England riots: East End rioters and Olympics

August 13, 2011 India Real Time/WSJ report: [...] In a Thursday editorial, the Indian Express focused instead on what the riots mean for the London Olympic Games. It noted that “it would not be sensible to judge security arrangements for 2012 on the basis” of the recent nights of rioting, since security will be a lot tighter during the Olympics.

At the same time, it saw the rioting as evidence of the government’s failure to transform the spirit and youth of London’s East End, a traditionally working-class and multicultural area of the city. “If the purpose was to rebrand an entire swathe of one of the world’s greatest cities, to demonstrate the vibrancy of the communities that call it home, then the images that have been coming out of East London — particularly Hackney, one of the Games’ major locations — do tend to undermine the Olympic mission,” it said.

While it described the challenges the U.K. government has to face between now and the start of the Games as “susbstantial,” the editorial also said one should “never underestimate the ability of events like the Olympics to, indeed, build solidarity even within communities as stressed as those which produced East London’s young rioters. It seems London did not just want the Games. It needed them, too.”