Barbed Wire and Cucumber Sandwiches: The Controversial South African Tour of 1970

By Colin Shindler

Barbed Wire and Cucumber Sandwiches is the compelling story of a cricket tour framed in a landscape of turbulent social history. Cricket, England's gentle summer game, was shaken to its core by demonstrations, strikes, arrests and violence amid growing global disgust at apartheid, ahead of South Africa's planned 1970 tour. The battle to stop and then to save the tour split the nation, drove a wedge between the generations and destroyed friendships in an uncanny foreshadowing of Brexit. Fifty years on, acclaimed author and social historian Dr Colin Shindler has delved deep into the MCC archives for new information and gained exclusive interviews with key players of the time. Alongside the views of cricketers Mike Brearley and Ray Illingworth are the opinions of Labour politician Peter Hain, who was chairman of the Stop The Seventy Tour campaign. Barbed Wire and Cucumber Sandwiches brings you the full untold story of one of cricket's biggest controversies - the significance of which reaches far beyond the realm of sport.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pitch Publishing
• Release date: May 18, 2020
• ISBN: 9781785317026

Colin Shindler

Colin Shindler is a social and cultural historian, lecturing at Cambridge University. Among the dozen books he has written are the bestselling memoir Manchester United Ruined My Life and National Service, a social history of conscription 1946–62.

Reviews for Barbed Wire and Cucumber Sandwiches

[petercat1-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a book written for an English audience and should appeal especially to those who were born in the 1970s or earlier. It is a detailed chronology of the events, mostly in England, leading to the cancellation of the 1970 South African tour of England.But for one who is not English, it is too many details. There is principally one argument in favour of the tour, and one against. Over the course of about an year, the same two arguments are raised by a variety of characters, newspapers and letter writers to newspapers. Apart from a few with a strong cricket connection and a few major politicians, the rest all seems the same, except that they are on different sides of the divide. Since the reader already knows how this end, it all feels like too many details and too many words.

[miaculpa-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Cricket has always tried to see itself separate to politics but obviously in the real world that isn't possible. Exhibit A is the proposed 1970 South African cricket tour of England, where a series of anti-apartheid protests led to the cancellation of the tour. Barbed Wire and Cucumber Sandwiches covers the events leading up to the tour, from the early opposition to apartheid, including players like Mike Brearley and Peter Lever, to the protests against the South African rugby tour, which was eventually cancelled due to the ongoing protests, and the growing realisation that the tour would be cancelled. In the background the Labour Government does what it can to ensure cancellation and the author intertwines his own experiences of the times as well as that of his champagne socialist uncle Lawrence.Shlinder makes some curious detours throughout the book, covering some areas that were at best obliquely related; did we really need a couple of pages on the break up of the Beatles, for example? However, overall Barbed Wire and Cucumber Sandwiches gives a good overview of the times, both on and off the pitch.