Remembering the tussles he had with Nat Lofthouse, Wright recalls the personal duels that went on between wingers and full-backs and particularly centre-halves and centre-forwards: ‘When I first started to establish myself as a centre half dear old Nat Lofthouse said with a straight face, “I’m not sure I can talk to you any longer, skipper. You’ve joined ‘them’. I hate centre-halves.”’
Lofthouse, however always rated Wright highly as a captain if not as a defender:
I had great respect for Billy Wright who was captain of England in just about every game I played. Billy was a great player but above all he was a great captain, a true leader. He might be having a stinker but that didn’t stop him shouting and encouraging all the other players around him. He never let his own performance affect his captaincy. Mind you, I always fancied my chances when I played against Billy. I could run and outjump him. So I looked forward to our meetings. Which couldn’t be said of all the centre-halves I came up against… Manchester City’s Dave Ewing was a big man, a pure stopper. And when you ran into Big Dave you stopped! Every time we played City I’d say, ‘I’ve got to beat this devil today.’ But I never did. I’d play like a real donkey. Dave always came out on top. With Billy Wright I was always confident but that doesn’t mean he always had a bad game against me. Far from it. For Wolves and England he had the knack of getting the team to fit in around him. If he was struggling, someone else would cover up. He was a wholehearted player and a great skipper. He deserved every one of his 105 caps.
The praise for Wright’s captaincy among his contemporaries is almost unanimous. It seems unlikely that Winterbottom would have asked him to lead out the England side on ninety occasions if he had thought there was a better alternative. Stan Cullis, the manager of Wolverhampton Wanderers who had captained the club himself during his playing days and who did not tolerate anything less than total commitment from his players, made Billy captain of the club in 1947, a position he held until he retired twelve years later. Cullis never had a moment’s anxiety that he might have chosen the wrong man: ‘He was a born leader. Where Billy led, his team-mates followed. It’s an old-fashioned word but his team-mates were loyal to him. Loyalty and Billy Wright went together like eggs and bacon.’
This ability to inspire loyalty in others was not related purely to football. The manner in which Wright went about his job as an executive at ATV Network in Birmingham was almost identical, as we shall see in a later chapter. Johnny Haynes, who was to lead England in twenty-two of his fifty-six appearances for his country, was always fulsome in his praise for the captaincy qualities of his predecessor, as he told Wright’s biographer, Norman Giller:
If there were any problems he would sort them out quietly. He did not flourish his fist like a Dave Mackay, or keep talking like a Danny Blanchflower. His way was to give quiet encouragement and he was always the first to shout ‘Bad luck… keep going, lads’ if things were going against us. Everybody who played with Billy learned a lot about humility. He was an outstanding man and such a good bloke that you wanted to play your heart out for him.
The last four years of Wright’s captaincy saw England begin a promising recovery from the devastation of 1953 and 1954. The optimism sprang from the emergence of the youthful Manchester United side known familiarly as the ‘Busby Babes’, from its development under the tutelage of its formidable Lanarkshire-born manager Matt Busby. In the emergence of three of those players in particular, England appeared to have the spine of a team that would be one of the favourites to win the 1958 World Cup in Sweden. The Manchester United of the late 1950s was, in stark contrast to the sides at the top of the Premier League in the early twenty-first century, almost exclusively made up of young Englishmen, with the exception of Billy Whelan, the Irish inside-right. As far as England were concerned, the three regular players were Roger Byrne, the accomplished left-back who was clearly destined to succeed Wright as captain of England as well as captain of the League Champions; Tommy Taylor, the spring-heeled centre-forward from Barnsley signed for £29,999 because Busby did not want the burden of being a £30,000 purchase hanging round the player’s neck; and a left-half called Duncan Edwards.
