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Overview
The post-war era was British speedway's golden age. Ten million spectators passed through the turnstiles of a record number of tracks at the sport's peak. With league gates as high as 80,000, speedway offered a colourful means of escape from the grim austerity of the times. A determinedly clean image, with no betting and rival fans mingling on the terraces, made speedway the family night out of choice. The sport thrived despite punitive taxation and Government threats to close down the speedways as a threat to industrial productivity. A three-division National League stretched from Exeter to Edinburgh and the World Championship Final attracted a capacity audience to Wembley. Test matches against Australia provided yet another international dimension. Even at the height of its popularity, speedway was a sporting edifice built on unstable foundations, which crumbled alarmingly as the 1950s dawned and Britain's economic and social recovery brought competing attractions like television.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780752494616 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | The History Press |
| Publication date: | 03/09/2011 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 160 |
| File size: | 7 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
The Golden Age of Speedway
By Philip Dalling
The History Press
Copyright © 2013 Philip DallingAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7524-9461-6
CHAPTER 1
1946
It seemed nothing had changed
Fully competitive speedway returned to Britain on 22 April 1946, when one of the sport's oldest names, Wimbledon, launched the post-war National League with a match against newcomers Bradford. A bomb-damaged Plough Lane arena was a poignant reminder of the recent conflict, but Peter Wilson of the Daily Mail, one of Fleet Street's top sports columnists, was amazed by the absolute familiarity of it all. Everything, he said, seemed just the same, from the clatter of the machines being warmed up for action and the evocative smell of the racing dope, to that magical moment, peculiar to speedway, when the winner crosses the line in the first heat, the house lights go up and a previously hushed crowd explodes into an ear-splitting riot of applause.
Even the crowd itself, Wilson added, had hardly changed over the wartime gap. Except that mother and father, who had been present in their teens when speedway began in the late 1920s, were now present with their own teenage children. Wilson wrote: 'It was as though the seven-year interruption had left speedway completely untouched.'
Attendances in 1946, when Wembley's league matches alone drew more than a million people, at an average of 50,000 a meeting, meant that a notoriously sceptical Fleet Street could no longer try to pretend speedway didn't count. Six-and-a-half million people clicked through the turnstiles of the twelve tracks, paying more than £1 million for the privilege. The previous best aggregate, in 1938 for sixteen tracks, had been four million.
Peter Wilson's impression of continuity was justified. It was not just the faces in the stands and on the terraces which were familiar. Six years of war had left young men little time for speedway and the 1946 teams were inevitably composed of pre-war veterans.
Transport and other difficulties meant few of the American and Australian stars who dominated British speedway in the late 1930s were able to return for 1946. Most of the top English riders, already in their thirties when war was declared, had spent the intervening years on essential war work, leaving them free to compete at Belle Vue. Most of them lined up for the restart and enjoyed an Indian summer. In 1946 Jack Parker and Eric Langton were both thirty-nine, and Jack's brother Norman and Bill Kitchen were thirty-eight – a stage of life at which many modern-day riders would have already retired. The team and individual photographs of the time show what to modern eyes appear to be rather elderly-looking men.
Many riders had been prematurely aged by the stresses and strains of war. Some, including Harry Edwards of Belle Vue and Howdy Byford of West Ham, had endured the horrors of Japanese PoW camps. A new generation would take time to emerge, although many potential riders were already gaining experience on tracks built by the armed forces in Italy, Germany and the Middle East, while waiting to be demobilised.
Most wartime meetings had been individual contests and the revival of league racing revived one of speedway's perennial issues, the question of team strengths. The Control Board decided to start again from scratch, pooling rider resources, introducing a grading system (which dictated pay rates), and allocating men to the twelve competing clubs. The two six-team divisions were called the National League and the Northern League, but were in fact first and second tiers. A free-for-all to sign up the available riders would have been unworkable, but the pooling and grading system brought disputes and a prolonged and often bitter power struggle between the authorities and the riders, through their 'trade union', the Speedway Riders' Association (SRA), led by Jack Parker.
Pooling also meant that there was one area in which the sense of continuity was broken. The 1946 teams had a strange look for fans old enough to remember pre-war campaigns. Each of the six National League teams received a grade one man and Bill Kitchen, a one-club man with Belle Vue from 1933, was allocated to Wembley, while Jack Parker, whose 1930s career had seen him ride for clubs in the Midlands and London, was despatched to Manchester.
It was entirely fitting that the historic first post-war league match at Wimbledon should be graced by the presence of Johnnie Hoskins, the New Zealander generally regarded as 'the father of speedway'. Hoskins was the man chosen by Wembley chief Arthur Elvin to manage speedway at the Empire Stadium when the sport was introduced there in 1929. Hoskins later promoted at West Ham, gaining a reputation as a shrewd operator and an unrivalled showman. He served as an RAF instructor between 1939 and 1945 and when the war finished discovered that he had been beaten to the lease of West Ham Stadium by former Hammer and England international Arthur Atkinson, and ex-New Cross rider Stan Greatrex.
With typical Hoskins determination not to be beaten, he discovered a new northern venue, the huge Odsal bowl in Bradford, which later held a crowd of more than 100,000 for a Rugby League Challenge Cup final replay.
