Surviving the Second World War relatively intact and experiencing an immediate post-war boom, greyhound racing looked to have a promising future. Yet within four or five years that picture had changed dramatically. Problems with the British economic productivity in 1946 and 1947, with the bad winter of 1946/47, undermined British post-war industrial growth and may have been responsible for both the restrictions on greyhound meetings being held and the taxation imposed upon greyhound racing. Norman Baker has suggested that the restrictions may have been largely a product of the Labour government’s need to ensure that industrial production was not impaired.1 However, this view is difficult to accept. Only a small proportion of the working classes attended greyhound race meetings, though on a regular basis, and their absence from work could hardly have affected production, a fact that politicians and sociologists were very aware of in the late 1940s (see chapters 3 and 5). There is also compelling evidence that greyhound racing was faced with continuing strong hostility from politicians, civil servants, local authorities and religious groups who, still rejecting it as a rational recreation, moved to use both planning controls and discriminatory taxation to prevent its development. These actions and, particularly, the discriminatory taxation imposed on greyhound racing drove gambling off-course and into the hands of the credit bookmakers, such as William Hill, Joe Coral and Ladbrokes, rapidly creating a pattern of off-course ready-money gambling which was further galvanised by the legalising of off-course betting in the early 1960s. This watershed moment in the late 1940s and early 1950s led to an immediate short and sharp slump in greyhound racing followed by a long, slow and steady decline.
Attlee’s post-war Labour government, the rise of the off-course betting, planning controls and taxation
Following the Second World War there was an immense surge of activity in greyhound racing. In 1946 the NGRS tracks attracted more than thirty-nine million attendances (with figures suggesting about twenty-five million for the sixty-seven NGRS tracks alone), and the total on-course tote turnover rose to more than £199 million, which was about five times the level of expenditure ever achieved before the Second World War (£40 million in 1938), although this growth was largely the product of wartime wage increases. This was obviously achieved in reaction to the end of war and promoted by the fact of full employment in the immediate post-war economy. Add to these the smaller provincial flapping tracks, many of which did not have tote facilities, and the annual attendances at greyhound meetings could have been well over forty million in 1946 and 1947. The whole picture was one of an immediate and prosperous post-war revival, especially once the wartime controls were removed in 1946 and tracks could move back to holding two meetings per week. The rising prosperity of the working class, whose living standards had risen by about 30 per cent during the inter-war years and even more during the war itself, led to the prosperity of the new urban sport which offered increased opportunities to gamble, especially when wartime controls were removed.
As part of the post-war revival, the NGRS tote tracks were re-organised and re-categorised in 1946 when the NGRS/NGRC divided its tracks into A, B, C and D. By the late 1940s there were fifteen Class A tracks in metropolitan London with attendances of 3,500 to 18,000; three Class B tracks in the provinces with attendances of over 5,000; twenty-nine Class C provincial tracks with 2,000 to 5,000; and thirty Class D tracks which had evening attendances of below 2,000. In contrast, the flapping tracks, both with and without the tote, were mainly to be found in the North and the Midlands and numbered 119 in total. From March 1947 they were organised by the PGTCO.2 Its tracks, like those of its predecessors, were small and often did not have totalisator facilities. In 1947 it had only seventeen Group 1 tracks with totalisators which had an average attendance of 1,000 to 1,500; thirty-one Group 2 tracks with totalisators but attendances of between 500 and 700; and twenty-three Group 3 totalisator tracks with fewer than 500 attenders. In addition it had forty-eight Group 4 greyhound tracks which had never operated a totalisator and attracted small crowds of fewer than 200.3
Combining the NGRS and PGTCO tracks together, along with independent tracks, the largest number of provincial tracks, and outside London, were still to be found in the major urban centres of Glasgow (five), Newcastle (four), Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester (three each), Bristol, Norwich and Sheffield (two each) (see Appendix 2). In Manchester and Salford there were two NGRS tracks and one BGTCS track, though in Liverpool all its three tracks were linked to the BGTCS.4 The larger and more expensive NGRS tracks rubbed shoulders with their smaller, less expensive, and less facilitated neighbours in many urban areas.
The picture of British greyhound racing by 1948, as indicted in Table 2.1, is that there were about 209 operating stadiums composed of seventy-seven NGRS tracks, 119 PGTCO tracks and, possibly, thirteen independent tracks, and was much as it had been in the inter-war years. Well over 70 per cent of them offered tote betting and the rest relied entirely upon course bookmakers to ensure attendances and gate money.
Table 2.1 Greyhound tracks in Britain in 1948
| Country | NGRS tracks | Non-NGRS tracks | Total |
| England | 67 | 91 | 158 |
| Scotland | 8 | 30 | 38 |
| Wales | 2 | 11 | 13 |
| Totals | 77 | 132 | 209 |
Source: HO 335/77, evidenced of the NGRS to the Royal Commission on Betting, Gaming and Lotteries (1949–51), Final Report, Appendix A.
The local tracks often operated in such a way as to ensure that most bettors were able to go to the dogs on any night from Monday to Saturday. In the years 1949 and 1950, indeed, the forty-eight tracks in London and the London area and its vicinity were divided on a regional basis for such an arrangement. The Middlesex tracks operated on Mondays and Saturdays; the City of London tracks on Thursdays and Saturdays; those in Essex on Tuesdays and Thursdays; and the West Ham/Surrey ones on Wednesdays and Fridays.5 In other words, betting facilities were available for six days a week. In the Manchester-Salford area the three tracks operated on six days per week. There were four days of betting at dog tracks in the Liverpool area, the Glasgow area and the Newcastle-Gateshead area. Indeed, the Royal Commission on Betting, Lotteries and Gaming (1949–51) reflected that:
In many parts of the country it is possible to go to a dog track on 3 or 4 days in the week, without having to travel more than 10 to 15 miles, and we understand that it is not unusual for persons to travel such distances. We were told by the managing director of the Oxford Stadium was the only track in the southern part of England at which racing took place on a Tuesday, there was a large influx of people from other towns and that private coaches ran to the track from London and elsewhere.6
Despite the geographical diversity and range of greyhound racing, and its domination of urban and working-class areas, the most obvious feature was the continued dominance of London. Throughout the Second World War, as indicated in Table 2.2 and the late 1940s, and in Table 2.3, the twenty-one (twenty in Table 2.2) main London tracks normally accounted for about half the take of the whole greyhound tote system, although the recorded statistics reported by the Home Office do vary slightly because of the opening and closing of tracks. In 1944 they accounted for 44.7 per cent of the tote system; £33,443,000 out of £74,846,000. In 1946 this proportion had risen to 51.9 per cent with a take of £103,377,000 out of £199,213,000; and in 1949 to 51 per cent, with £43,704,000 out of £85,643,000. As Table 2.3 indicates, the most successful track was the White City followed by Harringay, Wembley, Walthamstow, Clapton, Wimbledon, Catford and Wandsworth.
