The 1950s was rather more than about Elvis, Monroe and The Bomb. Slowly, as Britain recovered from the war, the rationing, and the cheerless austerity during the late 1940s, life got better. It is fashionable, for a certain type of writer, to claim that nothing much exciting happened before the 1960s (a classic Baby Boomer conceit); in fact, arguably, the 1950s were as interesting and colourful, albeit with fewer drugs. One institution that came to the fore in that decade of Ealing comedies and curvy sports cars was Manchester United FC, a once unfashionable club (it used to be called Newton Heath). Old Trafford, its ground, was reduced to rubble by the Luftwaffe; a young Scotsman demobbed after the war called Matt Busby, who used to play for Liverpool and Manchester City, took over as manager.
The story of what happened during his extroardinary career at Old Trafford will be remembered as long as football is played. The fortunes of the Red Devils waxed and waned, but inevitably, the tragedy that hit the club in the February of 1958 is indelibly marked on the history of the club. Eight players, plus other passengers, were killed when the aircraft taking the team from a European Cup match crashed in the snow-bound airport of Munich. It is widely recognised that one of the dead, Duncan Edwards, was probably the greatest British footballer of his generation.
Here is a wonderful account of the last game the team played in Britain – against Arsenal – before the European game. It is hard for any English football fan not to wonder at what might have been; at least three, if not more, of the Manchester team could have played in World Cups in 1958, 1962 and 1966. What a waste.
At least it can be said that air travel has gotten a lot safer since. In the late 1940s, the entire Torino football team from the North Italian city were killed in a crash.
May they all rest in peace.
Not just an entire Torino team, but Il Grande Torino. Unlike United, though, they never recovered.
And I never knew that about Busby. Liverpool and City. Unreal.
Don’t forget Knute Rockney, one of the most famous American college football coaches of all time, was killed in one of the first aviation disasters to become a really major news frenzy… it killed off the wooden commercial airliner (he diied in a Fokker), and gave the market to the Ford Tri-motor.
In 1954 and 1955 my father used to take me to Old Trafford occasionally to watch Man Utd reserve games – the ground was quite full in those days for even a mere second string game and so I could see he made a folding stool for me to stand on. I may well have watched some of the future Busby Babes play, but sadly cannot remember a thing about the matches… only the crowds!
Coincidentally when we moved to London a little later my dad was at Highbury for that incredible Arsenal v Man Utd game and for many years after he talked about it in glowing terms.
Pity then that despite my introduction to Manchester United I turned out to be a Wednesdayite, though I do recall seeing Wednesday beat Man U 5-4 at Hillsborough in teh 60s when Charlton and Best and Law played… oh wow, another great (if defensively uncertain) team.
I was there and will never forget that game – my father was a season ticket holder.
Although an avid Arsenal supporter I couldn’t help admiring the young Manchester United team, especia;lly the play of Duncan Edwards – he dominated the game.
This was probably the point where English football started its downward slide.
But that game will be etched on my memory forever – thank you for this post which polished the memories of the 50’s – the best decade.
“At least it can be said that air travel has gotten a lot safer since.”
Maybe on the other side of the Atlantic, but in the UK, at least, it simply got safer.
– a nice post apart from the quote above – it seems that Samizdatans simply can’t live without parcelling people up into nice tidy boxes.
Ian, I disagree, if only slightly. Take the old nonsense embodied in the expression, “sex did not start until 1963”, or all those programmes on the Southbank Show etc about the 60s. It struck me then about how the Baby Boomers who now hold senior positions in the media tended to build up the 60s at the expense, however unintended, of previous decades. That was the point I was making. For what it is worth, I am well aware that “Baby Boomer” is a bit of a generalisation – I have even criticised some people for thoughtlessly trashing said generation
(I was born in 1966, a very good year for football)
Pedant, you certainly are!
JP,
Sexual Intercourse started in 1963 / After the Lady Chatterley trial / And Before the Beatles first LP
Philip Larkin
They don’t just diss earlier decades but also later ones. Especially the 80s.
There isn’t a systematic bias, people will always tend to overestimate the importance of what was going on in their formative years, if for no other reason than that is what had the most impact on their development as people. Every generation has a different experience and it takes time for that experience to be filtered through the rest of your life. There are always exceptions of course, but attaching crude labels helps neither analysis or discourse.
…and of course Philip Larkin was not of the Boomer generation.
As for football, everyone knows the greatest team of the 1950s was Newcastle United.
Ah yes, those men in black and white like Milburn (he later managed my own team, Ipswich Town). They were a great Cup side in the 1950s, winning it three times; on the other hand, ManU won the championship three times that decade, arguably the greater feat overall. (And of course they led the entry of British teams in to European club competitions, although Spurs can claim the honour of being the first Brit team to win a European trophy, the Cup-Winner’s Cup, in the early 60s).
Great days.
I was working on Tyneside when Milburn died. I was amazed by the number of people who found excuses to be out of the office on the day of his funeral so they could see him pass by for the last time – 30 years after he last played for the team.
the great united team that dident came home