SPECTAT THE OR
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TYRANNY ON THE TRACK
At the Olympic Games in ancient Greece, all competitors had to satisfy two requirements before they were allowed to take part. Officials checked that they were all citizens of Greek states; and they also checked that none of the athletes was guilty of homicide. This second require- ment was religious in origin. It reflected a primitive phase of Greek religious thought, in which guilt was regarded as an almost physical pollution, something not only corrupting but also contagious. The very idea of contagious guilt may seem remote and alien to the enlightened modern mind. But it is not alien to the modern Olympic movement, nor to the International Amateur Athletics Federa- tion. The two conditions of the ancient Greeks have their modern equivalents, and the only sign of progress over the last two and a half thousand years is that the Present-day requirements are a little more closely related to each other. The first requirement is that athletes should not be citizens of South Africa; and the second is that they should not `fraternise' with, jog alongside, or generally come within sneez- ing distance of those infectiously evil sportsmen who are guilty of being citizens of that country. In its statement last weekend, the Coun- cil Of the IAAF decreed that 'taking part' in a competition did not mean what anyone with any knowledge of the English lan- guage had hitherto thought it meant. Miss Budd, it warned, had 'fraternised' with members of a suspended federation when she attended (as anon-participant) a cross- country event in South Africa last summer. She had been active also 'in other ways', it helpfully explained, ways which 'actively involved her with ineligible athletes'; and these other ways 'were undermining the strenuous efforts the IAAF has been mak- ing • . . to uphold the suspension of the Soilth African Amateur Athletics Union from membership of the IAAF'. Connois- seurs of ' officialese will relish the skilful blending together of obscurity, self- congratulation and absurdity in this sent- ence. The IAAF can uphold the suspen- sion of a national organisation from its own Membership as long — and as effortlessly — as it wishes. Miss Budd could not undermine its 'efforts' to say who its own
members are even if she ran a three-legged race with Mr Botha from one side of South Africa to the other.
The Council of the IAAF has not actual- ly ordered the British Amateur Athletics Board to suspend Miss Budd for a year. Not at all. It has merely expressed the opinion that the BAAB 'ought to consider' such a suspension, and it has also opined that if the BAAB fails to `take such action as is necessary', it will have to `consider exercising its suspensive powers against the BAAB'. No reasonable person could inter- pret this as anything other than an instruc- tion and a threat. The IAAF denies, of course, that it is instructing the British organisation. One has only to compare its use of the verb `to instruct' with its use of the phrase `to take part' to see that it does at least know how to be literal-minded when it wants to.
If the British Board gave in to these demands, Miss Budd would be not just entitled, but morally obliged, to take her case to the High Court. And she would undoubtedly win it. The eccentric inter- pretation of `taking part' would not stand up to scrutiny; the IAAF Council's com- placent reliance on Rule 20 of its code (which declares that it alone is competent to interpret its own rules) would be de- molished; and the procedure under which Miss Budd had been condemned would be open to serious challenge on grounds of natural justice. In any state which is not a totalitarian
one, the legal system must recognise that individuals are free to join associations, such as sports clubs, which have rule-books and disciplinary codes. By joining, the individual enters into a contractual relation with the association. Where the association is a purely private one, the terms of the contract can be as capricious as it wishes: if a private dining club has a rule requiring members to dye their hair green, the courts have no warrant to interfere if it suspends members for non-compliance. But when an association acquires monopoly powers over an activity (such as amateur athletics), and becomes a regulatory' body, then' its actions pass into the realm of public law and must be subject to judicial scrutiny. Any state which regularly interferes in private associations is a tyranny; but a state which refuses to interfere in its public associations will rapidly become a breeding-ground for one petty tyranny after another.
The tyrannising tendency seems to flour- ish particularly strongly in the world of sport. The Test and County Cricket Board is never happier than when it is disciplining members for opening their mouths without `authorisation'. A catch-all offence, `bring- ing the game into disrepute', has been invented to enable officials of various sporting bodies to poke their noses into almost any aspect of a player's moral life that they disapprove of.
But in the case of Miss Budd, the language of morality is insufficient to describe her offence. For that, we need the language of guilt, sin and depravity. She is guilty of being a white ex-South African, and of `fraternising' with white South Africans. That is the theological certainty which inspires the protesters who shout abuse and try to trip her up when she appears in public; and it inspires the UN Special Committee against Apartheid, which added her name to its blacklist last week without even waiting for the IAAF to come to its own worthless conclusions. The primitive concept of guilt to which these people adhere is hardly susceptible to rational argument. But the British courts could and should be used to demonstrate to the civilised world that, in any meaning- ful sense of the words, Miss Budd is Not Guilty.
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