Olympic ceremony was oh so correct and cosy

GLORIOUS traditions, like beauty, are in the eye of the beholder. And so, too, with the opening ceremony of the London Olympics.

The British media hailed the ceremony as “breathtaking… brilliant… delightfully, barmily British”. That, too, was the view in most Anglophone newspapers around the world.

But although spectacular in parts, the opening wasn’t wondrous at all. It was self-indulgent, historically misshapen, and absurdly politically correct – really, how many black captains of industry were there during the industrial revolution?

Danny Boyle, creator of the extravaganza, also made it incomprehensibly obscure. Marc Brunel, tunnel engineer, as the nation’s major historical figure? Coronation Street as the epitome of British television drama?

There is a plethora of statesmen, libertarians and outstanding scientific and medical innovators that Boyle had to choose from, but ignored.

Even if one pretends British history started in the Victorian industrial mills, why not Robert Stephenson, of steam locomotive fame? Or James Har- greaves, spinning jenny inventor?

But what was unforgivable about the ceremony was its massive intellectual dishonesty, its pretence that Britain’s most abiding legacy – exploration, annexation and empire – didn’t happen. The British Empire once included a quarter of the world’s people. In all, the enormous effect that the British have had on the modern world becomes apparent.

British imperialism was not exactly a benign experience for those at the sharp end of it. The British were enthusiastic slavers and it was also they who invented the concentration camp and a scorched earth policy against the Boers, coming close to ethnic cleansing.

That is perhaps why Boyle stuck with safe laughs, such as comic Rowan Atkinson and a parachuting queen.

A pity. For though the past is past, it is fruitless to pretend it never happened. Despite British excesses, there is much to salute.

It was the British who first turned their backs on slavery. It was ordinary Brits who, most among Westerners, backed the anti-apartheid Struggle.

London’s opening celebration was oh so correct and cosy. More Little Britain than Great Britain.