Going to the dogs: A history of greyhound racing in Britain, 1926-2017 9781526114525

Citation preview

i

 

Going to the dogs

ii

iii

Going to the dogs A history of greyhound racing in Britain, 1926–​2017 KEITH LAYBOURN

Manchester University Press

iv

Copyright © Keith Laybourn 2019 The right of Keith Laybourn to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-​in-​Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN  978 1 5261 1451 8  hardback First published 2019 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-​party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Typeset by Out of House Publishing

v

To Julia who probably stopped me ‘going to the dogs’.

vi

vii

Contents

List of tables  Preface  Acknowledgements  List of abbreviations 

page viii xi xiv xvi

Introduction  1 The rise of greyhound racing in Britain, 1926–​45: the politics of discrimination  2 Discrimination and decline: greyhound racing in Britain, 1945 to the 1960s  3 ‘Animated roulette boards’: financing, operating and managing the greyhound tracks for racing the dogs, c. 1926–​61  4 Dog breeding, dog owning and dog training: dividing the classes  5 An Ascot for the common man  6 Policing the tracks, detecting malpractice and dealing with the racketeers and ‘shady’ individuals, 1926 to c. 1961  7 The decline of greyhound racing in Britain, 1961–​2017 

1 19 59 79 106 123 142 173

Conclusion 

194

Appendices  Bibliography  Index 

199 209 215

viii

Tables

1.1 Annual attendances at greyhound tracks in Britain, 1927–​2017  page 21 1.2 Attendances at NGRS greyhound tracks in London, Manchester and Glasgow, 1928–​32  26 1.3 Attendances at the twenty-​one ‘unlicensed’ London tracks in the week ending 8 July 1933  31 2.1 Greyhound tracks in Britain in 1948  61 2.2 The totalisator take at the British tracks, 1938–​45  62 2.3 Dog-​tracks: total annual totalisator stakes in Britain (1944–​49) and at the eight leading London dog tracks  63 2.4 Estimates of betting on greyhound racing and horse racing, 1946–​53 (tote and bookmakers)  68 2.5 Falling levels of tote turnover, pool owners’ deductions (6 per cent) and Pool Betting Duty, 1945–​49  68 2.6 Number of bookmakers on some major tracks, 1948–​50  69 2.7 Number of bookmaker licences issued in January of each year, 1949–​53  70 2.8 The tote take and other tax paid on six tracks in 1949  73 2.9 The decline in the number of greyhound racing tracks, 1951 and 1977  75 3.1 Cost of tote installation, tote turnover and net profits after costs, 1932–​33  89 3.2 Staff employed by seventy-​three of the seventy-​seven NGRS tracks in 1950  91 3.3 Employment details of sixty-​two of the 132 PGTCO tracks in 1950  92 3.4 Attendances at the Provincial Greyhound Tracks Control Office track, 1949–​50  97 3.5 Profit and dividend returns to capital employed at sixty-​seven NGRS tracks, 31 December 1948  97

ix

Tables 3.6 The distribution of the tote turnover for eight NGRS tracks in Britain in 1949  3.7 NGRS chart of average expenditure at NGRS tracks, 1950  4.1 Breeding a greyhound for racing in 1976: schedule of costs from whelping to fifteen months for greyhounds registered to the NGRC  4.2 Cost of training greyhounds according to the NGRC, 1976  5.1 Frequency of attendance at greyhound tracks, 1950  6.1 Totalisators in tote clubs and on greyhound tracks, February 1932  6.2 Commitment of Metropolitan police officers to London greyhound tracks  7.1 Greyhound meetings, attendances and tracks, 1948–​75  7.2 Greyhound Pool Betting Duty on the Tote, 1948–​76  7.3 Income of the NGRC greyhound tracks, 1973–​75  7.4 The decline of greyhound racing, 1948–​75, on NGRC tracks  7.5 The declining number of NGRC and non-​NGRC tracks, 1948–​75  7.6 Profits and return on capital for NGRC tracks, 1973–​75  7.7 The annual BAGS/​SIS Championship winners  7.8 The four areas and the tracks involved in the BAGS and SIS Track Championship 2017  7.9 The number of registered greyhounds in Britain and the proportion of Irish-​bred greyhounds 

