Austerity. It’s a word we’re all hoping to forget for a while as we prepare for a summer explosion of Olympic razzmatazz and excitement.
After seven years of lavish planning and building, the London Games won’t leave our Government much change from £10billion… at a time when the country is hard-up and in recession.
So it’s a humbling experience to look back at the last time our capital city hosted the Olympics. Because they were called the Austerity Games.
The year was 1948. The country was still weary from war. And the word austerity then was charged with a much deeper meaning.
In the receding shadow of a global conflict, it was a triumph the Games happened at all.
But, against a backdrop of Blitz-scarred streets and cheering crowds still living on rations coupons, 59 national teams met in 17 days of competition, all arranged in just two years. And the cost? Just £732,268.
“Back then it was all done on a shoestring budget,” says Dorothy Tyler, 91, one of the surviving veterans from '48 who won silver for Britain in the ladies’ high jump.
“And yet for the whole country it was a wonderful event. The sun was suddenly shining in everyone’s lives again after all those dark years.”
The 4,000-plus competitors were treated very differently from today’s sporting superstars.
There were no limousines or luxury coaches to ferry them to and from events.
Instead, they were given bus and Tube tickets and told to find their own way.
There was no Olympic Village either.
The world’s finest athletes were billeted in school dormitories, youth hostels and even redecorated Army huts, sleeping in lines of iron-framed beds on linoleum floors.
They had to bring their own towels. Drugs were unknown, but free Horlicks tablets were handed round at lights-out.
And when they lined up for the start, it wasn’t in some spanking new arena.
The organisers hired Wembley Stadium, with its handy greyhound track that could be cheaply modified for two-legged competitors.
Next door, the Empire Pool ice rink was melted down for swimming and then drained again for boxing, while cycling took place on an old base for barrage balloons.
There was no Nike. No Adidas.
The entire Great Britain team was dressed for £11,000. The men’s official uniforms were black blazers and white Oxford bags plus two pairs of free underpants each.
The ladies were sent to a domestic servants outfitters and given white cotton frocks buttoned at the front
“It was what we used to call a kitchen dress, that you might give your cook,” said fencer Mary Glen Haig.
As for their competition kit, every athlete had to supply their own.
Mums and wives from the make do and mend wartime days brought out their sewing machines again to turn out vests and shorts.
On July 29, after a relay around south-east England that lasted just two days, the Olympic torch arrived down Wembley Way, the one new part of the stadium specially built for the occasion (even that was done on the cheap, by German prisoners of war who were still waiting to go home).
The Games of the XIV Olympiad were declared open by King George VI on the hottest day for 50 years, in front of a sweltering crowd of 82,000 who paid 3/6d (18p) for a seat on hard wooden benches.
A soft cushion was on offer for an extra threepence.
Sometimes the wrong national anthems were played, sometimes team flags went missing, after such a short time to get ready there was bound to be a degree of chaos.
The ceremonial pigeons died of heatstroke in their basket before they could be released, and spectators fainted by the dozen.
But it was a day of joy and celebration, when a nation got up off its knees and learned how to party again.
The Games themselves, the first since the Nazi-blighted event of 1936 in Berlin, produced a new crop of champions and record breakers – and, perhaps more than any other in modern times, seemed to embrace the perfect Olympic ideal.
They weren’t about fame and celebrity. They were certainly not about money. They were simply about sport.
Britain won 23 medals and two of the bronzes went to cyclist Tommy Godwin, now 91.
No one epitomised the Austerity Olympics better than he did.
Tommy took the train from Birmingham to London with his bike, then rode it to the velodrome at Herne Hill in South London with his racing wheels strapped to his back.
He shared a house with the rest of the seven-strong cycling squad, where they slept on camp beds and stuck to a diet of spam fritters, toad-in-the-hole and powdered egg, cooked by his mum.
The Games ended on a Saturday, and on Monday morning he was back at his factory job as an electrician.
“I see you won a couple of medals then,” a workmate said.
“Well done, lad... now here’s the jobsheet for today.”
There was no money, but plenty of true sporting spirit.
Britain in 1948
- Food was still rationed – an adult was allowed one shilling’s (5p) worth of meat per week.
- A new US import arrived in time for the Olympics... the British had their first taste of Coca-Cola.
- Britain sent a warship to the Falklands, as Argentina pushed its claim to sovereignty.
- The NHS was launched, as part of a new welfare system promising care from cradle to grave.
- Queen-in-waiting Princess Elizabeth gave birth to her first child, Prince Charles.
- A pint of beer was ninepence (4p) and the average house price was £1,751.
- The main aggressors in World War Two, Germany and Japan, were not invited to the Games.
- Ticket prices ranged from two shillings (10p) for hockey to one guinea (£1.05p) for the rowing finals at Henley.
- For the first time, the Olympics had sponsors... including Craven “A” cigarettes.
- It took five weeks for the New Zealand team to reach London, on a cargo ship overrun with cockroaches.
Source: www.mirror.co.uk
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