Greyhound racing in Britain enjoyed almost a quarter of a century of success between the mid-1920s and the late 1940s, even though its early development was checked and confined by the ‘Tote crisis’ of 1932–34 and the Second World War. It fulfilled the need for a legal gambling outlet for a small section of the working class at a time when off-course ready-money betting was illegal, only on-course money betting and credit betting being legal at the time. Indeed, with more than 200 tracks operating in the 1930s, largely established in urban centres, greyhound racing was readily available to the urban working class. Its history since then has been one of a long and slow decline, interrupted by spurts of closures, to its present situation which leaves it in the hands of the bookmaking firms and television sports executives and not far from the point of extinction. It is, therefore, timely to reflect upon its place in British history.
The modern sport of greyhound racing emerged as a result of technological and business developments which came out of the United States to a Britain where there was already a ‘northern tradition’ of whippet racing, an English and Welsh tradition of coursing, and where working men were limited in their access to legal on-course ready-money betting. The new sport mushroomed to success in 1926 and 1927, when everyone, it seemed, was ‘Going to the Dogs’, but it is clear that it emerged at a time when there was still deep hostility by the middle class and the Establishment to working-class gambling. The National Anti-Gambling League and most Christian religious denominations were varyingly opposed to gambling, and carried much influence in Parliament and amongst the local authorities of Britain. Mike Huggins has rightly suggested that opposition to gambling, which carried much more influence than its presence warranted in Britain’s new democratic state, declined during the inter-war years.1 Nevertheless, as Brad Beaven has rightly argued, there was still a prevailing view that those who gambled were not truly deserving of full citizenship in Britain’s new democratic state.2 This hostility towards gambling activities seems to have lasted much longer for greyhound racing than for other gambling sports, as is evident in the discriminatory manner in which it was treated, with the number of days of gambling meetings reduced to 104 per year in 1934, two per week, and when taxed by the Attlee post-war Labour governments of 1945–51, and when this was continued by subsequent Conservative and Labour governments. The introduction of the Tote Pool Duty and the Bookmakers’ Licence Duty quite literally tipped the balance, moved greyhound gambling off-course (where such gambling was not subject to taxation at the time), and weakened a gambling sport which was becoming increasingly vulnerable to competing leisure activities, such as slot machines, scratchcards, the football pools bonanza and ultimately the National Lottery. The process was given a boost by the 1960 Betting and Gaming Act legalising off-course betting. Recent debates on the cruelty of the sport have also challenged its continued existence both nationally and internationally. Thus, from its position of being the second most attended sport in the 1930s, after football, it began its slow decline, falling to a position of about fifth or sixth most attended sport for the middle and working classes. How much longer this will be the case will depend upon the national bookmakers, streaming companies, Sky TV and the BBC, who sustain the sport. In the end, greyhound racing in Britain bloomed for less than a quarter of a century in a climate of hostility when it was not regarded as a rational recreation, and has declined since as times have changed and competition has intensified.
Greyhound racing’s checkered existence has been partly conditioned by the degree of hostility it has faced both nationally and locally. The NAGL, the Christian churches, Parliament and the urban local authorities have been concerned at the threats that greyhound racing has posed to working-class life, working-class poverty and the community. Nevertheless, it is clear, as Carl Chinn and Mark Clapson have indicated, that gambling on the greyhounds was ‘a bit of a flutter’, as amply demonstrated by the work of Mass Observation, Frederick Zweig, the Sherman survey and the surveys commissioned for the Royal Commission on Betting, Lotteries and Gaming (Willink, 1949–51).3 In any case, as Zweig and the Willink Commission accepted, greyhound racing was a niche sport, largely confined to a small section (about 4 per cent in the late 1940s) of the working class. Also, despite the suggestion, by Baker, that the post-war Attlee Labour government believed that greyhound racing undermined Labour’s push for industrial growth in the late 1940s, it is clear that it did no such thing, and was probably much less destructive of industrial production than speedway, which often shared the greyhound tracks with greyhound racing and other sports. Indeed, there is evidence of a continued bias against this, not quite rational sport, in the official mind of government, through Sir Stafford Cripps, a Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer who had pilloried greyhound racing in the early years of the Second World War and in the mind of some civil servants.
Despite such hostility it is clear that greyhound racing did arouse some community support. Whilst some communities fought against it, driven on by religious moral zeal and local authority opposition, it is obvious that the attitude of the local urban communities was far more nuanced. Many local MPs supported their greyhound tracks, and formed part of the 200 or more MPs who regularly came to its defence in the House of Commons in the 1930s. Daryl Leeworthy has indicated that local authorities were well aware of the local rates that greyhound tracks paid and the local employment they created.4 Some local attachment, loyalty and commitment by bettors to their local tracks existed, as is evident in Brian Belton’s work on the Customs House track at West Ham.5 Indeed, Belton implies that such was the level of local commitment that when a track closed its clientele did not readily move to other tracks. In the final analysis, of course, the very high attendances at tracks in the first quarter of a century of greyhound racing confirms a high level of local attachment, even though the evidence, as suggested, is that greyhound racing was a niche sport. With more than 200 tracks operating in the mid-1930s and the 1940s most of those attending would have been visiting their local tracks, although several towns and cities like London, Edinburgh, Manchester and Birmingham, would have offered several tracks to choose from.