Table 2.2 The totalisator take at the British tracks,1938–45 (£s)
| 1938 | 1944 | 1945 | |
Greater London area (20 tracks) |
22,593,525 | 33,443,243 | 69,452,194 |
Durham and Northumberland |
2,617,536 | 4,897,635 | 8,620,062 |
Rest of England and Wales |
10,891,289 | 30,169,111 | 48,843,097 |
| Scotland | 3,250,489 | 6,335,825 | 10,800,020 |
| Total | 39,352,839 | 74,845,814 | 137,715,273 |
Source: HO 45/24210/812576/64, British tote statistics for 1949.
| (£ million) | ||||||
| 1944 | 1945 | 1946 | 1947 | 1948 | 1949 | |
| Total annual totalisator turnover | £74.8 m | 137.7 | 199.2 | 131.5 | 99.6 | 85.6 |
| Number of tracks operating a totalisator | 107 | 101 | 112 | 138 | 149 | 127 |
| 21 London tracks | £33.4 | 69.4 | 103.4 | 64.9 | 48.1 | 43.7 |
| (%) | ||||||
| % of all totalisator stakes | 44.7 | 50.4 | 51.9 | 49.4 | 48.3 | 51 |
| Leading London tracks | £ (million) | |||||
| White City | £7.1 | 13.5 | 17.6 | 10.8 | 7.9 | 6.8 |
| Harringay | £4.3 | 7.9 | 11.0 | 7.4 | 5.7 | 4.8 |
| Wembley | £4.0 | 8.0 | 10.9 | 6.0 | 4.2 | 4.3 |
| Walthamstow | £2.8 | 5.4 | 7.4 | 4.5 | 3.2 | 3.0 |
| Clapton | £1.9 | 3.9 | 5.8 | 3.7 | 2.7 | 2.2 |
| Wimbledon | £1.8 | 5.8 | 9.0 | 3.9 | 2.9 | 3.1 |
| Catford | £1.7 | 3.6 | 5.4 | 3.8 | 2.9 | 2.2 |
| Wandsworth | £1.5 | 3.3 | 4.7 | 3.3 | 2.5 | 2.3 |
Source: HO 45/24210/812576/64, British tote statistics for 1949.
In 1949 there were 171 tracks operating in England and Wales (thirteen more than in 1948), 129 with a totalisator (thirty-five down on 1948), as well as other tracks in Scotland.7 They were immensely variable in size (as indicated in Appendix 4), urban, dominated by London, and provided an outlet for a relatively small number of regular and frequent attenders. Although discussed in much more detail in chapter 5, there were about 1.2 million people who were responsible for the official 32.51 million attendances in 1950. Of these a mere 150,000 attended more than twice per week but accounted for more than half the attendances, about 16.5 million in 1950. Another 200,000 attended once per week, accounting for 10.4 million attendances in 1950, and the other 850,000 attended once per month. In other words, there as a hard core of gambling attendees, drawn largely from the working classes.8 This was further reflected in the fact that only 7 per cent of men and 1.5 per cent of women, just over 4 per cent of the population, bet on dog racing, according to the National Survey of the late 1940s.9 Ten times as many people were likely to bet on the horses and the pools. As will emerge strongly in chapter 5, greyhound racing was very much a niche working-class urban sport in the late 1940s.
Continued discrimination and decline
Nevertheless, from the immediate post-war years, and particularly between 1946 and 1948, there was a determined, and intertwined, two-fold attack on greyhound racing. The first came from the churches and joint church organisations, often working with local government in continuing their inter-war opposition. The second was from Attlee’s post-war Labour government (and indeed subsequent governments), which blatantly discriminated against greyhound racing through its taxation policy. According to Baker, the taxation was very much an unconscious decision of government ministers influenced by the desire to ensure that post-war production was not impaired. Faced with a fuel crisis in 1946–47, and the immediate post-war surge in greyhound racing, it is possible that Attlee and his ministers saw this as a threat to industrial production as they aimed to maintain and boost post-war standards of living.10 However, this action, contrary to Baker’s view, suggests that there was an almost conscious decision by the Establishment and government to weaken the sport, and that it paved the way for the development of off-course betting which further ensured the continuous decline of greyhound racing. Greyhound racing thus received a level of interference and control which, as in the Second World War, was never levelled at horse racing.
