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The battle for the roads of Britain : police, motorists and the law, c. 1890s to 1970s
\"The onset of the automobile, both cars and other vehicles, on British roads brought about a seismic change in the social, economic and political history of Britain. Cars fundamentally challenged the established democracy of the road by forcing the authorities to channel the pedestrian, and children, out of the way of the unforgiving automobile and educating them in exercising road safety. They also forced the police to implement the three Es of 'Enforcement, Engineering and Education'--enforcing the law of the road, pressing for new technology for signals and other technologies, and educating school children--in an impartial attempt to ensure that life was protected. In this process, the police should not be seen as the tools of the motorists, middle class or working class, but as the impartial enforcers of legislation, introducing as such the 'policeman-state.' Consequently, policing fundamentally changed in Britain between 1900 and 1970, as the police moved from their 'feet to their seats' in controlling traffic as British policing became more integrated and introduced new technology and modern systems\"-- Provided by publisher.
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Going to the dogs
Modern greyhound racing in Britain, with an electronic hare whirraxing round a circular track being chased by greyhounds, began at Belle Vue Stadium, Manchester, in 1926. It became an overnight sensation attracting around thirty-eight million attendees per year in the late 1930s. It mainly attracted male working-class bettors, and sometimes their families, for an ‘American night out’, watching the likes of Mick the Miller, and offering the bright lights and the gambling opportunities that were normally denied them. However, from the start its mushrooming growth led to religious and municipal opposition from those who felt that it was an immoral activity causing poverty, fecklessness amongst youth, corrupting women and children, encouraging the vision of a ‘something for nothing mentality’, leading to criminality. It was not for them a rational recreation. They opposed tote betting and the construction of tracks but were unsuccessful in stopping its growth until discriminatory actions and taxation in the 1940s tipped it into decline as betting on the greyhound moved off-course and into the betting shops, and as scandals developed around the treatment of greyhounds. There are now only two million attendances per year. Yet for a quarter of a century it played an important part in the leisure of a small proportion of the working classes attracted to the middle-class financed tracks. It provided employment opportunities for communities and it was far from being the den of iniquity it was often portrayed as being, despite the presence of a few small on-course gangs like the Sabinis at Brighton.
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Labour and working-class lives : essays to celebrate the life and work of Chris Wrigley
This collection of essays deals with the latest research on British labour history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It has been written by leading British historians, such as Ken Brown, Malcolm Chase and Matthew Worley, in honour of Professor Chris Wrigley.
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An Ascot for the common man
Greyhound racing has been described as ‘the Ascot of the common man’, the ‘working man’s turf’ and ‘poor man’s racing’, though it is clear that it drew some middle-class presence, particularly so in its early years when they attended this modernist sport. However, it was largely a sport for the urban working class attracted to a cheap and glitzy ‘American night out’. What is not always understood is that, despite the large number of attendances in its early years, it was very much a niche sport, attended on a regular basis by about 4 per cent of the working class, the vast majority of whom were males. Also as Mass Observation revealed in several surveys, and as other surveys revealed, the working class spent only small amount of money, compared with middle-class bettors, on greyhound racing, and their betting was very much ‘a bit of a flutter’. It was not the impoverishing activity it was often presented as being and was widely accepted in many local communities.
Book Chapter
Policing the tracks, detecting malpractice and dealing with the racketeers and ‘shady’ individuals, 1926 to c. 1961
In the early years of greyhound racing there was always the charge that it was a dissipate and morally dubious activity vulnerable to being manipulated by criminal elements because of the opportunities for malpractice that it offered. The ‘human tote’ operated during the ‘Tote crisis’ of 1932–34 seemed to confirm the potential for illegal totes and fraud. However, the facts do not support the general view of the seedy and criminal nature of the greyhound tracks. Several national surveys of the views of the chief constables of England, Wales, Scotland and the Metropolitan Police, which became increasingly sophisticated, reveal that there were malpractices but that it was on a minor scale. Indeed, the Metropolitan Police withdrew from policing the greyhound tracks in the mid-1930s and most NGRS tracks developed their own security under the control of former CID officers. Beyond the Sabinis, who operated at Brighton and Hove stadium, and Alf White, there is little evidence that gangs ran the tracks as had occurred in horse racing in the ‘turf gang wars’ of the early 1920s. In essence, greyhound racing operated a form of consensual policing.
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Dog breeding, dog owning and dog training: Dividing the classes
As Mark Clapson has suggested, despite its ubiquity, little has been written on the breeding, training and racing of greyhounds. The sport developed out of coursing but demanded an immense increase in the number of greyhound to fulfil the needs of the expanding sport in the 1930s. There may have been more than 60,000 greyhounds racing the tracks at any time in the 1930s which, given the fact that their race careers were often three to four years, meant that up to 180,000 different dogs were racing in the 1930s. This chapter focuses upon the costs of breeding, training and racing greyhounds and notes that there were marked differences between the practices and costs of those dogs raised for the NGRC tracks, which were often owned by the tracks themselves as well as rich individuals, and those raised for the flapping tracks that were often bred, trained and raced by working-class owners. The former provided dogs for the classic races whereas the latter essentially provided dogs for the low-prize money graded races. However, by the 1970s, and faced with the decline of greyhound racing, tracks moved towards using contract trainers to supply their racing needs.
