The Cold War and British debates over the boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics

2012/10/05 by Paul Corthorn · 2 citations
Social Sciences · #Sport and Mega-Event Impacts #Sports, Gender, and Society #Doping in Sports

paper · doi:10.1080/14682745.2012.727799

openalex publication_date 2012/10/05 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29

Abstract

This article examines the debate precipitated by the Thatcher government's (unsuccessful) attempt to secure a British boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Aware that it faced a struggle to win over the autonomous British Olympic Association, but with Thatcher in particular keen to support the United States, the government's case that the invasion required a specific response in the form of a boycott was steadily overshadowed as the public debate increasingly focused on arguments over human rights and détente and the use of state power.

Cited by

• 1980 Summer Olympics [wikipedia]
• Premiership of Margaret Thatcher [wikipedia]

Related

• The Thatcher government's response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, 1979–1980
• Bringing Human Rights In: The Campaign Against the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games and the Origins of the Nexus Between Human Rights and the Olympic Games
• The Soviet-Afghan War 1979–89
• Britain and the Indo-Pakistani Conflict: The Rann of Kutch and Kashmir, 1965
• ‘No protection against the H-bomb’: press and popular reactions to the Coventry civil defence controversy, 1954