Religious local hostility also often operated through local councils and was evident nationally, increasingly so in London and the North. In January 1948 the Urban District Council Association mounted a campaign to get rid of itinerant race meetings on the tracks of eight days, the temporary tracks permitted by Section 12 of the 1934 Betting and Lotteries Act.11 This campaign was strongly supported by the Hemel Hampstead Development Corporation in September 1948.12
Local religious and local political opposition was also substantial in the provinces. In Lancashire, for instance, Kearsley Urban District Council (near Bolton) campaigned strongly against the itinerant dog tracks of eight days, allowed under the 1934 Act, encouraged by the Urban District Council Association and religious groups. The Rev. E. R. Gilbert and the Rev. W. Whittle, of St. Stephen’s Vicarage, sent letters to the Keasley Urban District Council referring to their church meetings where it was felt that greyhound racing had a ‘deteriorating effect upon the character and hopes of many people’.13 The letter particularly attacked the temporary ‘tracks of eight days’ for taking over farm land needed for agricultural production and which, with ‘a slight alteration of the borders of the land could lead to eight further meetings and so on …’. Indeed, in the Keasley District ‘one temporary eight-day track was taking 12 to 32 acres of land out of cultivation’, which the Keasley Urban District Council felt was interfering with post-war agricultural production. The local Quarterly Meeting of the Methodist Church in the Farnworth circuit, supported by the St. Stephen Parochial Church Council, pushed for the suppression of greyhound racing of all types, but particularly of the ‘tracks of eight days’, in September 1948.14 In this specific objection they were in fact supported by the PGTCO and the NGRS, both organisations objecting to these temporary tracks. However, their objection was more to do with the conditions under which the races operated, with pitches being moved from one corner of a field to another on an eight-day temporary track, the attachment of a hare by a cord to the rear wheel of a motor car and operating around bottles stuck in the ground and thus operating like pulleys, and the fact that the uneven ground damaged the feet of the dogs.15
There was, indeed, significant pressure placed by religious groups and local government bodies on the Housing and Local Government Office throughout 1947 and 1948, and it is perhaps indicative of the state of mind of the government at that time that it was equivocal on the issue of dog tracks. One civil servant, in the Department of Housing and Local Government, wrote that:
While examining a proposal for a dog track it is difficult to avoid a slight prejudice against the activity. One may think [that if it is not] positively injurious, that it makes a divert which should only be met if it can be done without inconvenience to anyone. But a case can be made for the positive value of dog racing. Those whose daily life is dull and monotonous have a need of excitement in their leisure hours to reduce the balance. Those whose daily work is indoors should spend their leisure outdoors, even if it is cloudy and wet. Judged from their point of view dog racing merits a need and is better than the public house or cinema, as it can be followed in reasonable comfort after dark and in rain it will bear with watching football.16
Nevertheless, it is obvious that the government was looking not only at the problem of placing dog tracks but also at the possibility of reducing the number of tracks. It was concerned about tracks, like that at West Ham, on the edge of residential districts, and rather less concerned about other tracks in London at the edge of industrial districts, or those such as Wembley and Harringay, both of which were multiple-use tracks with ice rinks attached (see chapter 3).17 Such concerns were, of course, encouraged by many other organisations. At its Taunton Conference in 1946, the Standing Conference of Women’s Organisations demanded the amendment of the 1934 Betting and Lotteries Act to give local authorities more powers to refuse greyhound licences on moral and religious grounds.18
Operating at the same time was a second major challenge to post-war greyhound racing, the discriminatory treatment and taxation of greyhound racing levelled against it by Attlee’s Labour government. Evidence of this first appeared in the Budget of April 1946 when the Labour government reduced Entertainment Tax in all areas except for on greyhound racing and horse racing.19 This was followed by further action in the winter of 1946/47 when the Labour government faced a bad winter which caused a shortage of coal and electricity thus interfering with vital post-war industrial production.20 Given this situation the government introduced the Control of Fuel (Dog Races Course) Order which imposed a fuel control for about five weeks from 11 February 1947 until 15 March 1947 during which it was estimated that 1,200 greyhound race meetings were lost.21 This particularly hit greyhound racing and was imposed despite the fact that many tracks had their own generating equipment and would have made practically no impact on the national fuel situation. Demonstrations against this occurred throughout the country, including one in Hyde Park, London, where placards proclaimed ‘No dogs, No work’.22
Other restrictions were also applied but, to deflect further action by the government, Mr Aldridge, secretary of the NGRS, asked its affiliated tracks to voluntarily operate only between 12 noon and 2 p.m., from 15 March to 1 April 1947, when the only use of electricity would be for the hare, thus avoiding the ‘brilliance of lighting’ in an effort to reduce electricity demand by some 90 per cent.23 However, from 1 April 1947 the Minister of Fuel and Power (Manny Shinwell) imposed the Control of Fuel Dog Races (Association) Order 1947, which stopped mid-week races only allowing dog racing on a Saturday. This Order was later strengthened to become the Dog Races Betting (Temporary Provision Act) 1947. The Attlee government also set up Regional Procedures (Industrial Committees) under the Dog Racecourses Betting (Temporary Provisions) Act of 1947. The purpose of the regional boards was to allow exemptions to be sought where the conditions of employment and industry warranted them. Similar legislation was introduced in Scotland
The Control of Fuel Dog Race Order of 1 April 1947 limited the betting at greyhound tracks to between 1 p.m. and midnight on a Saturday, when racing was allowed. Similar legislation was applied to other sporting and entertainment activities, though soon removed, and on 14 July 1947 a joint deputation from the NGRS and the PGTCO to the Home Secretary, led by Mr Hynd MP and Mr Garland Wells (NGRS), objected to the continued mid-week ban which meant that ‘only greyhound racing was still restricted’ whilst ‘Speedway meetings, some of which took place on greyhound tracks, were attracting mid-week crowds four or five times as large as those which used to attend greyhound meetings; horse racing continued on almost every weekday of the year’.24 Wells argued that there was ‘no evidence that greyhound racing did cause absenteeism’ and Mr Browne of the PGTCO added that ‘the small tracks which he represented, with attendances of only a few hundred, could not understand how they could be charged with interference with production’. Wembley (Greyhound and) Speedway Control Board maintained that there was no evidence that greyhound racing caused the absenteeism.25 Mr Hynd MP also raised the matter further in the House of Commons on 23 July 1947, claiming that five speedway meetings, most of them held at greyhound stadiums, attracted 140,000 attenders. One alone attracted 17,000 on a Thursday night whilst a greyhound meeting at the same venue held on a Friday night, and allowed only by local exemption, attracted only 5,300. At Wembley, speedway attracted 65,000 customers per week compared with only 10,000 for greyhound meetings. At Wombwell, near Barnsley, a new speedway track had been opened and was attracting 10,000 ‘men and friends’, substantially larger crowds than the greyhound meetings. Phil Piratin, the Communist MP for Mile End in London, made much the same point and felt that the House should not discriminate between one sport and another. The question he asked was why was speedway allowed mid-week, when it must have interfered with production more dramatically than greyhound racing, whilst only greyhound racing was faced with a mid-week ban?26 Shortly afterwards the National Greyhound Patrons’ Association sent a letter to the Home Secretary (Chuter Ede), noting that between 400,000 and 500,000 people in the southern half of the country had signed a petition in favour of mid-week greyhound racing and asked ministers ‘to overrule their personal feelings and prejudices’.27 The government response was to allow for two meetings on Saturdays to compensate for the absence of mid-week meetings.
