How Apartheid shaped 1970’s Test cricket calendar
We still don’t know whether there will be any Test cricket this summer. Fifty years ago there was similar uncertainty. South Africa were due to tour, and cricket lovers were eager and enthusiastic, for South Africa were currently the best Test team in the world, having just won a home series 4-0 against Australia. But there was opposition to the tour from the Anti-Apartheid movement, and the young Peter Hain, later a Labour Cabinet Minister and now a member of the House of Lords, had launched a Stop the Tour campaign, calling for Direct Action.
There were good arguments on both sides. Those opposed to the tour believed that not only was apartheid repulsive, unjust, even wicked, but that, given White South Africa’s passion for sport, especially rugby and cricket, imposing a sporting boycott on the country was the best way of putting pressure on the regime. On the other hand, many believed that sport and politics should not mix, which was after all the position of the International Olympics Committee , and some pointed out that those who called for a boycott of South Africa had no objection to sporting links with the Soviet Union and other countries behind the Iron Curtain. Meanwhile others argued that since British banks and businesses were free to invest in South Africa, there was no good reason for us not to play rugby and cricket against the Springboks. Many believed that maintaining sporting links made it possible to apply soft pressure for change on the South African Government. I should say I agreed with most of this and was in favour of the tour.
Few who supported it were quite as outspokenly honest as the novelist Simon Raven. Writing in The Spectator, he said: “It is all, in the last resort a question of pleasure. By all means let the idealists, the students, the revolutionaries feel as passionately as they must, write as much as they choose, shout as loud as they please and carry banners as wide as they will: but for God’s sake let them not spoil other people’s pleasure. If I go to watch the South Africans it is on my conscience, not theirs.”
So I was in favour of the tour and eager to watch this South African team. However I had reluctantly to accept that this was unlikely. That winter of 1969-70 there was a tour by the Springboks’ rugby team, and it was miserable for the players who were harassed wherever they went and indeed had to be confined to their hotels. Matches were disrupted by demonstrators. Spectators going to the match required police guards and during the games there were pitch invasions. I was at Murrayfield for the Scotland-South Africa game, and it was a bizarre experience, rather a horrible one (even though Scotland won).The terracing at the north and south ends of the ground was shut off. Policemen, with their backs to the rugby, stood shoulder to shoulder all around the pitch. Even so protestors managed to evade them and tried to disrupt the game. There was violence at every match on the tour, often with fights breaking out between demonstrators and fans.
That day convinced me that the cricket tour couldn’t safely go ahead. A rugby match lasts eighty minutes, a Test five days. Twickenham is more defensible than Lord’s or The Oval. However idealistic opposition to apartheid might be, the tour was going to be made impossible, not by reasoned argument or peaceful protest, but by direct action, violence or at least the threat of violence. The bully-boys were going to win. No doubt the majority of the protestors were high-minded and peaceful, but it was the readiness of others to engage in violence which won the day. When the Home Secretary, James Callaghan, reasonably concluded that the tour offered a threat to public order and demanded it be called off, the civil power of the State was yielding to a mob. His decision was justifiable but shabby.
Most of the demonstrators were admirable people of a liberal frame of mind and their cause was good, but their victory could still be deplored. A minority had succeeded in imposing its will on millions, and it had done so by means of the willingness of a minority of that minority to threaten and indeed employ violence.
No one can tell what part the sports boycott played in the crumbling of the apartheid regime twenty years on, just as no one can tell whether maintaining sporting links and pursuing a policy of continuing engagement with South Africa might have been effective. What we do know is that self-righteous activists imposed their will on the government of the day, and did so by means of violence and with no regard for the wishes of so many of the British public.
And what of the cricket? With the tour cancelled a Test series between England and the Test of the World was quickly organized. The Rest of the World team was captained by the great Gary Sobers, and contained players from Australia, the West Indies, India, Pakistan and South Africa. So the South Africans – Eddie Barlow, Graeme Pollock, Peter Pollock, Mike Proctor and Barry Richards – shared a dressing-room with black cricketers (as would have been illegal in their home country). It was a wonderful series with much magnificent cricket, all very enjoyable. Yet the sweetness of the cricket couldn’t quite prevent a sour taste from lingering in the mouth.