ON LONDON OLYMPICS
Tessa Jowell, the former Labour culture secretary who played a key role in securing the 2012 London Olympics and used her own cancer diagnosis to campaign for better treatment, has died. She was 70.
Jowell died peacefully at the family home in Warwickshire, on Saturday, her family said in a statement.
Jowell, who was diagnosed with a brain tumour last year, remained a member of the House of Lords and used the platform to call for improved information sharing and better access to medical care. Her memorable speech in Parliament moved her peers to tears.
“In the end, what gives a life meaning is not only how it is lived, but how it draws to a close,” she said in January, with a shawl around her shoulders and her head covered by a skull cap.
“I hope that this debate will give hope to other cancer patients, like me, so we can live well together with cancer – not just dying of it. All of us – for longer.”
While politicians of all affiliations offered tributes and praise for Jowell’s courage and her championing of programmes like Sure Start children’s centres as a government minister, it was her work on the Olympics that gave her a profile with the general public.
Having pushed the UK Government to bid for the Olympics, her joy on securing the games for London was short-lived. The following day – 7 July 2005 – four suicide bombers targeted the city’s public transportation network, killing 52 people and injuring hundreds more.
On the tenth anniversary of the attacks, Jowell told those attending a memorial service that her memories of the day were vivid.
“I will certainly never forget it – neither the day itself nor the days afterwards. I was in Singapore,” she recalled. “We were celebrating having won the Olympic bid when my private secretary received a call from London to be told that there might have been a terrorist attack on the Tube network.
“As the full scale of the atrocity became clear, those of us representing the UK in Singapore could think about just one thing: we had to get home.”
Former Prime Minister Tony Blair asked Jowell to coordinate the government’s support for survivors and the bereaved. She later said she often thought about 7 July, but particularly during the twominute silence at the London Games’ opening ceremony directed by Danny Boyle.
“I saw the forward-looking, expansive, optimistic vision of Britain that the opening ceremony represented and I thought again that this was something the bombers and their supporters would have hated – all those nations, with their different views, their different cultures, their different traditions, coming together in a spirit of peace and play,” she said.
“So it was a deeply civilised thing that we did in those marvellous two weeks in the summer of 2012.”
Tributes for Jowell poured in from the many corners of British life she touched. In politics, Blair applauded her understanding of public health and the need “to shift health policy towards prevention of illness and not only cure.”
In sport, David Beckham posted an image on Instagram that showed him giving her a hug. “Dame Tessa, who was a passionate & amazing woman in so many different ways,” Beckham wrote.
Jowell is survived by her husband, David Mills, and their children Jessie and Matthew. The family said the funeral would be small and private, but a memorial open to all would be held later. DANICA KIRKA The Scotsman welcomes obituaries and appreciations from contributors as well as suggestions of possible obituary subjects. Please contact: Gazette Editor n The Scotsman, Level 7, Orchard Brae House, 30 Queensferry Road, Edinburgh EH4 2HS; n gazette@scotsman.com