More damaging still was the Labour government’s Pool Betting Tax duty on the greyhound totalisator. The NGRS, supporting the larger tote-based tracks, had fought against the taxation of the tote in April 1947 when the issue was first raised by Hugh Dalton, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who suggested that to ‘tax the Totes and the Pools alone would be unjust and let the Bookmakers go free would be wrong. It would be repudiated by all right-thinking men and women’.28 At that point Dalton decided that no such tax would be introduced but later, on 12 November 1947, announced a 10 per cent Pool Betting Duty on the tote fund to be applied from 4 January 1948. Dalton exempted the track bookies from taxation because there were not enough excise men to check upon them and horse racing was exempted because it imposed its own 10 per cent levy on the bets on the tote to enable improvements to be made in the tracks and for horse breeding.29
The impact of the Pool Betting Duty on the greyhound totes was immediate and palpable. About £131.5 million was staked on the tote pools in 1947 (rather down on the boom figure of almost £199.5 million in 1946 as a result of the fuel crisis closures), and this fell to £99.6 million in 1948 and £85.6 million in 1949, as previously indicated in Table 2.3. These figures fell to £72 million in 1950 and even further to £62 million in 1960, a considerable fall when allowing for inflation. These tote takes came from the 126 of the greyhound tracks that had totalisator facilities at that time, seventy-seven of whom were members of the NGRS.30 Combined with the Entertainment Tax, which had been levied on all organised sports, taxation became an enormous crippling burden to the greyhound tracks. Not surprisingly, as a result of the declining rewards for bettors, attendances at tracks fell away to thirty-six million in 1947 on the seventy-seven NGRS tracks (see Appendix 4 for a different estimate from the NGRS).31
Table 2.4 Estimates of betting on greyhound racing and horse racing, 1946–53 (tote and bookmakers)
| Year | Betting on greyhound racing | Betting on horse racing | ||
| Estimate | Tote tax (10%) | Fall from 1948 | ||
| £ million | £ million | |||
| 1946 | 250 | 300 | ||
| 1947 | 450 | 450 | ||
| 1948 | 210 | 9,473,184 | 350 | |
| 1949 | 200 | 8,494,007 | 10.3 | 450 |
| 1950 | 160 | 7,055,851 | 25.5 | 425 |
| 1951 | 6,665,348 | 29.6 | ||
| 1952 | 6,472,133 | 31.7 | ||
| 1953 | 6,169,551 | 34.9 |
Source: CUST 49/3504 for estimates on gambling and CUST 49/4216, in a letter to Greyhound Racing Society from John Aldridge to R. A. Butler.
Totalisator betting declined rapidly at greyhound tracks whilst that at horse racing tracks remained much the same (see Tables 2.4 and 2.5). The tote had taken about 80 per cent of the on-course betting take at greyhound tracks in 1946 but by 1949 that had shrivelled to less than 43 per cent, the rest being taken by the on-course bookmakers. As the tote take fell so did the government’s receipts – a fact that was used as a major argument by the greyhound interests in the pressure applied upon government and the Royal Commission on Betting, Lotteries and Gaming (Willink) of 1949–51.
| Year | Tote turnover | Pool deduction (owners) | Pool Betting Duty |
| 1945 | 124,914,411 | 7,494,805 | |
| 1946 | 189,540,300 | 11,372,000 | |
| 1947 | 119,529,873 | 7,171,712 | |
| 1948 | 87,306,407 | 5,238,884 | 8,730,641 |
| 1949 | 77,509,990 | 4,656,589 | 7,750,999 |
Source: MEPO file 2/8553, Appendix N, information presented to the Royal Commission on Betting, Lotteries and Gaming 1949–1951 (Willink) on 10 January 1950; The News Chronicle, 27 July 1949; CUST 49/4216, letter from John Aldridge to R.A. Butler, 28 September 1954.
Much to the chagrin of the bookmakers the Attlee government then decided to even up on on-course betting. In his 1948 Budget, the Chancellor of the Exchequer Sir Stafford Cripps, ‘Austerity Cripps’, the very man who had so vehemently and unfairly criticised greyhound racing for interfering with production during the Second World War, imposed a tax on bookmakers attending greyhound meeting, which varied according to the number of bookmaking rings there were on course.32 The tax was imposed in the form of a licence duty of from £6 to £48 on dog race meetings from 9 August 1948, the licence depending upon the number of enclosures; with £12 charged for one-enclosure tracks, but for two-enclosure tracks £6 for the first enclosure and £12 for the second. An extra licence fee of £24 was charged for tracks with a third enclosure and an additional £48 was charged for tracks with a fourth enclosure. As a result, as indicated in Tables 2.6 and 2.7, the number of on-course bookmakers attending greyhound tracks declined sharply, even though there is evidence that some of the smaller PGTCO tracks, which relied upon the bookmakers as well as the tote, did pay for the bookmakers’ licences: ‘Some Bookmakers felt that they could not pay the £12 duty. Many tracks faced with this divided into two enclosures – one where £12 bookmakers’ Tax Licence to be paid and the other where it was only £6.’33 However, the larger tracks, such as Wembley and Kings Heath, Birmingham, had three betting enclosures, as indicated in Table 2.6.
