|
The Austerity Olympics: When the Games Came to London in 1948, Janie Hampton, Aurum Press, 2008, £18.99.
The forthcoming global humiliation of London 2012, when our masters demonstrate just what our country can’t run in a brewery, is constantly on one’s mind whilst reading Janie Hampton’s timely and excellent new book.
There is as much austerity here as Olympics. It presents a fascinating snapshot of our country in the immediate post-war period. Basic goods were still rationed (and indeed the calorific ration for individuals was lower than in 1945). British athletes were at a disadvantage as they trained whilst on rations themselves. Massive areas of the capital were still bomb sites (in stark contrast to Hiroshima, which had, remarkably, rebuilt 85% of its streets by 1948). There were still many German prisoners of war in the country, who were put to work on the construction of some of the infrastructure for the Games. 19,000 deserters were still “on the run”.
The coverage of the 1948 Olympics itself is just as good. Unless a very serious sports fan indeed, there will be more than you’d ever ask for by way of results and the description of events and long-forgotten athletes and feats. This reader found himself skipping sports a little and seeking more of the interesting anthropological anecdotes Hampton has dug out, but that’s just a matter of taste. There are some basic, striking differences in comparison with the modern games. For a start, there was no participation from Germany, Japan or Soviet Union. The 1948 Games was also a watershed in the history of the Olympics – it was the last to feature aesthetic competition, with fields such as poetry and sculpture competing and being judged alongside track and field. The sheer size of the Games required a restriction of fields in future events – but, moreover, decline of the idea of absolute standards – of good, better, best – in the arts made the continuation of such competition impossible.
Organised in two years, the entire budget for the 1948 Games was £760,000. The Games turned a modest profit of £29,000 (which was then made subject to tax, which came as a surprise to the organisers – a surprise repeated exactly by our bid committee, which failed to consider the eminently foreseeable repercussions of tax on our budget…). This was in accordance with the motivations of the government and organisers of the event, who were primarily concerned with drawing capital into a war-ravaged economy. Such a concern usually motivates the organisers of modern Games, sometimes without success – Greece pushed itself outside the permitted Euro-debt levels to host their round of the Olympics, and the Chinese found that the tourist levels in Beijing were lower than usual during their Games.
In any case, the Austerity Olympics were certainly run with admirable economy. Competitors in 1948 were responsible for sourcing their own towels and kit. Equipment was sold off after the event to recoup costs. There was no luxurious, purpose-built Olympic Village or series of mega-venues. Schools, colleges and RAF camps were converted into hostels. Greyhound tracks and old sports grounds were patched up to a sufficient standard and venues outside of London were used where they already existed and could be utilized more cheaply than building new ones. One does wonder why such precedents were lost on our present committee.
I expressed my doubts about the forthcoming games here previously (SR Vol. 27 No. 1). Still, let us not forget that the recent refurbishment of the single stadium at Wembley (once the Empire Stadium, and as such a significant venue in this book) cost circa £757 million and took seven years. For £970 million, Germany constructed or refitted the 12 spectacular stadia that hosted the 2006 World Cup – in much less time. Considering the catastrophic Millennium Dome in hindsight, Tony Blair said “I should have listened to those who said that governments shouldn’t try to run big visitor attractions.” Certainly, with our track record, our government shouldn’t. In 1948 we managed it.
Hampton has a hard time making up her mind whether the “make do and mend” spirit she conjures up so well was the dominant sense of the day, or if “the wartime imperative to pull together had gone and the grumblers and backbiters enjoyed a heyday”. Of course, they’re not mutually exclusive, and certainly she shows both aspects well. And perhaps in many years’ time those who, like me, pour scorn on the 2012 Games will be viewed as misguided grumblers and backbiters too. Indeed, the Sydney Games received a healthy dose of mockery and pessimism from the Australian press, only to emerge as the “best Olympics ever”. The 1948 Games showed that a committed and passionate group of people can scrabble together a good enough event, but expectations and standards were entirely different at the time. Combining higher modern expectations and our lower organisational capabilities produce a pretty ugly prospect. In my view, there is a case for the present hosts to consider the precedent of Denver in 1970 – the good burghers of Denver looked at the spiralling numbers of their Winter Games budget and promptly voted to abandon the Games, which went to Innsbruck instead. They knew that their Games would go badly and would cost a fortune, so they did the wise thing and abandoned ship. Few now remember it, nobody holds it against Denver, and they saved themselves a generation’s worth of higher taxation. Worth contemplating given the state of our (non)preparation, isn’t it?
The book is attractively bound and pressed, with a good number of well produced pictures. It’s comprehensively sourced and fully indexed and whilst not without the usual proofreading hiccups it is in all respects a very attractive volume. Much of it draws on firsthand accounts from participants and observers from the Games, and the march of time has naturally dimmed memories and sadly thinned the ranks of those able to offer their insights. Hampton’s access to primary resources was hampered by the loss of much of the British Olympic Association’s archive in a flood. Nevertheless, it is a first rate piece of work and a great read. Sixty years on, this pointed and powerful review of the tremendous job done by our forebears in a London still shattered by war should bring blushes to the faces of those in charge of the current effort.
Alexander Deane is a barrister.
|