Hoskins not only held a prominent place in the sport throughout the period this book describes, but was still promoting at another track he personally discovered, Canterbury, in the late 1970s.
There have been unnecessary and often rather unpleasant attempts to dismiss the role Hoskins played in the formation of speedway in Australia in the 1920s. Many places, including the Republic of Ireland, now lay claim to have staged a form of motorcycle racing akin to speedway in the early years of the century. Although there may be some substance in these claims, for several generations Johnnie Hoskins was indeed 'Mr Speedway' and no-one in 1946 would have disputed his right to be at the centre of the sport's revival.
Wimbledon was promoted by another major personality, Ronnie Greene, who had been active at Bristol pre-war and had held a senior position in the London fire service during the Blitz.
In that first league meeting Wimbledon's grade one star was Norman Parker, who in the 1930s had ridden with brother Jack at Harringay. Bradford's top man was another former Harringay star, Alec Statham. On the night the northern newcomers held the whip hand, winning 45–39. Oliver Hart of Wimbledon became one of the earliest post-war casualties when he broke his right wrist towards the end of the encounter.
The following evening a reported 30,000 people saw another perhaps unexpected away win, this time by New Cross at West Ham. The first really competitive action involving Northern League teams saw a two-legged National Trophy tie between Sheffield and Glasgow, which ended in a rare aggregate 108–108 tie.
Today would probably see a one-heat race-off or a toss of the coin to decide the winner but in 1946 the whole double-header tie was replayed, with Sheffield eventually winning by just 2 points on aggregate. Glasgow, a non-league team in 1939, staged the first Northern League match, losing 40–44 to Newcastle.
Speedway was back with a bang and sport-starved fans were pouring through the gates, from Newcastle to Norwich. Dark clouds, however, were looming, almost before the comeback season had got into its full stride. The twin threats came from disgruntled riders and tax-hungry officialdom. The riders, appearing in front of packed stadia, could hardly fail to notice the box office success, and they claimed a bigger slice of the cake. A pincer movement against the sport became likely as the crowd levels also caught the eye of civil servants and ministers. Whitehall officialdom was already master of the concept of 'if it moves, tax it'.
The need to satisfy rider aspirations and pay the taxman was guaranteed to send managerial heads grey overnight. The grading system and its influence on pay were unpopular and the SRA, threatening a strike, succeeded in getting it scrapped. Compromises were reached which saved a resurgent sport experiencing what could have been a public relations disaster.
Grading was abolished and a pay deal of 35s a start and 40s a point agreed for riders in the top tier. Northern League men agreed a deal based on a sliding scale of crowd figures, which started at £1 a point and £1 a start for attendances up to 12,000 and went as high as 30s a start and the same amount per point if the gate was between 15,001 and 20,000.
A considerable gulf between the stars and the journeymen remained. In one week in May, Wembley rode three league fixtures and Bill Kitchen scored 29 points. His official earnings worked out at about £80 and the rider also had income from second-half scratch races and cash earned for product endorsements. During the same week Northern League Birmingham's Ernie Appleby rode in three meetings for 13 points. His cheque for starting and points money would have been a more modest £25, plus anything earned from crowd bonuses and second-half rides.
The cost of buying and maintaining equipment – almost always the responsibility of the individual rider – had to be deducted in both cases. Another major factor when considering the 1946 earnings of both Kitchen and Appleby – far higher than those of the average worker and even many of the professional classes – was the risk of injury, in a still pre-National Health Service Britain.
The choice of a rider named Appleby to illustrate the financial position of a journey-man speedway rider in a lower league team was not made entirely at random. Near the end of the 1946 season Charlie Appleby, a thirty-two-year-old Canadian, no relation to Yorkshireman Ernie, was killed racing at Brough Park, Newcastle. He swerved to avoid a fallen opponent in the third heat of a Northern League match but hit a machine and crashed heavily. Taken to hospital, he died from head injuries. Charlie, ironically, had been a rear gunner in the RAF for five years and had survived many operational sorties over Europe and in Africa and the Far East. He was not the first rider to be killed in 1946. Bradford attracted considerable criticism over the shape of the track at Odsal, which was laid around the perimeter of the Bradford Northern Rugby League Club's pitch. During a Bradford v Belle Vue match, home rider Albert Rosenfeld ran into an opponent's rear wheel, fell heavily and fractured his skull. The thirty-two-year-old, who had at first been thought to be recovering, suffered a relapse and died. In business as a motor dealer, he left a wife and a child.
A week later, when Bradford met West Ham, Colin Watson, the forty-seven-year-old Hammers rider and former England captain, was seriously injured in a second half scratch race after riding brilliantly in the match, in which he scored 12 points.
Watson hit a track lighting standard, but only half fell from his machine, which dragged him head down along the track for 20 yards, causing a fractured skull and a punctured lung. His condition later that night was described as critical and he was on the danger list for some weeks. He eventually made a full recovery but his racing days were over.