Table 2.6 Number of bookmakers on some major tracks, 1948–50
| Track | Number of bookmakers | |
| 1948 | 1950 | |
| Wembley, London | ||
| 2 shilling ring | 60 | 24 |
| 4s ring | 22 | 8 |
| 8s ring | 11 | 3 |
| Kings Heath, Birmingham | ||
| 1s 9d ring | 14 | 7 |
| 2s 9d ring | 11 | 3 |
| 4s 6d ring | 5 | 3 |
| Powderhall, Edinburgh | ||
| 2s ring | 60 | 15 |
| 4s ring | 21 | 12 |
| Belle Vue, Manchester | ||
| 2s ring | 85 | 27 |
| 4s ring | 16 | 10 |
| White City, Glasgow | ||
| 1s 6d ring | 30 | 9 |
| 3s 6d ring | 20 | 9 |
| Plymouth | ||
| 1s 6d ring | 12 | 5 |
| 3s 6d ring | 18 | 7 |
Source: HO 335/77, evidence, papers and correspondence of the National Greyhound Racing Society the Willink Commission, 1949–51, memorandum, para. 29.
The National Bookmakers’ Protection Associated and Associated Bodies Joint Committee (London) (NBPA) – which brought together fifteen organisations including the Bookmakers’ Association, the Welsh National Sporting Association, the West of England Bookmakers’ Protection Society, the Devon and Cornwall Bookmakers’ Association, the Midlands Counties Turf Commission – offered evidence to the Willink Commission suggesting that their fractional interests had been damaged by the tracks as much as taxation. Represented by, amongst others, its Chairman Mr G. Yates and Vice-Chairman Mr Alfred Cope, this essentially horse-based racing body blamed the decline in the number of on-course bookmakers on the main greyhound stadiums resulting from the Bookmakers Tax Licence scheme. Their printed statement to the Willink Commission (1949–51) suggested that:
The bookmakers operating upon dog tracks have constantly been called upon to pay a large ring fee as well as admission fees for themselves and their staffs … The money has gone to swell the profits of the companies owning the dog tracks. The position of these dog bookmakers has recently been worsened by the imposition of a tax which it is agreed is beyond their capacity to pay, and should be abolished.34
It noted that before the Bookmakers’ Licence Tax was imposed in August 1948 there were 3,500 bookmakers betting on dog tracks but that figure had dropped to 2,300 by February 1950.35 It claimed that there had actually been a loss of about 1,800 professional bookmakers but that about 600 ‘amateur’ bookies had taken their place. The NBPA was dismissive of the suggestion that off-course bookmaking was the reason for the decline – because they were suspicious of some dog results. They also suggested that since they were often paying four times the normal track admission price of 4s (20p) for each bookmaker and three employees, about £1–12s (£1.60) in all for each meeting, the 3,500 bookmakers in 1948 were paying about £1,164,800 a year in entrance costs, though by reducing to 2,300 bookmakers that income for the tracks would have been reduced to £765,440.36 Not surprisingly the number of bookmakers operating on greyhound courses declined sharply (Table 2.7).
Table 2.7 Number of bookmaker licences issued in January of each year, 1949–53
| Jan. 1949 | Jan. 1950 | Jan. 1951 | Jan. 1952 | Jan. 1953 | |
| One enclosure (£12) | 848 | 702 | 350 | 332 | 407 |
| Two enclosures | |||||
| £6 licence | 5,207 | 5,078 | 4,736 | 8,408 | 5,317 |
| £24 licence | 2,474 | 2,660 | 1,995 | 2,274 | 1,971 |
| More than two enclosures | |||||
| £6 licence | 4,111 | 3,471 | 3,297 | 3,729 | 3,388 |
| £18 licence | 1,288 | 1,102 | 959 | 1,013 | 946 |
| £48 licence | 597 | 537 | 419 | 420 | 356 |
| Total | 15,279 | 13,459 | 11,756 | 13,307 | 12,385 |
Source: CUST 49/4252/219/54.
The NBPA was clearly opposed to the taxation of the sport but, from its own perspective, blamed some of the decline in greyhound racing to the economic conditions of the time and what it saw as the rapacious greed of the greyhound track owners, reflecting upon the acrimonious relations between the bookmakers and the tote tracks over the years. Customs and Excise had estimated that in 1926–27 there were 12,834 bookmakers’ licences and 14,625 when greyhound racing took off in the 1930s. As we have already seen, this number had fallen dramatically by the 1950s, with Customs and Excise then indicating a reduction to 4,702 bookmakers, only 955 of whom were full-time bookmakers. Of all the active bookmakers, 516 operated exclusively on-course dog racing and the rest operated both on-course and in off-course short price offices.37 The NBPA did not agree ‘that betting in this country justified the constant criticism directed against it by small minorities who, having no desire to bet, work to force the majority to give up betting’.38 Indeed, it emphasised the intense hostility directed against all betting, and particularly greyhound racing, by religious groups and the government. Its final riposte was that ‘certainly foreigners have never suggested that decadence is the natural result of Britishness’s liking for a small bet’.39
This was disingenuous and duplicitous of the NBPA for whilst opposing taxation it was both attacking the NGRS, and the other greyhound owners’ association, and also denying that the bookmakers were in fact moving their betting to off-course offices in a continuation of an ongoing conflict which had fragmented the sport from its beginnings. In response the NGRS was adamant that the bookmakers had unfair advantage in being able to offer more betting opportunities – including trebles and accumulators – whilst the tote was confined to win, places, doubles or forecasts.40 Above all, the NGRS noted, correctly, that there had been a very rapid growth of off-course booking offices in 1949 and 1950. William Hill Ltd had Hill House with more than 200 manned telephones to receive bets and there was ‘Little off-course competition until 10 per cent betting tax was introduced’. Indeed, it listed well over a hundred other such off-course credit bookies operating off-course betting on dog racing, including Guntrips Ltd of Catford which ‘accepts bets on events at all BGRS tracks’, Jack Soloman’s Ltd, Ernest Hayes of Hove, Frank Neams of Walthamstow and City Tote which was ‘on duty every night until after the last race’. These threatened the NGRS tracks (sixty-seven in England, two in Wales and eight in Scotland in 1951), which employed a total of 14,809 full-time and part-time staff in 1950.41 With about 6,500 being employed on PGTCO tracks this meant that the jobs of 23,000 to 24,000 workers on greyhound tracks were threatened.42 In a letter to A. W. Peterson, Secretary of the Willink Commission (1949–51), John Aldridge reflected upon the impact of the Pool Betting Tax on greyhound racing, stating:
but within the last year more off-course bookmakers have seen the possibility of cashing in on the difficult position in which we have been placed … The introduction of the Pool Betting Duty is an addition to the 1934 Act which has thrown greyhound racing back into the hands of the bookmaker, and completely upset the balance between the bookmaker and the totalisator.43
