Diversity and inclusion – the twin towers of success

It was a fitting follow-up to the success of Team GB three weeks earlier and justification of the hype that has spanned the two Olympic events.

They represented the same commitment by participating athletes, and equal exhilaration from the spectators; the triumphs of Victoria Pendleton and Mo Farah in one forum mirroring those of Sarah Storey and Richard Whitehead in the other, and Oscar Pistorius in both.

Indeed, the similarity continued with each team sharing equal criticism from successive disgruntled French contingents over their superior technical equipment. But there the similarities end. For while Gallic ire was directed first against Team GB’s bicycles and then the Paralympians’ wheelchairs, the general nature of media reporting of the twin events and attitudes towards those participating could not avoid displaying the tension and unease that underlie the broad sensitivities of integration and discrimination.

Arguably, the Paralympic Games received a more fulsome preview than their predecessor. It certainly took less time to ratchet up the medal tally, though it could not fail to avoid the predictable mass of linguistic PC confusion, exacerbated by the impenetrable technical categories which surround the participants. So it inevitably fell victim to ambivalence and compromise.

Its dramatic opening ceremony posed bewildering questions. Was this about overcoming adversity, or championing an intellectual revolution? Certainly, the presence of Stephen Hawking, a brilliant intellectual who happens to be severely restricted in his mobility, appeared to unite the themes … but there I go, shying away from using the term ‘physically disabled’.

With more than 4,000 athletes from 164 countries participating, the Paralympic Games celebrate disabled sports people who are just as wedded to the ideals of Baron de Coubertin as those who assembled for the previous event.

It was therefore unhelpful, particularly to those ready to participate, to hear from the Prime Minister that ‘while the Olympics made us proud, the Paralympics will make us prouder’. We know what he meant, but however well-intentioned his remark was, it exposed the discomfort that recognises that they are achieving, despite their disability, something we can’t do.

We all know – because every media publication has been telling us – that the Paralympic Games owe their origin to Dr Ludwig Guttmann, a neurologist who escaped Nazi Germany and who through his work at the spinal injuries unit at Stoke Mandeville Hospital inspired and motivated patients to take up wheelchair archery as part of their rehabilitation.

By all accounts, he adopted a robust approach. To quote his daughter: ‘My father’s big thing was that he was determined to make his patients taxpayers’ – that is, to promote by whatever means (in this case, sport) integration into society, not exclusion from it.

And so, arguably, the message from the current Games and their elaborate opening ceremony is to advance the discussion of what is possible from sports to arts. No one would pretend that this will be a speedy process. When, for example, do disabled actors appear in product advertising – except during the past couple of weeks, that is – in the TV adverts, some of which so awkwardly interrupted the opening ceremony?

Obviously, as we are currently witnessing at London’s Olympic Park, there are areas where individuals simply cannot be pitted against one another.

Not surprisingly, the subject of discrimination has sprung to the top of everyone’s agenda, helped of course by such set-pieces as the Paralympics. How interesting that Jersey’s own Assistant Chief Minister could accept an invitation to the event, as it coincided with a two-day conference in London with Commonwealth representatives on new technologies and how they can help people with disabilities.

Predictably, when interviewing in the capital, the reporter was particularly interested in why Jersey had no participants in the Games this time, following the success of Simon Laurens in Beijing in 2008.

While Health officials in Guernsey are currently undertaking a survey to decide whether the island needs to develop a disability and inclusion strategy, here, after several years of promises and delays due to budget cuts, we are promised anti-discrimination legislation by the end of the year. But don’t hold your breath.

There is indeed a formidable larder of UK legislation to raid: Race Relations Act 1965 and 1976; Sex Discrimination 1975; Disability Discrimination 1995. All have made a considerable difference to attitudes and legal process. None is near 100 per cent effective, and some have proved a fertile feeding ground for mischievous litigants.

Despite the surrounding gloom of austerity, this year has provided an extraordinary series of up-beat events, from the Royal pageant and its fall-out to the sheer exuberance of national sporting achievement which, though it probably owes much to home advantage, has prompted an unusually warm welcome to all the participants in the Olympic events.

THE test will come when the doors to the venues have closed and the weeds begin to spring up along the banks of the River Lee. Much is riding on the legacy of London 2012, quite apart from bricks, mortar and easy access to facilities. The Games have served to highlight diversity and inclusion. They have underlined, if it were necessary, that everyone puts as much effort into what they want to achieve regardless of the degree of difficulty they face, and that anyone can experience as much joy as another when they succeed, and as much anger and heartache when they don’t.

In short, they have exposed what we already knew – that paternalism and tokenism in whatever form is as barren as the 7,000 tonnes of toxic soil excavated from the Stratford site to let the Games commence.