters were side by side in blocs X, Y and Z, which was impossible to foresee given that bloc Z was reserved for Belgians. 

The Belgian Football Union and the UEFA seemed to have been motivated more by preoccupations of a lucrative and commercial nature than by their duty to ensure the safety of spectators. 

Ticket sales, as it emerges from many statements and in particular that of Mr Roosens, were completely uncontrolled. A large number of tickets allowing entry to the Z zone (a neutral zone where under no circumstances should there have been Italian supporters) were sold to Italians. 

The sale of tickets at the Heysel Stadium (where in theory only 5 tickets could be sold per person) was organised in such a way that anyone - including Italians — could without problem buy tickets for the Z bloc. This went against not only the UEFA directives but also against the measures decided before the match. Such a procedure necessarily led to a black market.

Blogger's Note:
See also the article, 'Putting the boot in', from the same issue of the Socialist Standard.

Action Replay: The City and the World (2013)

Mahmood al-Zarooni

The Action Replay column from the June 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the end of April, racehorse trainer Mahmood al-Zarooni was banned for eight years after admitting that he had injected anabolic steroids into horses in his charge. This has been claimed to be the biggest doping scandal in the history of horse racing, but it also tells us a lot about the general social setting of sport.

Zarooni worked for Sheikh Mohammed al-Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai, part of the United Arab Emirates. Godolphin, the sheik’s enormous racing and breeding concern, has enjoyed great success in winning top races. But it’s not just a matter of an expensive hobby or a money-making enterprise. Dubai presents itself as a modern city, built on ‘a foundation of innovation and uninhibited achievement.’ And ‘Godolphin, in encapsulating those same values, exemplifies Dubai and plays a meaningful role in representing the Emirate to the world’ (godolphin.com/about-us/about-godolphin/). So it is a gigantic PR exercise, one that could do without the nasty associations of this scandal. Just as it could do without publicity about the impoverished immigrants who build the skyscrapers and work as domestic servants to the Maktoums and their relations.

The doping scandal also reveals a great deal about how the globalisation of production and distribution under modern capitalism has affected sport. Most Godolphin horses are trained in Newmarket, but many of them spend the winter back in Dubai, enjoying the warmer climate there. This, however, may have been the source of Zarooni’s problems, since anabolic steroids are allowed to be used in Dubai, as long as they are no longer in a horse’s system by the time it races. In the UK, though, they are prohibited completely. This sort of thing has created problems in the past – in 2009 even one of the queen’s horses was found to have raced with a drug (not steroids) that had not cleared its system in time.

Global capitalism sometimes has problems with differing regulations in different countries, so truly global corporations have to make sure that they fit in with whatever rules apply where they want to manufacture or trade. Ah, the trials of being a multinational company . . . 

Paul Bennett

Action Replay: Street Football (2013)

The Action Replay column from the September 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

The protests in Brazil began at the start of June, with objections to some fairly small increases in public transport fares in São Paulo. By the middle of the month perhaps a quarter of a million people were protesting in towns and cities across the country. The themes of the protests widened to include a clamp-down on government corruption, as the police and military responded with violence and yet more people assembled on the streets – over two million on some accounts.

In contrast to recent events in Turkey, one focus of the protests was specific to Brazil: the building and refurbishing of sports stadiums for football’s Confederations Cup (held this year during the protests) and World Cup (to be held in June and July next year) and the 2016 Olympic Games. The cost of these projects so far has been enormous, way more than what South Africa spent for the 2010 World Cup, even though half the stadiums are still to be finished.

The corruption allegations extend beyond the government to the Brazilian Football Confederation and to FIFA (football’s international governing body, responsible for organising the World Cup). Fans wonder where the money for the stadiums has really gone, and complain about the likely prices for World Cup tickets: these will be cheaper for Brazilians than for international visitors, but still beyond the means of many local supporters. Moreover, while the stadiums have been (partly) built, the government has not been so generous in providing resources for hospitals and schools.

Brazil is part of the BRICS group of nations (with Russia, India, China and South Africa), who are flexing their economic and political muscles as upcoming powers, possessors of raw materials and large potential markets. This has been reflected in the hosting of sports tournaments, such as the South African World Cup and the 2008 Beijing Olympics. But, like its BRICS fellows, Brazil’s economy has not been in good shape lately, with growth in GDP over the last three years being slower than forecast and its currency, the real, being generally seen as overvalued. There is massive inequality, and the favelas on the fringes of major cities are some of the worst slums on the planet.

