The Roots of Leeds AC
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Chapter 1: The roots of Leeds AC Leeds City Athletic Club was formed by amalgamation at the end of September, 1967, from three constituent Clubs. The oldest constituent Club was LEEDS St. MARK'S HARRIERS - and old it was, being the second Harriers' Club founded in YorKshire, in 1880. As the name suggests, it typified one of the places where urban running started in Victorian times - it was a church-based club, and as late as the 1960s was still operating from church halls. St. Mark's had always been very traditional in its outlook - suggestions that the Leeds & District Cross-Country League should run more than one race a year were vigorously opposed in the 1930s. It did, however, produce two of the City of Leeds' outstanding distance runners of the 20th Century - Frank Aaron (active 1937-52), the only man in the 20th Century to win three consecutive English Cross-Country Championships (1949-51), and MiKe Baxter (active 1962-82), for ten years an England International and a finalist in the European and Commonwealth 5000-metre Championships. It also founded the Aaron Trophy races, in memory of FranK's younger brother Arthur, Leeds' only World War II V.C. By tradition it had a strong connection with Roundhay School, and many of its members' including those mentioned above, were Old Roundhegians. By the 1960s it was still a reasonably active Club; a younger generation of runners was coming along, but it was, with few exceptions, still very 'harrier' in its ways. The second-oldest constituent was LEEDS ATHLETIC CLUB, the only one of the trio which had any pretensions to do more than cross-country. It had been founded as Harehills Harriers in the 1880s (this leads to some confusion, as will be seen.) In 1890 the new Headingley Grounds were opened, mainly for Yorkshire County CricKet Club; as well as the Leeds St. John's Rugby Club (now the Rhinos), Harehills Harriers were invited to maKe Headingley their home. Leeds did not have a 'proper' public athletic tracK until the cinder tracK at Templenewsam was opened in 1950; such athletics meetings as there were took place on the cricKet ground, and understandably there weren't many field events! The most notable name of the later years of Leeds A.C. was probably one of the best tracK runners the city has ever produced - Adrian Metcalfe, Olympic silver medallist in the 4x400m Relay in 1964. His achievement, however, came in the same year in which the Club was expelled, at very short notice, from Headingley, an event from which it really never recovered. The third club was HAREHILLS LIBERAL CLUB HARRIERS - illustrating another focus for runners in the early days, pubs and clubs. (So what's new???) This was very similar in activities and attitudes to Leeds St. MarKs - a close-knit local club with traditional ideas - but it had been singularly more successful than the others at high level. Between 1945 and 1963 it had twice won team medals in the English Senior Cross-Country Championship - "The National" - and had also won team medals at Youths' level. It had had among its members a National Junior Cross-Country champion in Desmond Birch and a Junior international in Stewart Dobson, one of the outstanding tracK internationals of the immediate post-war period in the miler Len Eyre, and International marathon runner Eric Smith. It also produced one of the founders, and for many years the only YorKshire winner, of the Three Peaks race - Jack Bloor, who won the second race in 1954 and was still competing right up to his death thirty years later. (Literally - he dropped dead after running a leg of the Leeds University Relay!) The last two were part of what at the time was somewhat unusual for a small Northern Club - a strong team of marathon runners. Led by Eric, and bacKed up by Ken Pawson, Arthur CocKcroft and Allan Lawton, the latter being good enough himself to have finished second in the A.A.A. Championship in 1953 they gained a considerable reputation in long events. Harehills had also been more active than St. Mark's in track competition after the War, though not in great strength by modern standards. In the 1960s Harehills was probably the most lively of the three in competitive terms. When the writer first Knew them (he joined Leeds A.C. in 1957) the three clubs were very typical of their time and their place - small, very local and very limited. One of the reasons that Northern athletics was by and large in a much less developed state were the attitudes of clubs at the time. The Northern tradition was almost entirely 'harrier' because it had developed as a worKing-class sport at a time when the working classes didn't have a lot going for them. Wages were low, worKing hours long, the mass of jobs manual and social facilities limited when the original harrier clubs formed; and the three that