Edwards occupies a unique position in English football history because his legendary status is based as much on what he did not achieve as on what he did accomplish. He made his debut in the First Division at the age of sixteen and two years later he made his first appearance for England in a 7–2 victory over Scotland. At the end of the 1955–6 season Edwards was the outstanding player in a fine 3–1 win in Berlin against West Germany, the current world champions. Edwards scored one goal, a pile-driver from outside the penalty area, and dominated the game in defence and attack, drawing extravagant praise from press, players and public alike. As in Vienna four years previously, the crowd contained a large contingent of British soldiers who were stationed in the British sector of Berlin. They duly invaded the pitch at the final whistle and carried off the heroic Edwards on their shoulders. Just as Nat Lofthouse’s winning goal in the 3–2 victory over Austria had been greeted by a pitch invasion, so this reaffirmation that Britain was the world’s footballing top dog was eagerly acclaimed by English football supporters, desperately anxious to forget those traumatic drubbings by Hungary.
Edwards’s career and life were tragically short. In February 1958, at the age of twenty-one, he died in Munich fifteen days after the air crash that killed seven other United players (including Byrne, Taylor and David Pegg, another England international) and twenty-three passengers in total. It was heartbreaking for his family and friends, his club and, if such a word can be considered appropriate in the circumstances, for his country. Even if Byrne rather than Edwards would have been the England captain during the 1960s it seems very unlikely that Bobby Moore would have been able to have dislodged Edwards from the team in July 1966 when Edwards would have been only twenty-nine years old. The images of 1966, so clear in the mind’s eye of every English person interested in football, might have been very different had that plane not tried to take off in the snow and ice at Munich.
In 1958 England were joined in Sweden to contest the World Cup finals by the three other countries of the United Kingdom, the last time all four countries qualified together for the same World Cup tournament. Wales and Northern Ireland exceeded expectations by qualifying for the knock-out stages but Scotland finished bottom of their group, gaining only one point and losing two of their three games. England fared slightly better, drawing all three group matches, including a goalless draw against the eventual winners Brazil. Finishing equal on points with the USSR, England played off against them but lost one-nil in a disappointing game.
Given the feeling at the start of February 1958 that England were strong candidates to win the Jules Rimet trophy – unlike many a tournament since this feeling was based on results and the strength of the squad rather than wish fulfilment and media hype – the 1958 World Cup was a damp squib for England. Brian Glanville thought the squad selection was foolish.
England lost Byrne, Edwards and Taylor who would have made a big difference but they left Nat Lofthouse at home. Nat Lofthouse! Vittorio Pozzo said that taking Derek Kevan instead of Lofthouse was giving way to brute force. ‘He scores goals with the outside of his head.’ Lofthouse scored twice as fast as Rooney – and he did it without the aid of penalties. They were entitled to take twenty-two players and they only took twenty.
He was equally dismissive about the new-look Hungary team which had been decimated by the after-effects of the 1956 Uprising, but was much more positive about Wales.
By the time it came to the 1958 World Cup Puskás, Czibor and Kocsis had left for Spain, Hidegkuti and Boszik were too old and they were a team of kickers. If they hadn’t kicked John Charles out of the play-off game against Wales I think Wales would have beaten Brazil. They were playing so well. Mel Charles was superb. Mel Hopkins played Garrincha out of the game and Pelé scored the scrappiest goal imaginable – it went in off the boot of Williams the ful
l-back.
There was a pervading sadness about that 1958 England team, caused primarily, of course, by the absence of the Manchester United trio. Wright and Tom Finney were coming to the end of their careers; Stanley Matthews, who would play on until he reached the age of fifty, had already departed from the international stage after an unseemly public disagreement with Winterbottom; and Johnny Haynes, the bright new midfield star, suffered from a badly blistered foot and never demonstrated the form of which he was capable. The team which took the field for the vital play-off match against Russia included such footnotes to English football history as Peter Brabrook of Chelsea, Alan A’Court of Liverpool, Tommy Banks of Bolton and the heavily criticised Derek Kevan. They were decent enough players but not star names like Mannion, Lawton, Swift and Carter, who would have seriously worried the opposition. Bobby Charlton sat and watched from the sidelines. This side contained nothing like the quality of the England side that had managed to lose to the United States in 1950. Billy Wright did well to maintain his level of performance at the grand old age of thirty-four, but it was obvious by now that even the supremely fit Wolves centre-half was facing the final curtain.
