London's Olympic century paints a portrait of Britain As the opening ceremony neared for the 1908 Olympics, "there was not much sunshine." Thankfully, on the day itself, "the rain of the morning held off during most of the afternoon." Nothing, however, could shift the low July cloud cover, so the clay pigeon shoot had to whitewash the targets to give marksmen a chance. Plus ça change. But beyond the weather, the great virtue of hosting the Olympics in London for the third time is to see just how much and how little has shifted in a century. In 1908, Britain stood as a colonial and industrial powerhouse, but Rudyard Kipling's "Recessional" was already hinting at incipient decline. At the 1948 "Austerity Olympics," Britain had just enjoyed its finest hour - but was now having to pick up the tab for beating fascism in the bomb-damaged capital. Yet what is so striking about both previous Olympics is how uninterested the British public and political class were. Today we are used to having the Olympics marshalled by the mass media for some soft-power geo-strategy. The US and the Soviet Union played out their cold war gaming at the Moscow and Los Angeles games; Spain buried its Franco ghosts at Barcelona; China came of age at Beijing. The British bid was itself the product of an attempt to forge a modern, post-imperial identity: the UK as a global, multicultural nation still able to "punch above its weight" (a vision cruelly rebutted the next day by the 7/7 attacks). But in the early 1900s, few cared for such branding. Pierre de Coubertin had only just begun reinventing the spectacle and Test match cricket or the Great Wheel at Earls Court proved far more popular. Similarly, in 1940s London, planning for the Festival of Britain would far outshine the Olympics - which do not even garner a mention in the then prime minister Clement Attlee's autobiography. That is not the case with Tony Blair's account of his years in office. As every Olympic probe tells us, what has been lost in the journey towards next week's multinational corporate jamboree is the engaging amateurism. In 1908 there was no shortage of that. With the tug-of-war a component part of the track and field programme, Britain took all three places on the podium - the City of London police team winning gold. When it came to rugby union, the only game played was in a deserted White City stadium between Cornwall and Australasia, who won 32 to 3. And what of the mother country herself? Figures collated by the House of Commons library reveal two starkly different Britains. In 1908, child mortality remained monstrous with a third of all deaths occurring in the under-fives; today that figure is less than 1 per cent. In the Olympics year, measles killed 50,000 children; tuberculosis and whooping cough another 40,000 each. Cancer was responsible for just 6 per cent of deaths - but by 1948 it had joined heart disease as the largest killer (as it remains today). Those children who made it past five would grow up in a structured family household. In the first decade of the 20th century there was only one divorce for every 450 marriages, while 90 per cent of men born in 1948 would be married by the age of 40. In 2010 there was one divorce for every two marriages and 46 per cent of children were born outside of wedlock. Then as now, drink was a formidable component of UK life. In 1905 the average Briton consumed 8 litres of pure alcohol per year. By 1948 this had halved to less than 4 litres, before rising steadily to more than 9 litres in the past decade. However, a century ago, more than 75 per cent of that consumption was beer whereas now this stands at well under 50 per cent. But what we did enjoy in 1908 and 1948 were some radical, reforming governments. Their focus was not on pay-offs for G4S, but on transforming the welfare state and reshaping Britain's place in the world. And they did so in tough times. The Liberal government of H.H. Asquith faced a wretched recession in 1908-09, but managed to introduce the state pension and the People's Budget. With the Iron Curtain and Indian independence in the in-tray, Clement Attlee's Labour government still managed to establish the National Health Service in 1948 and introduce the National Assistance Act, abolishing the remnants of the old poor law. What is more, it did so with debt levels hovering at about 250 per cent of gross domestic product rather than our own miserly 70 per cent. However, neither Attlee nor Asquith were quite able to finish off reform of the House of Lords. What has remained equally unchanged is London's hegemony. In the early 1900s, the socialist Sidney Webb called the Olympics host "more than a city: it is a whole kingdom in itself." So too in the 1940s; London housed the UN General Assembly just as the welfare state started to centralise decision-making in Whitehall departments. Today, even in the aftermath of our financial services readjustment, London remains out of kilter with the rest of the UK - accumulating even more migrants and sucking up public funds, as last week's census and unemployment figures revealed. It also houses the super-wealthy in a manner that has barely budged. In 1918 the top 1 per cent received about 19 per cent of all taxable income. Progressive reforms in the 20th century drove that down to 11 per cent in 1948 and 6 per cent in the mid 1970s. More recently, the 1 per cent has reasserted itself and its concentration of wealth has deepened as contemporary Britain looks more akin to Asquith's than to Attlee's era. But enough of politics - how did we do? At White City, 2,184 competitors took part in 21 sports, compared with next week's 10,500 competitors in 26 sports. In 1908 Britain won a total of 146 medals, of which 56 were gold, more than half of the total awarded - a feat that has never been matched since. In 1948 Britain took only 23 medals, of which three were golds. This year the UK has set itself the target of 48 medals in total. Statistically we are stronger on home ground. And it would be lovely if the past could repeat itself. But I fear history shows that London 2012 will have a much greater chance of wondering if the rain will hold off for the afternoon. The writer is a historian and Labour MP