A Contemporary History of Women’s Sport, Part One by Jean Williams

Author:Jean Williams
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Routledge

The London Olympiad 1948: Approximately 4, 100 Athletes of Whom Approximately 400 Were Women

The 1936 Berlin Olympics had been superbly organised but fatally linked in the public mind with Nazism. Helsinki would have hosted the games in 1940 if war had not broken out in Europe. But the British Olympic Committee, led by Lord Aberdare, continued to press the claims of London. In early January of 1942 the IOC lost its President, when Count Henry de Baillet-Latour died and Vice-President Sigfrid Edström took over as figurehead. In spite of the fragile idea of sport uniting nations during a world war, Edström had been able to send twenty-seven circulars to help keep the IOC active, helped by way of Sweden’s neutrality and his role as Chair of ASEA, an electrical firm with good communication facilities.35 In June 1944 the IOC celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the Olympic Movement and Edström, at the age of seventy-four, proposed Avery Brundage as his Vice President to act in his stead. Since the headquarters of the IOC had also been in neutral Switzerland, there was a relatively easy resumption of activities in 1946 when thirteen new members were elected to the executive committee.

Britain was hardly in a fit state to host such an international event as an Olympic Games. Post-war reconstruction had barely begun. British governments had been ambivalent about the value of international sport and British sport objected to state interference. But if the Games were to go ahead in 1948, government help would be essential. In January 1946 Lord Burghley of the British Olympic Committee met the Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin and Philip Noel-Baker, who was briefly Minister of State.36 Bevin was not a sports fan but Baker was, having been President of the Cambridge University athletic club from 1910–1912 and a co-founder of the Achilles Athletics Club, for Oxbridge graduates. While Noel-Baker became the minister in charge of the Olympics therefore, Bevin was a pragmatist and an internationalist, agreeing that tourists might bring much-needed foreign currency (especially US dollars). Cabinet support followed, as did some financial backing.

There were plenty of sceptics, especially during the bad winter of 1947 as mid-week sports events were cancelled to save industrial production and rationing remained in place. London was short of accommodation, building materials, food, fuel and transport. Many of the women competitors were housed at Southlands College in Wimbledon, and for some training took place at the Butlins Holiday Camp, Clacton on Sea. In the main, the drivers for the Olympic transport fleet between venues came from the Women’s Royal Voluntary Service (WRVS). In addition to the service personnel, hundreds of students and other people, young and old, volunteered to help, either living in wartime RAF camps or remaining at home.37

Popular ambivalence centred on whether an Olympic Games was the correct way to spend money in harsh times; not least in the £4,000 of hospitality lavished on dignitaries by amateur administrators.38 In stark contrast to the conditions endured by ordinary spectators and competitors, the social

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