ix 98 99 111 115 134 148 161 174 178 182 183 184 184 186 187 188

x

xi

Preface

Modern greyhound racing in Britain, with an electronic hare whirraxing around a circular track being chased by greyhounds, began at Belle Vue Stadium, Manchester on 24 July 1926. Although it had been tried in Britain about half a century before, it was not until its emergence in the United States that it began to attract interest in Britain by offering an ‘American night out’, with the lights, glitz and glamour that accompanied it, a sign of the influence of American culture on British leisure and sport during the inter-​war years, as evidenced in the book edited by David Slater and Peter J. Taylor, The American Century: Consensus and Coercion in the Projection of American Power (1999). It became an overnight sensation in Britain, with more than 200 tracks opening by the early 1930s and with around thirty-​two million attendances per year in a period of economic gloom and slump following the Wall Street Crash of 1929. In the words of a popular song of 1927, ‘Everybody’s Going to the Dogs’, beguiled by the successes of dogs such as Entry Bridge and Mick the Miller in the Greyhound Derby and the chance of a legal ‘bit of a flutter’. However, by 2017 the sport was down to around twenty-​five ‘licensed’ tracks, about two million attendances per year and facing oblivion. This book deals with the economic, social and political history of greyhound racing in Britain from the mid-​1920s, when it rose quickly until the late 1940s, though it also offers a substantial analysis of its decline from the 1950s onwards. There are at least half a dozen interwoven important debates that drive this book in explaining why greyhound racing became one of the main gambling sports in Britain for about a quarter of a century, and relate also to its decline. One is concerned with the nature of the deep hostility to greyhound racing, which it faced from the start. Why did this emerge quickly after it began? Indeed, why did anti-​gambling groups, religious denominations, local authorities and governments seem never to accept greyhound racing? Was it because they did not see it as a rational recreation, that they feared it would induce poverty and

xii

Preface

xii

immorality, or perhaps both? Whatever the reason, the result was that greyhound racing faced a level of opposition rarely experienced by other gambling sports and, indeed, much less than its close rival, horse racing. An unattributed newspaper cartoon of the late 1920s or early 1930s, featuring a well-​dressed man inviting a similarly well-​dressed woman to a greyhound meeting, starts with ONCE UPON A TIME TO GO TO THE DOGS MEANT A DEPARTURE FROM THE PATH OF VIRTUE NOWADAYS IT IS POSSIBLE TO GO TO THE BRASSY BOW WOWS THREE TIMES A WEEK.

If that was the case in its early years it was a situation that did not last long in the teeth of opposition from the National Anti-​Gambling League and fervent religious opposition to the sport, and ultimately with the intervention of the state. Connected with this, though more tangential, is a second debate about the extent of its relationship with the local communities, which raises the question –​ was greyhound racing accepted or rejected by local urban communities? Although it is not easy to establish the closeness of local communities to their greyhound tracks, given the powerful local religious opposition greyhound racing faced, there is sufficient evidence to suggest that tracks provided employment for the local community and elicited both local support and pride. Closely related to this is a third debate, which focuses very much on those who attended the meetings. Was it a working-​class sport or did it appeal across the classes? The evidence tends to suggest that at first greyhound racing drew interest from all classes  –​from the lower and upper middle classes to finance the tracks, from middle-​class dog owners and bettors, but that after the first few years it became overwhelmingly the ‘Ascot for the common man’, as it was so aptly described by the Rt. Hon. Ormsby-​Gore in 1933 (see ­chapter  5). This was undoubtedly one reason for the deep opposition it faced, particularly from Winston Churchill, who decried greyhound racing as an ‘animated roulette wheel’, impoverishing the poor of the working class, through betting, and encouraging criminality. Arising from Churchill’s criticisms, and similar comments from other politicians, is a fourth debate which focuses upon the criminality of the tracks. Was greyhound racing dominated by serious shady criminal activities or was it largely a clean sport faced only with petty crime? Opponents of greyhound racing presented it as a den of iniquity, racketeering and malpractice, and encouraged police intervention and the closure of tracks. However, with the exception of one or two gangs, such as the Sabinis operating at Brighton and Hove, greyhound racing was