Brazil is often described as the most football-mad country on Earth. So perhaps it’s not surprising that football has played a part in these mass protests and in sparking demands for greater transparency and better access to services.

Paul Bennett

Action Replay: Chips With Everything (2011)

Peter Swan (Sheffield Wednesday)

The Action Replay column from the April 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

Where there is gambling, there is likely to be corruption or cheating, and where there is sport there is likely to be gambling. From betting on prize fights and horse-racing sweepstakes to football pools and the current enormous betting industry, sport and gambling have always been closely allied. But recent complaints and sporting scandals surrounding corruption allegedly caused by gambling have moved to a new level.

Over the decades there have been a number of celebrated betting scandals. In 1919, players in the Chicago White Sox team threw the baseball World Series, so some gamblers could make a fortune betting on their opponents; as a result, eight players were banned for life. In a scandal in the Football League in 1962, three players were imprisoned and banned after betting on their team to lose a match; as one of them, Peter Swan, said, ‘Where there’s money there will always be a fiddle.’ In each case the players benefitted relatively little but paid a big price.

More recently, three Pakistan cricketers have been banned for fixing a Test match against England. They did not conspire to lose but, it’s alleged, to do things such as bowl no-balls at particular points, since that’s the kind of specific event that you can now bet on. They are facing criminal charges too.

The International Olympic Committee is setting up a taskforce to combat not just match-fixing but also illegal betting, an industry worth several hundred billion pounds. Jacques Rogge, IOC President, has said that ‘illegal betting…threatens the credibility of sport’. But the credibility and reputation of professional sport are already undermined, from horse doping to fixed boxing matches to dubious games of snooker or cricket. Swan, it seems, had it half-right: the profit motive leads to fiddles and cheating, where the swindled punters or the corrupted athletes are the real losers.

Paul Bennett

Ignoble art (1986)

From the June 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Since 1939 there have been approximately 360 deaths throughout the world as a result of professional boxing and each time there are renewed calls for its abolition.

Supporters of boxing claim that many other popular sports are potentially hazardous and that the nine or ten deaths worldwide each year due to professional boxing are low compared with them. It is further claimed that boxing is organised under strict medical supervision and that if it was banned then unlicensed fights would flourish without such stringent controls and the risks for boxers would be greater.

To claim (correctly) that the fatality rate for boxing is lower than for a number of other sports disguises the fact that injuries in sport usually result from accidents or breaches of the rules, but injuries in boxing arise from the application of the rules. Boxing differs from other sports in that the contestants engage in an activity — fighting which is normally considered to be illegal. Indeed, in the early days of prize fighting the legal position of the emergent "sport” was precarious.

In the old prize ring days the sport survived not only because there were not enough police to subdue it but because it was supported by so many influential people. Indeed, the position was slightly ludicrous, for although the sport was banned by law and scorned upon by the church it was never surprising to see a few church dignitaries or Parliamentarians at the ringside. (Golesworthy. M. [1983] Encyclopaedia of Boxing. 7th Edition. Robert Hale. London, p. 142)

Professional boxing has been legalised in South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, Canada and most of the United States. But the ability of boxing to flourish in Britain without legal backing is typical of the way that the law can be conveniently ignored when business interests are involved and also how powerless the law can be when confronted with overwhelming public demand.

Bare knuckle prize fights continued until about 1895 and the conditions under which many of them were fought were quite barbaric. Fights often lasted for several hours and prize fighters were shamelessly exploited to provide money for promoters and profits from gambling. In May 1833 James Burke fought Simon Byrne in a contest which lasted three hours and six minutes before Byrne was defeated. He died three days later; Burke was tried for manslaughter but acquitted. Earlier, in 1741, when George Stevenson died in a contest with Jack Broughton, a charge of manslaughter was not brought against the winner but, as Golesworthy points out, Broughton's backer was the Duke of Cumberland, third son of George II, whose influence was used to override the law.

The use of gloves to protect the hands became increasingly popular towards the end of the last century but little else was done to protect boxers, who continued to take part in very long fights. In 1893 Andy Bowen and Jack Burke fought a contest, wearing gloves, of 110 rounds lasting seven hours and nineteen minutes, which was declared no contest because neither boxer was knocked out.