*
England was changing as a country in the late 1950s but the country’s football seemed stuck in the pre-Suez past, living, like Anthony Eden, off memories of past glories. In April 1955 the eighty-year-old Churchill had finally resigned as prime minister and was succeeded by Eden, his long-time deputy and foreign secretary. Eden was suave and sophisticated, handsome and well-liked. He could read Arab and Persian literature in the original and when he travelled to Cairo to persuade Egypt’s new ruler, Colonel Nasser, to join the Baghdad Pact, which was designed as an anti-Communist alliance of Middle Eastern countries, he greeted his guest for dinner at the British Embassy in Arabic.
At home, Eden’s arrival at 10 Downing Street was received with relief on both sides of the House and with great warmth by the electorate. It appeared as if the country that had finally abandoned all rationing two years before had now found a leader whose appeal to good manners and common sense was going to find a welcome reception in the country at large. An increase in the Conservative majority from sixteen in 1951 to sixty in the election held the month after Eden assumed power indicated that the British people were pleased at the prospect that lay ahead. Within eighteen months, however, it had all gone disastrously wrong.
On 26 July 1956, Nasser made a three-hour speech to a cheering crowd in Alexandria in which he announced the nationalisation of the Suez Canal. As much as the revelation of the Nazi–Soviet Pact on 23 August 1939 and Germany’s invasion of Poland which began a week later, this was a stark test of Great Britain’s power. Eden certainly saw it as a rerun of the fascist challenge to the Western democracies in the late 1930s. Having resigned in 1937 over the British government’s policy of appeasement, he was in no mood to allow this flagrant breach of international protocol to pass without response. He embodied the post-war belief that had Britain stood up to Hitler in 1936, 1937 and 1938 war would not have broken out in 1939. Nasser was now posing, so he believed, the same question that Hitler asked. It was a familiar question. The United States had asked it in 1950 before President Truman committed American troops to fight the Communists in Korea. It was believed that unless the Western democracies showed they had the stomach to fight, as they had not in 1938, it would be an open invitation to the worldwide spread of international Communism.
In Eden’s eyes, Nasser was an embryonic Hitler, testing his strength against the imperialist powers, seeing what he could get away with. More worryingly, his radical anti-imperialist philosophy was starting to have an impact in Jordan and Iraq and Britain’s influence in the Middle East was being seriously undermined. Taking his cue from Nasser, in March 1956 the young King Hussein abruptly dismissed General Sir John Glubb, the British commander of the Arab Legion in Jordan, another blow to British prestige.
The United States, however, did not see Nasser’s actions as worthy of military intervention, so Eden had to resort to subterfuge and secret collusion with France and Israel. The three countries agreed that Israeli forces would invade Egypt and storm across Sinai towards the Canal as fast as possible. Britain and France, meanwhile, would drop paratroopers into the Canal Zone to establish peace, thereby seizing control of the disputed territory.
For Eden, the early promise of his premiership had dissipated all too rapidly. His health, which had been fragile since a failed gall bladder operation in 1953, continued to deteriorate. By-election losses, the inevitable consequence of apathy and traditional anti-government feelings between general elections, weakened his political position in Westminster. The rising tension in relations with Egypt made Eden feel as if he were caught up in an intensely personal battle with Nasser and in a radio broadcast of 8 August he echoed the familiar words of previous historical crises. ‘Our quarrel is not with Egypt, still less with the Arab world. It is with Colonel Nasser.’ Eden had set out on a path that would lead him to abject humiliation and inevitable resignation.
