Run fast comrade, the old world is behind you

Interesting to see that a 'Louise Michel Sports Club' has been established in South East London, a radical group based around 'solidarity through fitness' with an initial focus on running, self-defence and hiking. They are named after the famous Paris Commune revolutionary who lived in SE London later in her life (a while ago I promised to organise a walk around her old haunts, maybe it could be a radical history run some time). Anyway I am dying to get my hands on one of their forthcoming t-shirts which they previewed on their twitter feed earlier (@louisemichelsc): 

Anyway that reminds me of another idea I had for a radical running t-shirt, based around a slogan written on the walls of Paris during May 1968 - 'cours, camarade, le vieux-monde est derriere toi' (run, comrade, the old world is behind you)

or in another variation 'cours vite...' (run fast...)

Would love to reproduce one of the above on a running top some day, technical fabric of course.

First World War Cross Country

The cross country season started for many of us this month, for me on Wimbledon Common in the Surrey League Division One (men). Around 200 runners took part, with my team Kent AC - last year's champions - coming out on top (not that I scored - we had 29 runners, with only the top ten counting to the final result).

A hundred years ago, as the First World War raged, combatants on all sides were facing a far more serious muddy and bloody ordeal. But in training camps and elsewhere there was still some cross country running...

Cross Country Team, 2nd Officer Cadet Battalion, Cambridge, 1917

Cross Country Race, Somerset Light Infantry 1918

Southern Cross Country Association 1916 (ebay)

flipside of above Southern Counties medal - 18 November 1916, Bandsman B. Mayson, 11th Reserve Battalion
 - 5 mile race at Shorncliffe (barracks near Folksestone, Kent)

Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine, Cross Country Team 1915

Allied cross-country race at the Auteuil racecourse. The mound. Paris, on October 29, 1916. Photograph published in the newspaper "Excelsior" of Monday, October 30, 1916.

Athletics at the Museum of the History of Immigration in Paris

The Musée de l’histoire de l’immigration (Museum of the History of Immigration) was officially opened last year in Paris after several years in development. It is housed in a magnificent building near to the Bois de Vincennes that was originally built for the 1931 Colonial Exhibition. The space once used to glorify the French empire is now being used to tell a different story of the migrants who have settled in France over the past 200 years or more- many of them of course from parts of the world which France once invaded and ruled by force (as with British immigration, part of the story is that 'they' are here because 'we' were there).

Swimming statue outside the Musée de l’histoire de l’immigration

Part of the mission of the museum is to celebrate the contribution of immigrants to French society - did you know, for instance, that the creator of Asterix was born to Ukrainian-Polish Jewish parents and grew up in Argentina? 

As with Britain an immediately visible contribution has been in sports and entertainment, a double edged position since that very success is arguably a measure of the exclusion of migrants and their descendants from other spheres. But nevertheless the museum is right to highlight the important role sports has played in the lives of migrants to France. Here's a few images from the museum:

Algerian-born Ahmed Bouguera El Ouafi (1899-1959) - left in the photo - won the Olympic Marathon in Amsterdam in 1928. In the lead up to the competition he worked in a Renault factory in France - hence the caption 'le champion ouvrier' (the workers' champion)

Algerian-born Alain Mimoun pictured after winning the Marathon for France at the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne.

Top - Georgian basketball players in 1932; Bottom - swimmers from the Yiddish Workers Sports Club in 1935  (a Jewish athletics club associated with the Communist Party)