Gambling has always been an integral part of boxing and this has led to a number of attempts to manipulate the results of contests. The earliest record of a bribe being taken to fix a fight was when George Meggs was beaten by Bill Stevens in March 1761 and admitted that he had accepted money to throw the fight. During the 1920s boxing in the United States was controlled by the Mafia who made large sums of money from gambling. As a consequence many fights were fixed according to the betting and in 1930 the New York State Athletic Commission was forced to introduce the "no-foul rule" which prevented boxers from winning bouts because of being struck low blows. Before this many boxers had lost by fouling their opponents but safeguarded the racketeers' money because bets were not paid out on fights ending in disqualification. Although fortunes were made by mobsters, promoters and managers in the early days of boxing many professional boxers struggled to earn a satisfactory living even for the few years that their careers usually lasted: Digger Stanley died in poverty in 1919 in spite of being British bantamweight champion in 1913.

The number of bouts fought by some boxers was remarkable: Abraham Hollandersky is believed to have had 1,309 contests between 1905 and 1918; Battling Levinsky fought three contests in one day - 1 January 1915; Tommy Burns defended his world heavyweight title twice in one day on 28 March 1906, against Jim O'Brien and Jim Walker in San Diego. The New York State Athletic Commission was formed in 1920 and the British Boxing Board of Control in 1929 because it was recognised that over-exploitation of boxers could ruin profits. Professional boxers, particularly if they had championship potential, were valuable and needed to be protected from overmatching and unnecessary physical injury. It must also be remembered that as boxing had no legal recognition in Britain concessions had to be made to the pressure of the abolitionists.

Professional boxing in Britain is probably the most stringently controlled in the world because of its precarious legal position and the need to be able to claim to be "safe". But there has been an anomaly in the operation of boxing booths in fairgrounds for, although the boxers are licensed by the British Boxing Board of Control, the booths are owned by members of the Showmen's Guild of Great Britain and there are no checks made on people who try their luck against the professionals.

Racial prejudice has also been an ugly feature of boxing throughout its history. Golesworthy states:

Several notable coloured boxers who might well have become world champions never even got a chance to fight for the title. It is also a well known fact that many of the coloured men who did achieve world honours had to be satisfied with smaller purses than their challengers. (p.59)

Coloured boxers, although eligible for Empire titles, were prevented from competing for British titles until 1947. when the British Boxing Board of Control lifted its ban. Racial tensions were deliberately exploited, to boost attendance at fights, by dubbing white boxers, particularly in the heavyweight division, as "great white hopes" when matched against coloured boxers.

Supporters of boxing would claim that most of the exploitation and barbarity of the early days no longer apply; punch-drunk boxers are rarely seen because of stricter medical controls; mobsters no longer control the betting; racism is not now condoned by boxing's controlling bodies; boxing champions have chances of earning vast amounts of money. But although controls have certainly improved there are still a lot of problems: the British Medical Association states unequivocally that all forms of boxing are dangerous and that even participation in amateur boxing, which is very strictly regulated. leads to brain damage. Besides brain damage a form of Parkinsonism, with slowing down of movements, difficulty with walking, slurred speech, memory lapses and personality changes - boxers risk cuts and bruises, eye damage and fractures and osteoarthrosis of the hands.

The business interests of professional boxing has led to less stringent controls being applied there than in amateur boxing and, consequently, professional fights are of longer duration and less likely to be stopped because of cuts or knockdowns. The longer the bouts that professional boxers participate in, the fewer boxers are needed to provide an evening's entertainment. With fewer boxers to pay, the higher the profits for promoters. Gambling remains as prominent as ever in boxing and, although Mafia involvement has been kept in check, bookmakers' profits are expanding.

Racism and nationalism remain firmly entrenched; white boxers are still regarded as "great white hopes" when fighting coloured boxers and although boxing's controlling organisations no longer officially support racism they manage to turn a blind eye while such attitudes continue to sell tickets although recently they had to take disciplinary action (because of the risk of being discredited) when two boxers went too far and brawled in a London street over racial abuse each had voiced against the other.

A few top boxers earn enormous amounts of money - but this is true of the elite of any sport. At amateur level and the lower echelons of the professional ranks boxers are not only encouraged, but trained, to risk their health and that of their opponents by engaging in a brutal and dangerous occupation in the hope of earning glory and big purses from trying to injure their fellow workers.

The lack of legal status has not prevented boxing from flourishing. When abolitionists appreciate that any activity, however barbaric or dangerous, can be condoned under capitalism as long as it is profitable then perhaps they will abandon reforms.

Carl Pinel