I had just completed my national service—indeed I got away five weeks early so I could join the tour—and in the army you learn that orders is orders, and there was no arguing once the decision had been made.
The fact is that I felt lucky to be on the tour at all. If it had not been for my mother and my future wife I wouldn’t have been able to go on the tour because it was a rule that you had to have £40 in your wallet and that was a lot of money in those days. You also had to supply all your own gear except for a tie, and it was thanks to them that I was able to go.
McLeod did acquire something on tour—a nickname: ‘That fellow O’Reilly was awful quick with the gab, and the first time he saw me I was wearing my tracksuit with the legs rolled up about my knees. “Look,” O’Reilly said, “it’s an abbot”, and the name stuck from then on.’
There were plenty of colourful figures on the tour, not the least of whom was an ordained army chaplain, the Rev. Robin Roe of Lansdowne, London Irish and Ireland, who would go on to win the Military Cross for his bravery while serving with the Lancashire Regiment in Aden in 1967, when he rescued soldiers from a blazing lorry under heavy gunfire. The medal citation read: ‘His courage and example in the face of danger has been outstanding and his infectious enthusiasm and confidence under all conditions has been an inspiration to the whole Battalion.’ A Lion even when he was wearing a dog collar—what manner of men were these?
Of them all, the Rev. Roe had perhaps the most misgivings about touring a land already disfigured by the apartheid policy of the ruling National Party with its Afrikaaner majority. Most of the Lions were not in the slightest politically minded, but a few such as Roe were troubled by what they were going to encounter. Yet he and the others decided to go, if only to see for themselves what the morally repugnant system was like.
Meredith said:
We didn’t know what apartheid meant, but you soon realized that it meant that blacks went one way and whites another, and that there was demarcation everywhere. It didn’t affect us much because we only met the people that wanted to meet us anyway, but it was certainly an eye-opener when sometimes a black man would come up and start talking to you for two minutes and then he would say ‘I had better go now because someone might think I’m accosting you.’
I remember a boxer coming to talk with us and he said ‘I’d better go now in case I get accused’, and off he went.
Apartheid was one reason why the tour got off to a surprising start for the participants. They had gathered at Eastbourne College for pre-tour training and a get-together when a Foreign Office mandarin gave them a strong lecture on the ban on associating with non-whites. In particular, he stressed that on no account was there to be any sex with black or mixed-race people as that was a criminal offence punishable by imprisonment. It was a rude awakening about the realities of apartheid.
One of the perhaps forgotten men of that tour was Scottish lock forward Ernest Michie, who has rarely given interviews about his days as a Lion, but was happy to speak for this book. He said: ‘I missed out on the Foreign Office speech because I was a couple of days late in joining the party due to having to sit my final exams at Aberdeen University. But I remember the message loud and clear—don’t talk about politics and be pretty circumspect about who you speak to.’
Michie is disarmingly modest about his achievement in being selected:
I had played for Scotland but I was very surprised to be chosen. The University side was on a tour to London, going by bus which took about 20 hours because there was no motorway in those days.
We stopped every so often for a cup of tea, and at Watford or somewhere I was dozing on the bus when one of the chaps, Doug Robbie, who is now a doctor, came back from his cuppa and said ‘Your name’s in the list of British Lions.’ I said to him. ‘Don’t be daft,’ and I really didn’t believe it until we met up with the London Scottish boys who included Dr Doug Smith, who had been a Lion in 1950 and would manage the 1971 Lions. He assured me it was true, so I began to believe it then.
Michie really began to believe it when he made his first-ever flight on an aeroplane, from Dyce Airport near Aberdeen to London to join the squad. At Eastbourne, the squad not only got their instructions from the Foreign Office but manager Siggins also handed out strict instructions on behavioural standards and gave out the rules on cash—they would be allowed just five shillings (25p) per day pocket money. In the event, some of the Lions augmented their income by selling their complimentary match tickets, and such was the demand for Test tickets in particular that some went for £50 each. That was strictly against the rules on amateurism, but either a blind eye was turned or Siggins knew perfectly well what was happening and ignored it.
Dickie Jeeps said: ‘There was indeed a black market in tickets, especially for the Tests where they could have sold the tickets ten times over. But by the time the first Test came around you would have made some friends, and that’s where most of the tickets went, though there was undoubtedly a sale of tickets which nobody admitted to.’
The Lions themselves came up with the most famous code of tour etiquette, which has been known to touring Lions ever since as Lloyd’s Law. During a team meeting with Siggins, Welsh scrum-half Trevor Lloyd suggested that if a player was lucky enough to get himself a girlfriend, no other player should attempt to muscle in, and all of them agreed to it. Some would suggest that Lloyd’s Law did not prove to be binding on subsequent tour parties.
The Lockheed Constellation aircraft which was to be their ‘safe’ conveyance to South Africa played its part in the early adventures of the tourists. The Lions had to board and disembark a couple of times before taking off from Heathrow, and for those who had never flown before, such as Welsh back row forward Russell Robins, already jangled nerves were stretched taut. More than 50 years later he recalled: ‘I’d never been on a plane before in my life and was beginning to feel nervous about it.’
The journey via Switzerland, Italy, Egypt, Sudan, Kenya, and Uganda took 36 hours, but the Lions were at least able to stretch their legs while the Lockheed was refilled with fuel and that most important of cargoes: booze.
On the flight between Khartoum and Nairobi, the captain encountered difficulties with the aircraft, which was being dragged down at the tail and veering in flight. Leaving the cockpit, he went to the rear where he found 20 sizeable young men crammed into a space designed for half-a-dozen people. The Lions were having a party, and how were they to know about such things as ‘trim’ and weight distribution? Ernest Michie confirmed:
There was nobody else left on the plane but us by that time. We were all moving about chatting to each other and having a drink and I don’t think the captain could work out what was going on as the plane became a bit unstable with the surge of bodies to and fro and back and forward. He came back to see what was happening, and found that hardly anybody was sitting in their own seats. He politely asked that, if it wasn’t too much trouble, could we sit in our seats now and again?
On arrival at Johannesburg in the middle of the night, the Lions were amazed to find a huge crowd waiting to greet them. ‘I honestly think there were 10,000 people there to greet us,’ said Jeeps. ‘It was packed, and was the first time we realized what we were getting into.’
Cliff Morgan had anticipated a welcoming party, though not a crowd of that size, and had appointed himself choirmaster, helped by Tom Reid of Ireland. Under Morgan’s tutelage, the Lions had learned the old Afrikaaner folk song ‘Sarie Marais’ with its jaunty chorus that translates into English as ‘O take me back to the old Transvaal, where my Sarie lives, Down among the maize fields near the green thorn tree, there lives my Sarie Marais’. The Lions gave voice in Afrikaans and were an instant