xiii

Preface

xiii

not a particularly corrupt sport. There was much low-​level malpractice, though the greyhound tracks and their organisations tightened up on this through the registering of dogs and the introduction of veterinary checks. Indeed, greyhound tracks appear to have posed little problem and presented few social order issues for the police. Greyhound racing was also a sport of competing interests, particularly between the different types of tracks, the National Greyhound Racing Society (NGRS) tracks and the flapping tracks, and between the track owners and the bookmakers, and the track-​owned dogs and the individual dog owners, and a fifth debate thus highlights the fragmented nature of the sport. Why was there almost internecine conflict within the sport, particularly between the large tracks and the small tracks? Was it the fact that large tracks were able to introduce their expensive totalisator machines for betting purposes from 1929 and that put them into conflict with many of the smaller tracks, who often could not afford the tote machines and relied upon bookmakers? This naturally raises a sixth important debate over how the tracks operated and what they offered. Were they operating different business plans? It is clear that the larger and smaller tracks offered different facilities and opportunities for their clients and that the resultant business strategies of the tracks conflicted over betting arrangements, the registration and grading of dogs, and what should be provided on race day. It was not until the early 1970s, when in sharp decline, that greyhound racing became more united, though this was only after the discriminatory legislation had already doomed the sport to sharp decline. These debates are encompassed within the much wider all-​embracing issue of the rise and fall of greyhound racing. Why did greyhound racing emerge so quickly between the 1920s and the late 1940s to fall away so sharply from the 1950s onwards? The evidence presented here suggests that greyhound racing offered the working class a sport which provided them with a cheap legal gambling thrill, ‘a bit of a flutter’. The fact that the industry was fragmented by internecine conflict in the face of the opposition of anti-​gambling organisations put it under serious pressure from the start. However, it was the discriminatory actions and taxation of governments which ultimately forced betting on greyhounds from the tracks to off-​course bookies from the late 1940s, signalling the decline of the sport and forcing it into the hands of the bookmakers, streaming to the Licensed Betting Offices (LBOs), television and property companies, whose interests were varied in a climate of increasing competitiveness in gambling.

xiv

Acknowledgements

All academic publications owe a debt of gratitude to the generosity of others, and this is especially the case in the writing of this book. My colleagues and ex-​colleagues in the history section of the University of Huddersfield have been very supportive, and these include Sarah Bastow, Barry Doyle, Rob Ellis, Rebecca Gill, Katherine Lewis, John Shepherd, David Taylor and Paul Ward. I would also like to thank the support of Brendan Evans, formerly Professor of Politics and a Pro-​Vice Chancellor, and Chris Ellis and Neil Pye, two of my former students. Many thanks must also go to Tony Mason (Senior Commissioning Editor), Robert Byron, and my copy editor, for their help in preparing this book. Without their careful guidance, and that of the rest of the staff of Manchester University Press, this book would have been much longer in the making. A considerable amount of this research has been conducted in the National Archives at Kew. I would therefore like to thank the National Archives, which gives automatic rights to quote from government documents and papers, under the rules of the Government Open Licence, which merely requires that proper attribution is made. I would also like to thank the Controller of Her Majesty’s Stationery Office (Norwich) for permission to quote from crown copyright material, which is also subject to the rules of the Government Open Licence. In addition, I would also like to thank Julie Lamara, Collections Access Officer-​ Local Studies, of the Bolton Archives Museum and Archive for the use of its collections on local government and religious reaction to the emergence of greyhound tracks and also to the History Press (previously Tempus) for the use of several quotes from Brian Belton’s book on When West Ham went to the Dogs (2002), although their usage falls well within the normally accepted publishers’ guidelines. Many secondary sources have been used in the writing of this book but they are not substantial and fall well within the normal guidelines set by publishers, and all the sources have been fully attributed

xv

Acknowledgements

xv

Every effort has been made to avoid any infringements of copyright. However, I  apologise unreservedly to any copyright holders whose permission has been inadvertently overlooked.

