Petrol rationing

Speedway was in decidedly bad shape as 1957 dawned. Sir Arthur Elvin, Wembley’s chairman and largest stakeholder, died leaving the sport without a champion in the boardroom at this iconic venue. The remaining board members almost immediately elected to discontinue speedway. Bradford too had folded. Petrol rationing had been introduced in December 1956 following the Suez crisis and car users were to be limited to vouchers for 200 miles each month, with business users getting a further 100, hardly enough to get you to an away meeting. It was only planned to last for four months but there were fears it could last much longer. Indeed, with this in mind, Poole had decided to withdraw from league racing, feeling that it would be impossible for them to stage meetings with such limited fuel supplies, although Southampton and Norwich, amongst others, must have faced a similar predicament.  With only four First Division tracks remaining, the SCB had merged the two divisions into one combined league.

In the 50s, the season usually started in early April, often with the first meetings being at Easter with the Good Friday Bank Holiday being a prime time for a bumper crowd. The 1956 season opened with Good Friday meetings on March 30, but in 1957 Easter Sunday fell really late, being on April 21 - the latest possible being April 25. Under normal circumstances, it would have been expected that teams would have started in early April rather than waiting for the Easter weekend. Promoters were in a quandary wondering whether to start the season with rationing still in force and uncertainty over whether teams could make it to away fixtures. These travelling considerations may well have influenced the introduction the Britannia Cup, featuring two regional sections ahead of league racing but even then some of the fixtures would involve some distance, with Southampton to Norwich, both in the Southern Section, being around 200 miles apart. The lateness of Easter was a godsend, giving promotions a way of letting things stew to see if rationing would end as had been forecast. Most teams plumped for an Easter start date although both Norwich and Southampton opted for the more regular early April start. Southampton rather imaginatively staged a Dick Bradley’s Team v Brian Crutcher’s Team event, on April 8, a glorified practice perhaps, but one for which a programme was issued. Eleven days later they staged an individual meeting which was followed again eleven days later by their first Britannia Cup fixture against Norwich.

The Midland triumvirate of Birmingham, Coventry and Leicester all deferred opening until May, with all three eschewing challenge meetings by opening up with a Britannia Cup fixture.

 

Bus strikes

After riding out the petrol rationing, the promoters could be excused for thinking they had seen out the storm but there was then a bus strike, involving over 100,000 provincial busmen which started in mid July. However a referral to arbitration by the Industrial Disputes Tribunal brought a speedy resolution to the week long action but not before the Norwich v Belle Vue Britannia Cup Final had been postponed. While the London busmen were not involved in the strike, they accepted the offer of the same wage rise offered by the tribunal, but this peace was shortlived when there was a further strike in London the following year. This lasted considerably longer, over six weeks, during which time Wimbledon felt they had no ther option but to close their doors. Rather ironically after seven postponed home meetings, the Dons, in a bid to stop the backlog accumulating, arranged to race their home fixture with Poole at Poole. Just days after this meeting the strike ended and regular racing returned to Plough Lane with Barry Briggs winning the Southern Riders Championship Final in the first meeting at the stadium after the enforced absence.

 

Smallpox

A smallpox scare in South Wales in 1962 led to public gatherings being banned with Neath’s meetings getting caught up in this embargo. Enterprisingly promoter Trevor Redmond arranged for three fixtures against Edinburgh, Stoke and Bradford to be raced at his nonleague track at St Austell, the former being arranged at such short notice that the Edinburgh programme couldn’t say which venue their team would be racing at the following week.

 

Dodged a bullet

Speedway was fortunate that the Great Smog of London occurred in the close season during the winter of 1952/53. Visibility was so poor that public transport had to be discontinued, so racing would have been out of the question.  Similarly the scheduled power cuts and the problems brought by the three day week of the early 1970s were also in the winter causing football matches to have earlier kick offs as floodlighting was banned, another disruption that speedway avoided.

 

We never closed

While World War Two brought speedway to a halt, Belle Vue managed to run a fairly full programme throughout these troubled times staging mainly individual meetings, the highlight of which being the British Championship titles with Eric Chitty winning it three times  in 1940, 1941 and 1942 with Ron Clarke , Frank Varey and Bill Kitchen taking the title in the subsequent years.