Essentially those attending were working-class bettors but, as Mike Huggins suggests, one must not ignore the middle-class bettors of the inter-war years, nor the involvement of the lower, and middling, middle classes in financing the tracks and the sizeable number of middle-class, and even aristocratic, owners of greyhounds. Those MPs defending it in the House of Commons were often of middle-class backgrounds, and now that they are essentially commercial ventures the greyhound tracks were probably just as attractive to the middle classes as the working classes in the twenty-first century.
Despite such community, and cross-class, support, the omnipresent pressure of anti-gambling organisations operated effectively to cramp and confine greyhound racing, playing on the deep divisions that existed until it was forced to unite in the early 1970s. The NGRS tracks and the flapping tracks operated in different ways and had different demands. The former aimed to control the sport by offering high quality sporting entertainment, good accommodation, high prize money and tote betting, as well as betting with bookmakers to the male bettor and his family. The flapping tracks were generally smaller, offered poorer facilities, a lower grade of racing with little prize money, and whilst many offered tote betting, were very reliant on the presence of the bookmaker. Increasingly, it would appear that as time moved on from the 1920s to the 1960s, the flapping tracks catered for the ardent male bettor rather than the working-class family. The differences of organisation led to opposed attitudes on the issue of Sunday opening, which the NGRS rejected in the name of rational recreation whilst the flapping tracks favoured it because of their perceived need of it for financial survival. The registering of the greyhounds also became a bone of contention between the rival forms of greyhound racing, until the flapping tracks introduced their own scheme to deflect the criticism that their dogs were running under different names at different tracks, and that their meetings were especially vulnerable to fraud and corrupt practices. It was not until the sport declined, in the 1970s, that the differences between the NGRS ‘licensed’ tracks and the flapping tracks began to lessen, although they were not removed overnight with the formation of the new and unified National Greyhound Racing Club in 1972. Within a few years, the differences between the tracks were eroded as they lost their old working-class constituency as greyhound racing became more of an occasional night out for both the working classes and the middle classes.
The claims of the anti-gambling organisations that greyhound racing was a particularly corrupt sport, and should be banned were, of course, exaggerated. Despite considerable police attention and investigation, there is little to suggest that greyhound racing was subject to anything more than a low level of malpractice and corruption. The Sabinis and Alf White ran their track gang operations but they seemed to be a rarity on greyhound tracks and to present much less of a problem than the horse racing tracks faced, particularly in the gang warfares of the 1920s. It is hardly surprising, then, that greyhound racing figured small in the policies of the Home Office and of the police in Britain.
What then of the business of greyhound racing? It was clearly a successful business venture for many, offering the ‘American night out’ that so many lauded it as being. It was an overnight success, offering the bright lights to the lives of the local working-class bettors for a relatively small level of outlay and on betting, entry costs and refreshments, to fit the working-class budget. It had a very strong appeal to the working-class bettor until the taxation of the late 1940s and the imposition of fuel controls led to betting on greyhounds going off-course. By the time some of these restrictions had been removed, and the taxes reduced, the television had emerged and other forms of betting and entertainment had emerged. There was no going back and greyhound tracks became largely an adjunct to television, LBOs and betting companies.
In the final analysis, greyhound racing emerged in Britain in the 1920s because it provided a cheap form of glitzy ‘American night out’ entertainment for the working classes. It was essentially a meaningful, if niche, leisure opportunity for the working classes which rather supports Brad Beaven’s emphasis upon the plurality, rather than homogeneity, of the working-class experience of leisure in creating a wider citizenship for the working class. It attracted community support, was a ‘bit of a flutter’, a major employer within the local communities where tracks were present, and was a significant addition to working-class leisure. In the end, it declined largely because of the continued hostility against it that led to discriminatory taxation that made many tracks financially less viable from the late 1940s. In this taxed environment gambling on greyhounds transferred from the track to the untaxed off-course bookmaker. In the end the plurality and porosity of working-class leisure and gambling meant that it was easily replaced by other leisure activities but for almost a quarter of a century it became a significant, if not ubiquitous, part of working-class life.
Notes
1Huggins, ‘Everybody’s Going to the Dogs?’.
2Beaven, Leisure, Citizenship and Working-Class Men in Britain, 1850–1945.
3Chinn, Better Betting with a Decent Feller; Clapson, A Bit of a Flutter, Mass Observation, ‘Some thoughts on greyhound racing and national unity’; Mass Observation, ‘Saturday Night’; Mass Observation ‘Mass Gambling’; and Zweig, Labour, Life and Poverty.
4Leeworthy, ‘A Diversion from the New Leisure’.
5Belton, When West Ham went to the Dogs.