The prime minister misled the House of Commons about his intentions in Suez just as surely as Jack Profumo, the minister for war in a later Conservative government, was to do in 1963. Both men’s political careers ended shortly after they had uttered their fateful untruths in parliament. The Israeli incursion began on 29 October 1956. The British government gave both sides twelve hours to pull back their troops from the Canal. Egypt, despite its anti-British posturing and aggressive intent, was surprised by the British response and unsure what to do. On 31 October, British troops were dropped into the Canal Zone. The Americans were incensed at not having been informed about what Eden was up to and they began to apply economic pressure. The drain on Britain’s gold and currency reserves increased rapidly with the Treasury losing approximately $100 million in the first week of November. President Eisenhower was running for re-election and was outraged that Britain had initiated military action without telling him at a time of such political sensitivity for him. In addition, he was made aware on 4 November, two days before his countrymen voted, that Russian tanks were rolling towards Budapest in an attempt to quell the Hungarian Uprising. Any lingering affection Eisenhower might have retained for Great Britain after his experience as Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force was eradicated by Eden’s misguided decisions at this time.
The Suez Canal was closed, shipping was stopped and the British economy lurched into crisis. Harold Macmillan, the chancellor of the exchequer, asked Washington for assistance and was brusquely informed that no funds would be forthcoming from the IMF unless British troops withdrew at once from the Canal Zone. Macmillan, having supported Eden’s aggressive stance at the beginning of the Suez crisis now changed his tune. On 6 November Eden telephoned Eisenhower to tell him that British troops would immediately evacuate the Canal Zone. Eden had gambled and lost. The British public, whom he had imagined would instantly recognise the parallel with 1938 and support him, were in fact split down the middle. There was an instinctive British lion roar but there was no general acceptance of Eden’s belief that Nasser was Hitler reborn. The British Empire effectively ended in the muddle and confusion of Suez. There were just too many dissenters and the country was torn between those who wanted to give the upstart Nasser a bloody nose and those who felt that such behaviour belonged to the days of nineteenth-century gunboat diplomacy rather than the mid-twentieth-century world.
John Osborne’s play The Entertainer, which opened at London’s Royal Court Theatre on 10 April 1957, caught this divided spirit of the times as Archie Rice’s old dad wonders why ‘People seem to be able to do what they like to us’. His daughter Jean attends the big anti-war rally in Trafalgar Square and his son Mick is captured in Suez and eventually murdered. ‘Those bloody wogs, they’ve murdered him! The rotten bastards!’ screams Mick’s friend, Frank. Perhaps even more to the point, the previous year in Osborne’s play Look Back in Anger which made his name and fortune, the anti-hero Jimmy Po
rter had declared:
I suppose people of our generation aren’t able to die for good causes any longer. We had all that done for us, in the thirties and the forties, when we were still kids. There aren’t any good brave causes left. If the big bang does come and we all get killed off, it won’t be in aid of the old-fashioned, grand designs. It’ll just be for the Brave New-nothing-very-much-thank-you. About as pointless and inglorious as stepping in front of a bus.
It was a dramatisation of American Secretary of State Dean Acheson’s later pointed comment that Great Britain had lost an empire and not yet found a role.
Eden was furious and humiliated over Suez. As is ever the way with politicians, he found fault wherever he could and television was an obvious target. When he made his major broadcast to the nation in the run-up to the Suez crisis on 8 August 1956 the lights in the television studio dazzled his eyes and he was very cross that he had to wear his glasses in order to read his speech. He blamed the BBC for thus deliberately humiliating him. He was to be incensed by the Corporation’s refusal of a request from the Australian prime minister, Robert Menzies, to broadcast a message of support for his British counterpart. The relationship between television, particularly the BBC, and the government was ever thus fraught.
As the 1959 general election campaign got underway the Labour party asked for Alasdair Milne to be seconded to make their party political broadcasts as snappy as his Tonight programmes. Initially they were cheered by the utter incompetence of the Tories whose first broadcast came from Birch Grove, Macmillan’s country house in Sussex. Milne recalled it with great glee.
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