The claim was that the bookmakers had cashed in as a result of the changes. Indeed, this view was supported by Mr J. Browne, CBE, representing PGTCO, who in his evidence to the Willink Commission on 11 January 1950 suggested that eleven of the thirty-eight courses he knew of paid the licence fees, or taxes, for the bookmakers and that many of the others that he had little information on did the same.44
Between 1949 and 1951 the NGRS and the PGTCO showered the Home Office, Customs and Excise, and the Willink (1949–51) Commission with letters, memorandums, calls for deputations and statistics. The NGRC indicated that attendances at seventy-one of its tracks fell 10 per cent from 25,203,553 in 1949 to 22,549,079 in 1950, and that the tote turnover fell 18 per cent from £74,956,376 in 1949 to £61,768, 111 in 1950. In addition between these dates the Tote Pool Betting Duty had fallen from £7,489,067 to £6,204,281, along with the Bookmakers’ Levy and the Entertainment Duty.45 It provided intricate and detailed analysis of the position in London and breakdown of all the receipts of some tracks, from bookmakers down to car parking. Indeed, figures suggested that in 1950 NGRS tracks earned an average £1,007 from every race meeting and that the government, from the Tote Pool Duty, the Entertainment Tax and Bookmakers’ Licence Duty, was receiving £1,592.46 The clear message was that the Pool Betting Duty was subject to the law of diminishing returns which would damage both track and government finances, as revealed in Table 2.5. In addition, betting was being deflected off-course into both legal and illegal betting shops where no tax was charged. However, Customs and Excise was apparently not concerned, arguing that the bookmakers who dropped out ‘are the unsubstantial and part-time men rather than the established professionals’.47
There is overwhelming evidence of the financial burdens imposed upon the tracks within the first year of the Pool Betting Tax as indicated in Table 2.8 where a selection of tracks indicates the scale of tax they paid.
Table 2.8 The tote take and other tax paid on six tracks in 1949 (the figures do not match exactly)
| Track | Money staked | Pool Betting Duty | To bettors | To operators |
Belle Vue (25,000 capacity) |
£1,970,800 | £197,079 | £1,655,289 | £118,440 |
Walthamstow (40,000 capacity) |
£3,043,055 | £304,295 | £2,556,153 | £182,577 |
West Ham (40,000 capacity) |
£1,829,509 | £180,856 | £1,639,586? | £108,932 |
White City, London (75,000 capacity) |
£6,748,059 | £674,750 | £5,668,499 | £404,852 |
Blackpool Greyhound and Sports Company |
£761,907 | £76,191 | £639,980 | £45,745 |
Source: HO/45/24210/817566/98.
Such information became the basis of the NGRS’s sustained campaign to persuade the Rt. Hon. Hilary Marquand, Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1950, to remove both the Tote Pool Tax and the Bookmakers’ Tax. Marquand was, however, informed by his civil servants that the decline in greyhound racing had been due to the bad weather of the winter of 1946/47 and that its subsequent decline had been due to ‘a reduction in surplus spending power’, and he was thus braced for the assault from Aldridge and the NGRS. He was informed that ‘the case for a reduction in duty grows stronger the longer the duty remains’, and that there was ‘A strong feeling of injustice long since felt and expressed by greyhound racecourse’.48
In this campaign the full financial position of the failed Oxford Stadium was used frequently as evidence of the disastrous impact of taxation. For the first eleven months of 1950 its tote turnover was £215,950, the Tote Betting Tax was £21,595, the Bookmakers’ Tax was £9,459 and the Entertainment Tax was £4,154. That meant that it paid more than £35,000 in tax to the government in eleven months and that, at 6 per cent tote take, the owners were receiving just under £13,000.49 Such evidence that the track earnings were less than 40 per cent of the track take and the other 60 per cent was taken in taxation failed to attract even a flicker of sympathy from government and in 1955 Mr Downing, of the Ministry of Transport, sent a letter to the Chancellor of the Exchequer referring to John Aldridge’s stream of letters and memos ‘for the last seven years and [that] his latest adds nothing fresh’.50 That was despite the fact that Aldridge had during this period enlisted the aid of the Trades Union Congress (TUC), which in February 1952 made constant reference ‘to the iniquitous treatment of greyhound racing’ and the falling government tax – the Duty having raised £9,433,182 in 1948 but only £6,169,551 in 1956, a fall of 35 per cent.51 Much the same could be said of the Bookmakers’ Licence Duty, the return from which had fallen from £2,669,179 in 1948 to £1,882,567 in 1952 and to £1,513,064 between January and October 1953.52 With a totalisator system crippled with tax, with all tracks paying the standard Entertainment Duty, and with bookmakers making the financial decision to organise off-course legal credit betting, and some illegal money-ready betting, greyhound racing was faced with a serious challenge to its future and long-term decline.53
Greyhound stadiums began to close (see Appendix 5). The highest profile case was that of Oxford Stadium Limited, as just mentioned, which ceased operating after its Boxing Day meeting on Tuesday 26 December 1950. It had been formed as a private non-NGRS stadium on 23 July 1938 at Cowley in Oxford and had closed twice during the early days of the Second World War and once during the fuel crisis of 1947. However, with regular attendances varying only between 780 to about 950, and faced with a taxation of 16 per cent (10 per cent in Tote Pool Duty alone), was losing about £200 per week.54 Leslie V. Calcutt, the Managing Director, ranted against ‘the disastrous effect of an ill-advised discriminatory and excessive ten per cent tax introduced alone on greyhound racing totalisator turnover’.55
The PGTCO held similar opinions to the NGRS as to both the affects and effects of taxation. It noted in the summer of 1950, just over two years after the introduction of the Tote Pool Duty, that forty-one of its tracks had given up their tote facilities, although (see Appendix 6) it recorded only thirty-six between 1947 and 1953.56 The NGRC recorded the closure of at least four of its tracks in 1950, if Oxford is added to the list indicted in Appendix 5. Attendances at its tracks were declining and in 1950 its Group 1 tracks were averaging attendances of 1,362 per meeting, Group 2, 592, Group 3, 296, and there were no accurate figures for Group 4.57 The flapping tracks were also in steep decline.
