The ‘Great Game’ and Sport: Identity, Contestation and Irish–British Relations in the Olympic Movement

Abstract

This paper draws on original rigorous research conducted in an extensive range of local, national and international state archives, sporting repositories and personal papers. In focus is the 1948 London Olympic Games, the Olympic movement and a ‘new’ phase in Irish–British relations involving international sport. Here, for the first time, we elucidate the role of non-state sportive diplomats who, acting as cultural intermediaries, were involved in the production of ideas about the normative rules governing international jurisdiction and identity that prevented nations/states from being recognized on their own terms. The intricate details revealed here are made possible by a rigorous two-way traffic between sensitizing concepts and evidence: specifically, the quest for exciting significance by non-state actors, soft power struggles and ‘patriot games’ via the medium of international Olympic and athletic movements. The paper also makes two other important contributions: to sport in/and international relations and the politics of Olympic protests.

KEYWORDS:

• sport
• national identity
• Olympics
• cultural intermediaries
• war
• propaganda
• statecraft
• sportcraft
• Ireland

Notes

1 They led successive governments from 1922–32 (Cosgrave); 1932–48, 1951–54 and 1957–59 (De Valera), and; 1948–51, 1954–57 (Costello).

2 The Tailteann Games was an Irish sporting and cultural festival held in 1924, 1928 and 1932, and a means of projecting Gaelic attributes of the new Irish state.

3 The DO wrote in November 1948 that, in reference to the use of titles in bilateral agreements, ‘the sooner we know our own minds … the better’ (DO 130/92; DO 35/3977).

4 He was brought up in Belfast, fought in World War One, was awarded the military cross and a distinguished service order, joined the IFS army where he was second in command, and then became Deputy Commissioner of the Garda Síochána until his retirement.

5 Broy was a penetration agent who worked in the British secret service in Dublin. He joined the intelligence branch of the British-controlled Dublin Metropolitan Police, after Michael Collins recruited him. Broy travelled with the 1921 Irish treaty delegation as Collins’ private secretary and bodyguard. He became adjutant of the IFS army air corps. On being elected President of the OCI on 5 March 1935, Broy held a meeting with De Valera the next day (De Valera Papers, UCD).

6 Kilcullen wrote to the IOC in January 1938 directing attention to the new Irish constitution, which provided that ‘the name of the state is Éire, or, in the English language, Ireland’ (IOC Archive).

7 Carroll was active in the IRA during the War of Independence and a military policeman in the Civil War. He joined the Garda Siochána in 1923. He was called to the bar in 1932 and during WWII he worked closely with military intelligence.

8 The National Archives, Kew, contain a reference to Chisholm being ‘nothing if not a colourful character’ (DO 35/3977). Chisholm served in the military from April 1922 until October 1946, when he retired on age grounds at the rank of Acting Commandant (Military service record, O.0326).

9 The Irish Army Athletic Association debated the inclusion of imperial-associated sports such as golf and tennis, promoted boxing and army equestrian members excelled internationally in the 1930s.

10 This club supplied one third of Britain’s 1928 Olympic team and Cambridge the two medal winners.

11 In 1938 the (Belfast) Stormont cabinet considered a change in NI designation to Ulster (PRONI CAB/4/390/15794). Instead, the Imperial government used Eire to refer to the area known, prior to the new Irish constitution, as the IFS. See also DO 35/3968.

12 He was president of the Achilles club (1946–1979), opened the 1948 IOC Conference and chaired several Olympic events. In July 1952, Noel Baker decried the OCI ‘refusing to send a team’ to Helsinki ‘on purely political grounds and we all greatly disapprove’ (Noel Baker to Haddleton, 14 July 1952, Churchill Archives)

13 For a wider discussion of the continuation of politics by other means as it applied to Anglo-German relations, see Hughes and Owen (2009).

14 Though Burghley visited Moscow in July 1947, the Soviet Union did not join the IOC. It was by then affiliated to FIFA.

15 Harold Fern, secretary of the (British) Amateur Swimming Association (1921–1970), and FINA President in 1948, used his influence.

16 Broy’s OCI report (1949) makes clear that they could have objected to the selection of ‘several Irish boys’ for Great Britain, (such as Sullivan, born in Limerick; Barton in Kildare; Nesbitt in Monaghan; Kelleher in Cork), ‘but […] they themselves desire to go in the British team, and it would be contrary to Irish ideas of sportsmanship to be so petty’.

17 Mirroring athletic events, in 1947 the British National Cyclists’ Union proposed to the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) that the NACA be confined to 26-county jurisdiction. This motion was passed by the UCI, for whom Southcott was Vice President from GB.

18 This newspaper was the platform of Thomas Moles MP, editor, and a hardline Unionist. Williamson, who also became editor, took up Moles’ role subsequently, and corresponded with the AAA, the IAAF and the IOC.

19 Burghley was not present at the Palace owing, perhaps, to his diminished standing with the Royals after his divorce and remarriage (Edström to Brundage, 15 June 1948, BC).

20 IOC executive member, Kankevsky (Hungary), wrote to de Baillet Latour, in May 1936 that ‘a man from Ulster is no longer Irish and Ulster is a constituent part of the British Kingdom’ (IOC Archive).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Katie Liston

Dr Katie Liston is a senior lecturer in the social sciences of sport, based at the Sport and Exercise Sciences Research Institute at Ulster University. She has published extensively on the nexus of sport and identity, including gender, national identity, and pain and injury.

Joseph Maguire

Professor Joseph Maguire is past-President of both the International Sociology of Sport Association (ISSA) and the International Sociological Association Research Committee 27. He has published extensively on sport, culture, and society and has received two major awards: from the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport for Distinguished Service and ISSA.