Bodyline: The Empire Strikes Back Part 2

Red Rosa's Spartacus League

Nothing embodies the idea of sport as politics pursued by other means so clearly, and painfully, as the 1932/1933 cricket tour of Australia by the MCC. This story has everything: class struggle and prejudice: camaraderie across the class divide; the attempt of a decadent empire to exert control over its uppity colony at a time of economic crisis; the wonderful complexity of Douglas Jardine who hated Australians from above but was always a good friend to the Nottinghamshire miner, Harold Larwood; the secret illegitimate child of the chairman of England selectors bowling for England in the series; splits in the Australian team based around hatred of Bradman and ill feeling between the Irish Catholics and the Free Masons in the camp; all that and some great cricket featuring some of the best who ever played the game. Apart from the fascinating politics this is one of the best Australian soap operas you will ever encounter.
In Part 2 of this podcast we talk more about the politics of the tour and its aftermath with the very knowledgeable Hugh Kirkbride, an expert on the sport and the politics of this intensely interesting time. The Australian economy suffered very badly in the great depression partly because of its dependence on the extraction industries, this dependence was a function of the colony's place in the British Empire so the tour happened at a time of some tension between Australian and the Mother country, all of which influenced the aftermath of the tour. As well as global political economy we talk about the shabby treatment of Jardine and Larwood after the tour, their enduring friendship across the class divide and how Larwood found contentment through moving to Australia in the 1950s, becoming fully reconciled with the country that hated him so resoundingly in those depression years.