ABSTRACT
Although the appointment by successive governments of a Minister for Sport, and the establishment of the Sports Council by Royal Charter in 1972, had underlined the linkage of sport with politics in Britain, it did not follow that the Government actually controlled sport nor did it follow then that it wished to do so. The increase in public finance at national and local levels for facilities for sport, for the wages and salaries of those charged to administer and develop activities and programmes, and for many of the actual programmes, involved political will and decision both in Parliament and in the town halls throughout the land. The partnership built up between the statutory authorities and voluntary sports organizations prospered in the seventies, within the overall financial restraints that then prevailed, to the general benefit of sport in Britain.