The rapid decline of dog racing had been the result of the post-war controls and the eventual proliferation of other forms of gambling in the 1950s. This was finally sealed by the 1960 Betting and Gaming Act which had legalised off-course betting in licensed betting offices, although there had been much betting on the dogs in legal and illegal betting offices prior to 1960 – Jordans of Barnsley taking substantial bets on the dogs in the 1950s and widespread phone-based credit betting at the big gambling firms such as William Hill, Ladbrokes, Coral and Mecca.58
The number of greyhound stadiums almost halved between 1951 and 1977 (see Table 2.9).59 By 1977 greyhound betting had moved overwhelmingly off-course, first of all to credit bookies and then, from 1961, to ready-money bookmakers as licensed betting shops were set up. They, and particularly the big four – William Hill, Ladbrokes, Coral and Mecca – began to dominate off-course bookmaking, offering better odds and a wider range of gambling options than the greyhound totes were allowed to offer. By 1977 the totalisator was taking only £75 million in bets (14 per cent of the total, on-course bookmakers taking £117 million (21 per cent) and off-course bookmakers were taking £358 million (65 per cent). Indeed, by 1977 the typical NGRS track operating NGRS rules was facing very severe financial difficulties. By that time the tracks had been allowed to increase their take from the totalisator fund from 6 per cent to 15 per cent, though not all took it, and the number of meetings had been increased. From then onwards the average NGRS track held 122 meetings per year attended by an average of 1,126 people and on each visit the bettor would stake an average of £11 on the tote and £13 with the bookmaker (see chapter 7). The sixty or so tracks not operating by NGRC rules were holding about 100 meetings per year in 1977, attended by about 250 people each of who normally staked £2.90 with the tote and £20 with the bookmakers.60 Greyhound racing was now a shadow of its former self, entering its twilight years.
Table 2.9 The decline in the number of greyhound racing tracks, 1951 and 1977
| 1951 | 1977 | |
| Number of courses | 198 (210 licences) | 107 |
Number of courses under NGRC rules |
68 | 48 |
Number of tracks with totalisator facilities |
138 | 76 |
Aggregate annual attendance £ million at 1977 prices |
21.2 million | 6.5 million |
Total stakes on totalisator |
313.1 | 70 |
| NGRC tracks | 279.3 | 70.6 |
| Non-NGRC | 33.8 | 4.4 |
| Estimated turnover of bookmakers off-course | 98.5 | 358 |
Source: Royal Commission on Gambling, Final Report, 1978, vol. 1 (London: HMSO), Cmnd 7200, para. 10.7, Table 10.1.
Conclusion
Greyhound racing in Britain survived the inter-war years and the Second World War in remarkably fine shape and seemed set for a prosperous post-war growth. However, the economic difficulties of post-war Britain led the Attlee Labour governments of 1945–51 to focus upon the need to rapidly increase post-war industrial production. This may have been part of the reason for the restrictions on meetings and the taxation that the Attlee governments imposed on greyhound racing but there was a persistent and underlying prejudice against it which survived the war, engendered by continued religious and local government opposition. That clearly had not abated since the inter-war years even though, as Daryl Leeworthy has indicated, some Labour MPs were strongly supportive of the sport.61 Hugh Dalton, Labour’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, imposed taxes on greyhound racing not imposed upon other major gambling sports, and this was continued by Sir Stafford Cripps, his successor.62 From 1948 onwards the tote turnover, the number of bookmakers and attendances declined – fast at first but slower and steadier thereafter. There is compelling evidence that this was largely provoked by the continuing discriminatory hostility towards greyhound racing, as compared with the attitude towards other sports. Given that greyhound racing was less likely to interrupt industrial production than other sports, such as speedway racing, this must bring into doubt Baker’s assumption that the Attlee Labour governments were driven primarily by a concern to prevent the undermining of post-war industrial production rather than discriminatory attitudes.
Nevertheless, in its early years and in the 1940s, and possibly until the late 1960s, greyhound racing was still a vibrant, if niche, activity, supported by the urban working class, accepted as part of community life, creative of a culture of owning and training, and a sport which was comparatively honest. Above all, it had provided the working classes with an opportunity to escape the drab existence that many led by offering a bright and glitzy ‘American night out’. Greyhound racing was always a precarious financial activity which was vilified for not being a rational recreational activity, subject to a level of discrimination never experienced by other sports. Yet at the same time it created a new sporting activity, a new infrastructure of sport, new employment, a new type of culture and new social problems, as it came to be an important force in working-class leisure and gambling.
Notes
1Baker, ‘Going to the Dogs’.
2HO 335/87, evidence of the PGTCO to the Royal Commission on Betting, Lotteries and Gaming (1949–51), p. 1.
3Royal Commission on Betting, Lotteries and Gaming (1949–51), Final Report, p. 26; copy of the Final Report, HO 335/1; HO 335/1.
4Clapson, A Bit of a Flutter, p. 146.
5Ibid., p. 99.
6Ibid., pp. 27–8.
7Ibid. The statistics in this file are occasionally slightly different, but the suggestion of thirteen tracks in Scotland, as opposed to the figure of thirty-five, is clearly wrong.
8Ibid., p. 152; Laybourn, ‘“King Solomon’s mines cannot compare with the money that has been raked in by greyhound racing”’.