newgenprepdf

xvi

Abbreviations

ACC AGROA BAGS BGTCS BT CID CSC CUST GBGB GRA GRPA HLG HO LBO MEPO MO NAGL NBPA NGRC NGRS PGTCO TUC YMCA

Assistant Chief Commissioner (of the Metropolitan Police) Allied Greyhound Racecourse and Owners’ Association Bookmakers’ Affiliated Greyhound Scheme British Greyhound Tracks Control Society Board of Trade Criminal Investigation Department Christian Social Council Custom and Excise Greyhound Board of Great Britain Greyhound Racing Association Greyhound Racing Protection Association Housing and Local Government Home Office Licensed Betting Office Metropolitan Police Files Mass Observation National Anti-​Gambling League National Bookmakers Protection Association National Greyhound Racing Club National Greyhound Racing Society Provincial Greyhound Tracks Central Office Trades Union Congress Young Men’s Christian Association

1

Introduction

In 1926, three months after the first British greyhound meeting, held at Belle Vue in Manchester on 24 July, an unknown civil servant wrote, on the brown outer-​ cover of a Home Office file, a terse, though all-​embracing, comment on the new mushrooming sport of greyhound racing: This [file] refers to the ‘new sport’ which consists of an artificial hare, by an electrical contrivance, being sent round a course. Each time some half dozen greyhounds are released who endeavour to capture the hare. The hare by a mechanical regulatory device is kept just ahead of the leading greyhound and at the end of the course disappears down a hole. The winner is the greyhound which first crosses the line a short distance before the hole. The general arrangement resembles a race meeting as far as possible with paddocks etc. The sport offers considerable opportunities for betting. It is understood that a syndicate proposes to promote it in different places. It is exciting much interest in the USA where the sport is becoming popular. It appears to be lawful. Refer Enclosure to CC [Chief Constable] at Manchester for report & etc. LSB1 28.10.262

Another civil servant wrote that: It may be added that the element of cruelty to a hunted animal is absent & that quite apart from betting, there is an interest in the North, among miners & others, in the performance of greyhounds whippets etc. etc. AL 29. 10. 263

These observations were almost prophetic, though not entirely accurate, indicating that modern mechanical greyhound racing was stimulated by developments in the United States, offered legal on-​course betting to the working class, and was particularly popular in the North of England. Indeed, from its inauspicious

2

2

Going to the dogs

beginnings in Manchester, before a small crowd of 2,550, greyhound racing, based on an electronic hare circulating on a track, developed rapidly over the next decade to more than 200 tracks, connected with the NGRS or acting as independent, non-National Greyhound Racing Club (NGRC) licensed, ‘flapping tracks’. There were well over thirty-​two million attendances per year by the 1930s, as well as the millions of unrecorded attendances at the temporary ‘8-​day [a year] tracks’, which were subject to a police licence under the 1934 Betting and Lotteries Act. Indeed, one calculation suggests about thirty-​eight million attendances in 1936, although the more regular estimate is of about thirty-​two million in the late 1930s, and attendances may have reached forty-​two million in 1942 and forty-​six million in 1946.4 Greyhound racing had become so popular by 1927 that the song ‘Everybody’s Going to the Dogs’ became an instant hit, highlighting its rapid growth as well as creating a euphemism for a wasted life, based upon the gambling it encouraged.5 There was a genuine sense of excitement about the new sport that attracted thousands, and which even the condemnatory report of the Daily Express on a meeting at Belle Vue in October 1927 could not dampen. Practically excluding men, who normally constituted the majority of greyhound crowds, it focused upon the moral turpitude of greyhound racing, stating that: There was far more betting than in any ordinary racecourse. I saw a woman with a baby in her arms laying her shilling. Children in their teens betted as freely as other elders. Boys in school caps … girls in hats and red ribbons of secondary schools pushed their way through from bookmakers to bookmaker asking odds and staking where they secured the best price. Working girls of the typist and shop assistant class wagered by the half-​crown or five shillings. There were … three races on the flat and three over hurdle events. There were 22,000 present on Saturday evening … All the land seems to be going to the dogs.6

