HYBRID VIGOUR
You may remember that quaint old adage, ‘Keep Politics Out of Sport’. It had its heyday among apologists for the South African government at the time of the sporting boycott of the apartheid era. There has probably never been a dumber slogan. It would be like Castor without Pollux or Laurel without Hardy. Politics has as much relevance on the playing field as in Parliament, in the dressing room as in the boardroom. I don’t doubt that the boycott of sports-mad South Africa contributed substantially to the end of racial separation.
And thanks to the collision of the European Athletics Championships in Rome and the Europe wide elections - save in that isolated outpost of the once Roman Empire, Great Britain & Northern Ireland – you cannot have failed to notice that a preponderance of countries represented here in the Stadio Olimpico feature, well, a lot athletes of colour.
Even ignoring, for example, that Britain’s crumbling National Health Service would fall apart completely, were it not for immigrant labour, from surgeons to janitors, what better antidote than this parade of multi-racial excellence to those people and parties who are lurching to the right if not the far-right, driven by anti-immigration policies?
Other nations in Europe have long been used to British and French teams fielding athletes whose parents, one or both, hail from colonial outposts. But, gradually other European countries’ immigrants or their offspring began to make their presence felt if not in all walks of life, then certainly on the sports field. Countries from Sweden in the north to Portugal and Italy in the south, to Ireland in the west and Romania in the east have joined in as is apparent in Rome; and that includes conservative Switzerland where women only secured the vote in 1971.
I am reminded of a fascinating hour or so I spent with Lee Evans in Athens 40 years ago. Evans was the first man to run under 44 seconds (43.86sec) when he won the Olympic 400 metres in Mexico 1968. A Fulbright scholar and a vocal proponent of racial equality, Evans and his fellow US medallists Larry James and Ron Freeman wore Black Panther berets on the victory rostrum in Mexico, emulating with less clamour the black-gloved salute of their 200 metres colleagues Tommie Smith and John Carlos. Aussie silver medallist Peter Norman sported a badge of the Olympic Project for Human Rights in sympathy. Following his relegation to third by Norman, Carlos incidentally made a comment, maybe tongue-in-cheek, but which still resonates today, ‘I didn’t know a white guy could run that fast!’ When Norman died in 2006, Smith and Carlos repaid the compliment; they flew to Melbourne to be pall-bearers at his funeral.
But, back to Evans: we had been invited to an Olympic symposium in Athens in the mid-1980s, he for his celebrity and subsequent teaching and coaching career in Africa, me since I had managed to con my way into a job on a newspaper which still had a vestige of prestige around the world. I don’t know how we got on the subject, and I was very wary of saying the wrong thing, but Evans had no such constraints. He lectured me on ‘hybrid vigour’ or cross-pollination, a term better known in botany, and something that racists would call miscegenation, ie inter-marriage and procreation. Evans had no qualms, citing several leading athletes of mixed race from that period four decades back, including Daley Thompson, a product of a Nigerian father and Scottish mother, who had recently won his second Olympic decathlon title.
Evans claimed that humans are nothing special, and although he didn’t use the term, he argued that we, like animals and plants are simply part of the same eco-system, responding to the same dynamics; whence his championing of hybrid vigour.
The evidence of his thesis is manifest in the continuing rise of rainbow nations on the track and field of endeavour called Athletics.
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HYBRID VIGOUR
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A CROOKED TALE
This is a story about barbarians who destroyed an unusual and much loved pub in the west midlands of England.
I wrote this tale some months ago for my website, www.globerunner.blog. Recent news suggest that the barbarians, as my article suggests are going to be forced to rebuild The Crooked House!
Locals of a demolished pub near where I was born can take heart from the story of a demolished pub near where I live now - one which was ordered to be rebuilt ‘brick-by-brick’. Judging by calls and emails I’ve had from folks who know that I’m a Black Country boy, the news of the recent burning and demolition of the Glynne Arms, aka the Crooked House near Dudley in the English west midlands must have gone around the world. I was born a mile or so away from what we locals knew as the Siden (side-on?) House, and as our local gang of kids grew up in the 1950s and 60s, the pub was a regular curiosity for us to view as we roamed the countryside around the disused pit workings that had contributed to the Crooked House’s subsidence. Later on, I'd often run past it on one of my training stints on the disused railway track which overlooked it. My father had been born even nearer to the pub, and as I grew into drinking age, it would be on our itinerary for an occasional pint, and the traditional rolling of a ball-bearing seemingly ‘uphill’ on the bar or the window sills. It was also a must-see for anyone visiting the area. Now living in north-west London, the last time I was there was four years years ago, showing the place off to some French visitors who’d come to the family home to celebrate my mother’s 100th birthday.
The story of the pub’s demise last weekend has been across the national news for days. Originally built as a farmhouse in the late 18th century, it had been a pub since the 1830s. Despite a campaign to preserve it as such, it was sold two weeks ago, apparently to be repurposed. The building then burned down last weekend in circumstances that the neighbourhood websites have universally described as SUSPICIOUS. The fire service arrived to find its way blocked by mounds of earth on the access road. The delays in getting high pressure fire hoses close enough to the blaze meant that the building had already been gutted by the time that fire was extinguished. Then, to pile anguish onto injury for the locals, bull-dozers were brought in the next day, to reduce the place to rubble. Drinkers, devotees and dignitaries across the West Midlands are up in arms, demanding explanation and restoration.
They might take heart from the tale of the Carlton Tavern in Maida Vale, a couple of miles from where I live now. In 2015, the Carlton, which had been rebuilt as a pub in 1921, was bought by a company who turned out to be developers. An immediate application from them to build flats was turned down by Westminster Council; and alert locals sought a Grade II listing from Historic England, to prevent further threat to the pub. But two days before the listing was to be awarded, the new bosses gave staff a day off, allegedly for stock-taking, and avoiding the inconvenience of a fire in a residential area, the bulldozers were drafted in and reduced the pub to a shell within a few hours. Cue mayhem! But, as the Guardian reported two years ago on its reopening, ‘… the Carlton’s story did not follow the usual plot, where the developer presents the fait accompli to the local authority and pays a fine before pressing ahead with the redevelopment and counting their profits.’
Over 5000 locals, including councillors had mobilised to set up a campaign entitled Rebuild The Carlton Tavern. They pressured Westminster Council, not noted for its public spirit, and not only did the council turn down the developers’ further application for flats, they ordered the company to rebuild the Carlton ‘brick by brick’. That was a pleasant surprise for James Watson, the pub protection adviser for the Campaign for Pubs, who advised the Carlton group. “I never imagined that I would see a planning inspector order a developer to put back what he’d just knocked down, to look exactly as it was. I thought the developer would get a slap on the wrist, a £6,000 fine. But I was flabbergasted – and it has set an incredibly useful precedent. Other planning inspectors will remember it, and so will developers”.
With hundreds of locals descending on the site of the former Crooked House in the last two days to bemoan and complain of its passing (and to take away a souvenir brick), pressure is only going to grow around the Black Country and West Midlands for something to be done about the wanton destruction of such an unusual historic landmark. Roger Lees, the leader of South Staffordshire council has already confirmed it is investigating planning breaches, and the over-zealous destruction of the property, which his body had not authorised. Council and aggrieved locals could do worse than study the case of the resurrected Carlton Tavern. Could the Crooked House yet rise from the ashes?
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A CROOKED TALE
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