9W. F. Kemsley and David Ginsburg, Betting in Britain, National Survey covering 1947–50, published in 1951. On the football pools 51 per cent of people participated, 28 per cent of women and 39 per cent of men. The percentages for horse racing were 51, 38 and 44, respectively. A total of 4.1 per cent of people participated in greyhound racing.
10Baker, ‘Going to the Dogs’, particularly p. 106 where he suggests that the Home Secretary, Chuter Ede, was of the lower middle class, moderate, concerned that gambling was foolish but not sinful, concerned to increase industrial production, and very aware that he was discriminating against it for pragmatic reasons.
11Report of a Conference of the Urban District Council Association, 30 January 1948, The National Archives, HLG 52/1423.
12Letter dated 10 September 1948 in The National Archives HLG 52/1423.
13Letter from Rev. W. Whittle, referring to the Rev. E. R. Gilbert, dated 24 August 1948 and sent to Kearsley Urban District Council, Bolton Archives, AK/6/67/9.
14Letter from Rev. W. Whittle, 15 September 1948, to Kearsley Urban District Council, Bolton Archives, AK/6/67/9.
15HO 385/87, PGTCO evidence to the Royal Commission on Betting, Lotteries and Gaming (1949–51), p. 3, paragraph 11 on ‘tracks of eight days’.
16The National Archives, HLG 52/1422, dated about 1947.
17The National Archives, HLG 52/91698/1.
18HO 45/24210.
19Baker, ‘Going to the Dogs’, p. 103; Daily Herald, 10 April 1946.
20Richard Farmer, ‘“All Work and No Play”: British Leisure Culture and the 1947 Fuel Crisis’, Contemporary British History, 27 (2013), 22–43.
21The Times, 18 March 1946; The Star, 18 March 1946; Daily Herald, 12 and 14 March 1947.
22Manchester Guardian, 12 March 1947; Daily Express, 12 and 17 March 1947.
23HO 186/741.
24HO 45/21932.
25Ibid.
26Ibid., 45/21932, with an extract from Fifth Series, Parliamentary Debates, Commons, 23 July 1947, cols. 1567–8. Phil Piratin also calls attention to the twenty or so exceptions that were allowed, particularly holiday towns. Mid-week meetings at Blackpool attracted about 2,590 people (on a track designed for 7.000) and were held after 6.45 p.m.; Great Yarmouth had crowds of 700, on a track designed for more than 1,200) at meetings held after 7 p.m.; and Brighton and Hove had crowds of 3,000, on a track designed for 21,000, and had no specific time allocated for meetings.
27HO 45/21932.
28HO 335/77, NGRS Memorandum referred to in Fifth Series, Parliamentary Debates, Commons, 15 April 1978, col. 78, gathered as evidence for the Willink Commission (1949–51).
29Fifth Series, Parliamentary Debates, Commons, 12 November, vol. 444, cols. 405–8.
30Royal Commission on Betting, Lotteries and Gaming (1949–51), Final Report, p. 151.
31Ibid., Cmnd 8190, para. 103, Appendix II.
32Manchester Guardian, 7 April 1948; The Times, 7 April 1948.
33MEPO 2/8553, part of the evidence of Mr Browne of the PGTCO, given to the Royal Commission on Betting, Lotteries and Gaming, 11 January 1950.
34Ibid., p. 5, para. 19 of printed statement to the Royal Commission (Willink, 1949–51).
35Ibid., p. 5, paras 23–8.
36HO 335/77, evidence, papers and correspondence of the National Greyhound Racing Society, 1949–51.
37CUST 49/4252/219/5, para. 30.
38Ibid., p. 16, para. 88.
39Ibid., p. 16, para. 89.
40HO 335/77, Appendix H, evidence, papers and correspondence of the National Greyhound Racing Society, 1950 to the Royal Commission on Betting, Gaming and Lotteries (1949–51).
41Ibid.
43HO 335/77, letter from John Aldridge to A. W. Peterson, 15 January 1951.
44MEPO 2/8553, including the evidence of Mr J. Browne, of the PGTCO, given to the Royal Commission on Betting, Lotteries and Gaming, 11 January 1950.
45HO 335/77, letter and memorandum, 15 January 1951. Between 1949 and 1951 at NGRS tracks the Bookmakers’ Levy had fallen from £2,214,117 to £1,891,198 and Entertainment Duty from £1,240,408 to £1,087,296.
46Ibid., Appendix L and also Appendix M.
47CUST 49/4251/219/1954.
48CUST 49/3504/4479/199.
49Ibid.
50CUST 49/4216.
51Ibid.
52CUST 49/4216.
53HO 335/81.
54HO 334/81, also CUST 49/3504/4479/1951, which indicates that the Oxford Company paid £21,595 in Totalisator Tax, £9,459 in Bookmakers’ Tax and £4,514 in Entertainment Duty.
55Ibid.
56HO 335/87, Memorandum on Totalisator Trading by the Provincial Greyhound Tracks Central Office to the Royal Commission on Betting Lotteries and Gaming (Willink, 1949–51). It would appear that only about thirty Group 1 and Group 2 tracks had tote facilities, forty-one had given them up and forty-eight had never had any.
These figures essentially referred to men, as women seemed to represent only 17 per cent of the attendance at Group 1 and 2 tracks and 11 per cent in Group 2 and 3
57HO 335/887.
58Carl Chinn interviews, Mr Jordan, Tape 296 A and B, interview tapes in the Herson Room, University of Birmingham Library, also quoted in Laybourn, Working-Class Gambling in Britain, p. 206.
59Royal Commission on Gambling, Lotteries and Gaming (Willink, 1949–51) and the Royal Commission on Gambling (Lord Rothschild, 1976–78).
60Royal Commission on Gambling, Final Report, 1978, vol. 1 (London: HMSO), Cmnd 7200, para. 10.7, Table 10.1.
61Leeworthy, ‘A Diversion from New Leisure’.
62Cripps did impose a 20 per cent tax on the football pools, a purely gambling activity not necessarily welcomed by the Football Association, and one which did not in any way directly affect the running of the sport.
It was not until the mid-1950s that the pools contributed to the coffers of the FA for its use of the football fixtures.