There was excitement, a sense of the new, and of expectation as dog jostled with dog, and as the working classes were given wider access to gambling opportunities. This contrasts sharply with the decline of the sport, from the forty million attendees or more in the 1940s down to the two million of 2017, as a result of government taxation and the movement of betting on the dogs to off-​course outlets. When the famous Wimbledon track, opened in 1928, was closed on 25 March 2017 there was considerable nostalgia, lots of photographs of bettors walking on the track, posing in the traps and drinking, but almost tired resignation rather than anger. The event almost slipped away in an atmosphere of jollity, indifference and acceptance. One regular suggested that ‘It’s inevitable that it would happen … We thought that it was going to close six months ago’.7 Older regulars felt that the track had been taken over by a younger generation intent upon drinking, gambling and eating in the Grandstand restaurant and having no interest in dog racing itself. One greyhound trainer who attended the closure of

3

Introduction

3

Wimbledon, who had an Irish training establishment at Hollyoak, could not see how dog trainers and owners could make the business pay when a dog could not run more than once per week and cost a £30 entry fee for a grades race and £10 per day to keep. Faced with such costs there seemed little point continuing. The excitement and commitment of the early years of dog racing had gone. Much of this contrasting experience is a product of the strong opposition greyhound racing faced after its rapid early growth. From the beginning, greyhound racing was a sport and gambling activity which upset many of the middle class, local authorities, religious denominations and the National Anti-​Gambling League (NAGL). The NAGL had been formed by Seebohm Rowntree, a Quaker chocolate manufacturer, social investigator and social benefactor from York, in 1890, and was supported by Christian religious faiths, though mainly, and fervently, by the Nonconformist denominations. It had enjoyed some success in 1906, with the passing of the Street Betting Act, which banned ready-​cash betting on the streets and added to the constraints on betting imposed by the Betting Houses Acts of the 1850s. Its campaigns were supported by ‘respectable’ people, teachers, religious leaders such as the Anglican Canon Peter Green, the Dean of Manchester, and nonconformist groups. The NAGL was further supported by administrators, local authorities, councillors, figures in the police force such as Robert Peacock who was Chief Constable of Manchester from 1898 to 1926, and, of course, by many MPs. They were divided in precisely what they wanted, particularly so the Christian churches:  the Wesleyan Methodists wanting an end to gambling, the Primitive Methodists and United Methodists hoping for better legislation to deal with gambling, the Baptists sponsoring a local option for local authorities, and other religions wanting to make it illegal for children to attend greyhound meetings.8 These forces of anti-​ gambling formed a small but powerful body of opinion both inside and outside Parliament, presenting gambling as ‘irrational’, somehow not respectable and possibly, often invariably, dishonest. It was they who overwhelmed the 1923 Select Committee on the Betting Duty with anti-​gambling resolutions. Indeed, of the 2,000 resolutions received, 94 per cent came from various churches –​the Primitive Methodists sending in 365 and the Wesleyans 311.9 Religious and social reform organisations formed the Council of Action in May 1923 to mount resistance to gambling and similar action was launched against greyhound racing stadiums in 1928 when, by May, the Home Secretary had received over 1,600 motions from religious and secular groups for state control and regulations to allow local authorities to ban greyhound stadiums. Bodies such as the National Emergency Committee of Christian Citizens published pamphlets condemning gambling as ‘an emotional deficiency disease’.10 John Gulland wrote a pamphlet entitled Canine Casinos for the NAGL, claiming that there was illegal betting going on at the greyhound meetings at the White City, London.11 If, as David Dixon claims, in From Prohibition to Regulation, the NAGL was losing influence