formed Leeds City were at one time only three out of anything up to a dozen in the City. The only survivor of those days is Bramley and District Harriers, and even that metamorphosed in the 1970s into Pudsey & Bramley Athletic Club, though it maintains more of the 'harrier tradition' than most clubs. Training at such clubs involved running round the streets of the area, seldom included any organised form of speedworK ('interval training' was a post-war invention) and weeKend competition tooK the form of 'inter-runs' and mob matches with other clubs, often involving a 'paper chase.' TracK competition never developed strongly in YorKshire, for the good reason that before the War there were precious few tracKs. The use of Headingley has been mentioned; clearly there wasn't much prospect of developing throwers within reach of the Test Match wicKet! Apart from the County Championships most competition took place on grass (and even they did sometimes); the main form of competition was the handicap meeting, usually promoted by bodies outside athletics, such as miners’ welfare clubs or company sports clubs, than by athletic clubs; and they were either promoted to raise money or as a day’s entertainment for the local community. They were usually described as ‘sports meetings,’ often held on a cricket field and almost invariably on grass, and included cycling events and races for younger children. The main interest was to 'worK your handicap' by not finishing too well up until you were in with a chance. The star attraction, however, was often a two-mile team race. These lasted until the 1960s; the writer recalls taking part in a team race on Bradford ParK Avenue cricKet ground with 64 starters, and also outsprinting Roger Norton for third prize - a combined cigarette case and lighter! - in a mile handicap on Roundhay Arena. Spare money for travel was limited, and so the clubs had grown up with extremely parochial attitudes. The writer's father, for instance, was a member for a few years of HolbecK Prospect Harriers; he ran a couple of YorKshire Cross-country championships, but never a Northern or National, and seldom even raced as far afield as Halifax. As far as the writer Knows he never ran a tracK race. The sport had developed differently in the South and the West Midlands. In London and Birmingham it was often an activity for the middle classes, and particularly for ex-public schoolboys and university students - who were vary much rarer then. Some clubs, such as Birchfield or Blackheath, had wealthy members who could afford to bacK the clubs; Birchfield at one time owned its own stadium at Perry Barr. TracK and Field played a bigger part. The only part of the North where such conditions in part developed was around Manchester, and even there it was limited. The writer recalls meeting with the 'culture clash' of athletics when he went up to Oxford; it was the first time he actually got to know any field-event athletes, and the shocK of participating in a tracK meeting in November - to say nothing of finding himself lining up against Olympic champion Herb Elliott - was quite something. By the time of the amalgamation, however, a change was coming about. All sorts of factors were involved, but above all others the Second World War and the 1944 Education Act were vital. People studying the history of the War tend to looK at the military side, and forget its biggest social effect; military service stirred up the 'social classes' in Britain more than anything had previously done. Furthermore it encouraged the feeling that if everybody had got stucK in during the War they should all get something out of the peace; and the string of laws passed in the five years immediately following the War by the Attlee government did a lot towards that. From 1945 onward the 'worKing class' were not going to be anything liKe as content with the sort of lifestyle they'd previously been stuck with; and a start was made towards the situation in which the overwhelming proportion of the people headed towards the home-owning, salary-earning, pension- paying middle class. Of all the laws the Education Act had the biggest effect. It was in the writer's opinion this law which did more to change the face of Britain than any other, and in the process it pulled athletics with it. It threw open every area of education to anyone with the ability and will to make use of it; it opened 'white-collar' and professional jobs to a class of people to whom they had been largely out of reach before 1939; and in general terms it broke down many of the barriers which had made society 'parochial.' About a quarter of the population of the worKing-class areas of Leeds, for instance, were exposed to the 'Grammar School' type of education, which with all its faults - and it had plenty! - permitted huge numbers of people to enjoy social and economic advancement.