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The decline of greyhound racing in Britain, 1961–2017
Greyhound racing in Britain declined rapidly from the late 1940s onwards from about 200 tracks and more than thirty million attendances to about twenty-five licensed Greyhound Board of Great Britain (GBGB) tracks and two million attendances by 2017. The main reason for this is the discriminatory taxes imposed upon greyhound tracks that led to betting moving to the off-course bookmakers, which were not faced with such taxes. As a result greyhound tracks closed and those that remained became increasingly drawn into the business of streaming their races into Licensed Betting Offices and into the hands of the large bookmaking organisations. These organisations have taken over the industry and faced with competition from other forms of gambling activities have, often with property companies, closed down tracks that have proved to be uneconomic and built housing where they once stood. In recent years the sport has also had to deal with the controversial issue of cruelty to greyhounds, which has resulted in the issue of the GBGB Greyhound Commitment on 14 March 2018. Faced with this situation, greyhound racing would appear to be marking time and never has this looked to be the case more than when the Wimbledon tracks closed on 25 March 2017.
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Discrimination and decline: Greyhound racing in Britain, 1945 to the 1960s
Greyhound racing survived the Second World War very much intact and experienced an immediate post-war boom. However, the fuel crisis of 1946–47 led to the introduction of discriminatory fuel controls and restrictions by the first Attlee Labour government followed by taxation on the greyhound tote and upon bookmakers in 1948. This affected both the large National Greyhound Racing Society tracks, that depended upon tote betting for their livelihood, and the small flapping tracks which were more dependent upon the bookmakers to attract bettors to earn them gate money. There may have been other factors at play as the post-war British economy faced austerity, and as the Labour government felt that it was protecting industrial productivity, but the continued hostility towards greyhound racing seems to have led to a tipping point where betting on the on-course tote and with the on-course bookmakers declined and was transferred to off-course betting, which was not taxed. From that period onwards crowds declined, the tote takes declined, and tracks began to close.
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The rise of greyhound racing in Britain, 1926–45: The politics of discrimination
Mechanical greyhound racing in Britain grew rapidly and was toasted in 1927 by the hit song ‘Everybody’s Going to the Dogs’. Yet from the start it became a major political battleground between the churches and the National Anti-Gambling League, on the one hand, and by the greyhound racing interests, on the other, over the legitimacy of the sport. It was further ravaged by internecine conflict between the National Greyhound Racing Society tracks, geared towards regulating the sport and making it safe for the public, and the smaller flapping tracks, whose prime interest was to survive by opening as often as possible. This internal conflict made the sport vulnerable to the broader attacks of the anti-gamblers, in the country and in Parliament. These can be seen in the political battles over municipal control of the tracks, Sunday closing, and the closure of the tote between 1932 and 1934. In the end, greyhound racing was always vulnerable, but survived, undergoing further challenges during the Second World War.
Book Chapter
Fifty Key Figures in Twentieth Century British Politics
This guidebook provides a complete overview of the lives and influence of fifty major figures in modern British political history. Reflecting the changes within British society and politics over the past century, the entries chart the development of key contemporary issues such as women's rights, immigration and the emergence of New Labour. Figures covered include: * Winston Churchill * Tony Blair * Emmeline Pankhurst * David Lloyd George * Margaret Thatcher * John Maynard Keynes * Enoch Powell * Barbara Castle With cross-referenced entries and helpful suggestions for further reading, this book is an essential guide for all those with an interest in understanding the dominating issues of modern British politics.
1. Asquith 2. Astor 3. Attlee 4. Baldwin 5. Balfour 6. Beaverbrook 7. Bevan 8. Beveridge 9. Bevin 10. Butler 11. Callaghan 12. Campbell-Bannerman 13. Carson 14. Castle 15. Chamberlain 16. Churchill 17. Citrine 18. Cripps 19. Crosland 20. Dalton 21. Eden 22. Foot 23. Gaitskell 24. Grey 25. Hardie 26. Heath 27. Henderson 28. Hoare 29. Home 30. Joseph 31. Keynes 32. Kinnock 33. Lansbury 34. Law 35. Lloyd George 36. MacDonald 37. Macmillan 38. Major 39. Morrison 40. Mosley 41. Pankhurst 42. Pollitt 43. Powell 44. Samuel 45. Simon 46. Thatcher 47. Wilkinson 48. Wilson
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