4

4

Going to the dogs

from the beginning of the inter-​war years because of issues of changing personnel and leadership, one should remember that it was only part of a wider framework of opposition to gambling that carried considerable influence.12 However, the correspondence of Rowntree would suggest that the decline of the NAGL set in during the 1930s and that this led to Rowntree financially abandoning the organisation.13 These essentially middle-​class and Establishment opponents saw greyhound racing as facilitating legal ‘on-​course’ gambling for the working classes, causing poverty, corrupting women and children, and creating a ‘something for nothing’ mentality.14 Since the betting was on course, and thus legal, as opposed to off-​ course ready-​money gambling which was illegal, opponents of greyhound racing found it difficult to take action without incurring the wrath of the greyhound interest groups who pointed out that the peripatetic middle class and the locally based working class could attend and gamble at horse racing meetings without such levels of hostility. Despite the obvious discrimination in gambling that was occurring, throughout its first four decades, greyhound racing particularly drew the critical attention of the local authorities, local government and some chief constables, in a way which was not so obvious in the more middle-​class dominated sport of horse racing, even as the hostility towards gambling in general was gradually diminishing in the 1920s and 1930s.15 Winston Churchill, who sought to drown greyhound racing at birth, wrote a letter to the Home Secretary on 13 December 1927, warning of the dangers of the spectacle of the ‘animated roulette boards’, a phrase which he repeated in the House of Commons and which became widely used in debates on greyhound racing.16 William Joynson-​Hicks, the Home Secretary who was often referred to as ‘Jix’, wrote in a memorandum of 30 April 1928 that the ‘mushrooming growth’ of greyhound racing increased the opportunities for the working-​class bettor and consequent poverty.17 In May 1928 greyhound racing was attacked by John Buchan MP, the politician and famous author of the novel The 39 Steps, writing of his disgust at what he perceived happened at greyhound tracks: When the darkness begins and the lights are lowered elsewhere the illuminated ribbon of turf becomes I am bound to say not unlike the green baize –​the animated roulette board –​to which it was compared in the picturesque description of the Chancellor of the Exchequer [Churchill].18

He added that he was not convinced that greyhound racing was ‘preventive of anarchism and Bolshevism’, which had been suggested by the industrial relations expert Lord Askwith, President of the NGRS, quoting a comment made by King Alfonso of Spain in a visit to Britain in 1928.19 In addition, greyhound racing was almost forced out of existence in the ‘Tote crisis’ of 1932–​34, although it was then legalised and controlled by the 1934 Betting and Lotteries Act. Sir Stafford

5

Introduction

5

Cripps, returning from his ambassadorial role in the Soviet Union in the early years of the Second World War, placed greyhound racing alongside boxing as a distraction from work and war production, whilst at the same time ignoring the much more popular gambling sports of football and horse racing. Even though Mike Huggins has perceptively revealed how the opposition to working-​class gambling declined during the inter-​war years, and how a more relaxed attitude to gambling ensued, this was clearly not the case for greyhound racing in the years immediately following the end of the Second World War. The Attlee Labour government of the late 1940s imposed a betting tax on greyhound racing and a licence tax on on-​course bookmakers which were not imposed on horse racing and most other gambling activities. These actions cannot easily be explained away in more pragmatic than puritanical terms by Norman Baker’s in his analysis of the Clement Attlee post-​war Labour governments.20 Baker’s detailed analysis argues that there was no deep hostility towards greyhound racing resulting from the feeling that it did not meet the accepted views of what were true sporting activities, and from the fact that it was deeply associated with gambling, but that action against dog racing arose from the belief that it interfered with its objective of maintaining post-​war industrial production. The fact is that there was no specific evidence that greyhound racing led to absenteeism from work and indeed speedway, which often operated on greyhound tracks to larger crowds and without restrictions, was potentially a greater threat to the occurrence of absenteeism. Nevertheless, Baker wrote that: At best, dog racing existed on the very margins of social conceptions of sporting activities and furthermore carried the burden of an overwhelming association with gambling. Government was not on a mission to destroy the dogs. Rather what were presented as redeeming qualities that led ministers to moderate their policies towards other sports did not exist in the case of dog racing. Had they been a little bit less certain that they knew what was best for the working class, and had they been a little bit more familiar with the social ways and preferences of that class, the ministers of the post-​war government might have pursued different policies.21