Speedway riders accept the risks of the sport, and serious injuries and even deaths are usually put down to uncontrollable circumstances. In the case of the Bradford incidents, the riders believed the shape of the track was at fault and demanded alterations. Johnnie Hoskins ordered the bends on the track to be widened, but it was too late to save Rosenfeld's life and Watson's career.
There was no stopping Wembley in 1946. The Lions pulled in 40,000 spectators for their opening league match, a 50–32 win against great pre-war rivals Belle Vue. At the end of the season Wembley had three riders in the top ten National League points scorers – Bill Kitchen, Tommy Price, and the consistent George Wilks. Wembley won all but two of their twenty league matches and finished a spectacular 11 points clear of Belle Vue. Bradford had a good first term despite the track problems, finishing third, with Wimbledon, New Cross and wooden spoonists West Ham below them.
Things were closer in the Northern League with Middlesbrough (draw specialists with four matches ending level, an unusually high number for speedway) finishing 5 points clear of Sheffield and 7 points ahead of Norwich. Birmingham and Newcastle had moderate seasons, with Glasgow propping up the table with just six wins from twenty matches.
Despite the wide variation in team strengths between the National League and Northern League sides, the prestigious National Trophy competition was traditionally run on a knock-out basis, again the case in 1946. Northern Leaguers Sheffield and Birmingham emerged from a preliminary contest to join the Division One teams in the first round proper. Both put up stalwart performances, and Wembley's aggregate victory over the Brummies was by a margin of just 8 points. Wimbledon overcame Bradford and Belle Vue beat Wembley in the semifinals. The Manchester Aces, frequent winners of the trophy pre-war days, triumphed over the Dons in the final by 3 points.
The man of 1946 was unquestionably Jack Parker. He finished the season with 217 league points, ahead of West Ham's Canadian Eric Chitty and Bill Kitchen.
There was no World Championship Final (it was not to be staged again until 1949), but the British Riders Championship final attracted 85,000 to Wembley. Lions riders Tommy Price and Bill Kitchen filled the top two slots, with Jack Parker third. Northern League men Frank Hodgson (Middlesbrough), Tommy Allott (Sheffield), Jeff Lloyd (Newcastle) and Bert Spencer of Norwich were the highest scorers in their own qualifying competition and competed in the Wembley final, where Hodgson scored a creditable 8 points.
It was not altogether surprising that Jack Parker, despite his dominance in the league, should fail to win the season's premier individual honour. Jack was not always at his best in an individual meeting and believed other riders combined to block him out on the first bend of crucial heats of big events. One brand of speedway where Parker immediately stamped his authority post-war was the two-man match race championship, raced once a month between the holder and a challenger nominated by the Control Board, and a form of racing where collusion to block one rider was impossible.
Bill Kitchen was nominated as first holder by virtue of his wartime performances at Belle Vue, and he beat Ron Johnson of New Cross in his first defence. The next challenger was Jack Parker and he subsequently defeated Kitchen, Eric Chitty, Ron Johnson and Tommy Price to establish his grip on what was subsequently to become known as 'Parker's Pension', such was the dominance for several seasons of the pipe-smoking, bespectacled veteran.
Parker is acknowledged as one of the all-time speedway greats, but his success over so many years – his career lasted from 1928 until 1954 – undoubtedly occasionally caused resentment. Particularly outstanding or unexpected performances occasionally lead to allegations in speedway that someone has been riding 'a big one' – a bike with an engine exceeding the permitted power capacity. On 25 June 1946, Parker and Kitchen clashed in the match race championship at the neutral venue of West Ham, following the Hammers' 50–46 victory over Wembley, Kitchen's team. Kitchen scored an immaculate five-ride maximum in the earlier ACU cup match. The match race series was to prove a different matter.
Parker won the best-of-three rubber 2–0 and Kitchen immediately asked for his opponent's machine to be measured. The bike was impounded by the meeting steward for examination. Two days later the Control Board announced that the inspection had found the engine to be slightly under the prescribed limit of 500cc. Kitchen was ordered to pay the examination costs.
For the most part speedway is raced in an exemplary atmosphere and riders (and the fans) mingle and socialise. But with big reputations and sizeable prize money at stake, there are occasional reminders, like the Kitchen–Parker incident, that the sport is essentially a very serious business.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Golden Age of Speedway by Philip Dalling. Copyright © 2013 Philip Dalling. Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Foreword,Preface,
Acknowledgments,
Introduction,
1. 1946 – It seemed nothing had changed,
2. 1947 – Duggan's year as speedway defies Whitehall,
3. 1948 – Aussies dominate but fail the ultimate tests,
4. 1949 – Promotion fever as Brummie fans queue from midday,
5. 1950 – Speedway pauses to catch its breath,
6. 1951 – Tartan triumphs as speedway hits the limit,
7. 1952 – Close season chess moves bring speedway winners and losers,
8. 1953 – Patriotic gestures not enough in Coronation year,
9. 1954 – Stock car menace casts shadow across the tracks,
10. 1955 – Sea air fails to revive speedway's fortunes,
11. 1956 – Clinging on to a fast-fading sense of glory,
12. 1957 – The survivor's tale,
Appendix: The post-war honours list – 1946 to 1957 159,