Friday, August 25

I was half-watching a TV program last night about tourism in Scotland.  I suppose I was hoping to get a glimpse of places I knew but, apparently, the most scenic parts of Scotland have passed me by.  Then a comment by the presenter made me prick up my ears.  Talking about mountain climbing he made the extraordinary statement that, after the First World War, working-class men from Glasgow and Edinburgh started to get involved in climbing on their free weekends.  My first thought was, why does the fact that they are working-class matter?

But, of course, in that era, sport was very much the bailiwick of the idle upper classes (I've always wanted to use that word).  Who can forget the great film Chariots of Fire with the talented amateurs, who were not obliged to make a living, putting their energies into Olympic participation.  My favourite scene is the one where Lord Andrew Lindsay, played by Nigel Havers, puts a full champagne glass on each of his hurdles while training, to make sure he didn't bump them.

When I was young, I used to read stories about a working class athlete called Alf Tupper, the Tough of the Track.  'Tough' had a particular meaning: it wasn't necessarily derogatory but differentiated the working class men from the 'toffs'.  I revelled in the fact that Alf used to win his races despite the efforts of various upper class twits putting obstacles in his way.

Of course, with the appalling loss of upper class twits during the First World War, organisations like the Alpine Club had to look further afield for new members, even if they had to accept people who wore flat hats and drank beer.  The older members might have had to change their attitude a bit.  One of their journals of the time gave some advice to prospective mountaineers:

1. Make your travel arrangements through Thomas Cook. 2. Keep your ice axe firmly in front of you. 3. Follow the guides because they know the way.

The new working class mountaineers were more likely to travel on their bicycle (if they were lucky) and the idea of paying for a guide would have been laughable.

Anyway, the new egalitarian approach to mountaineering paid dividends right across Europe with the conquering of faces like the Eiger, and eventually Everest itself.

Finally, I love this contemporary photograph from 1937 highlighting the gulf between the toffs and the toughs.  It was taken the Eton-Harrow cricket match.  The two boys from Harrow are waiting to be collected to go home for  the weekend; the 'toughs' have wagged school to try and make a bob or two at the match opening taxi doors and carrying luggage and so on.