Nevertheless, despite arguing that that there was no conscious attempt by the Attlee government to destroy greyhound racing in Britain, it is clear from Baker’s own evidence that there was an unconscious decision to do so, emerging, perhaps, from the historic hostility to gambling of Ramsay MacDonald, and many other prominent Labour politicians influenced by religious nonconformity, who saw greyhound racing as different from other sports.22 Despite the working-​ class roots of many of the members of the Labour governments of 1929–​31 and 1945–​51, greyhound racing was never considered in the same light as the more favourably viewed middle-​class sports and gambling activities, including horse racing, even though some Labour MPs such as Nye Bevan, Secretary of State for

6

6

Going to the dogs

Health and Housing between 1945 and 1950, were much more in favour of greyhound racing.23 It never enjoyed the level of acceptance of other gambling sports and, indeed, more recently, has been the subject of charges of animal cruelty to a level that even the death of horses in the Aintree Grand National horse race never achieved, even during the worst years for horse fatalities. Greyhound racing seems to have been especially selected for special restraining treatment because it was the working class who essentially attended its tracks  –​even though the porosity of class relations in Britain particularly drew some significant middle-​ class interest in the first decade of its existence.24 This conscious and unconscious opposition to greyhound racing led to a discrimination in the taxing of the gambling involved in the sport which was to lead to its rapid decline from the late 1940s onwards. Yet for more than a quarter of a century, and particularly in the 1920s and 1930s, greyhound racing was an important part of the leisure, cultural and community environment of the relatively small number of working-​class people who attended greyhound meetings on a regular basis, before facing a long decline.25 Debates on working-​class leisure and gambling The emergence and subsequent long decline of modern mechanical greyhound racing resonates in the wider debates about British working-​class leisure, which also has a protracted and contentious history often based upon the themes of class and social control. Originally, historians assumed that the leisure and sporting pursuits –​the local fairs, cock fighting and traditional roots  –​of the working class were suppressed as a result of the rise of the middle class during the so-​called Industrial Revolution. However, this view was seriously challenged by Hugh Cunningham’s book, Leisure in the Industrial Revolution, which, in 1980, cast doubt on the belief that there was a fundamental change in working-​class leisure at the beginning of the nineteenth century when the middle classes were supposed to have suppressed and controlled traditional sporting and leisure activities that did not meet with their more orderly, respectable and rational vision of British society.26 Cunningham in fact revealed that many traditional leisure activities survived well into the industrial age, often prospering. Post-​modernist in his approach, and thus critical of sweeping generalisations, Cunningham emphasised the need to view working-​class leisure as pluralistic, with broad strategies of a vigorous commercial popular culture (often run by working-​class entrepreneurs) surviving alongside a religious culture (often dominated by Methodism) and a radical culture (a minority culture of Owenism and Chartism). In essence, Cunningham argued that working-​class leisure often survived attempts to suppress it, as was evident in the continuity of various types of live coursing, whippet racing and dog racing in Britain.

7

Introduction

7

The survival of these traditional working-​class leisure pursuits, according to Cunningham27 and others,28 raised a moral panic amongst the middle classes in the mid-​nineteenth century, at a time of radical disturbance and Chartism. As a result, Cunningham argues, the middle classes sponsored ‘rational recreation’, guiding the working classes to leisure activities that were controlled, ordered and uplifting.29 P. C. Bailey has suggested how the rough and bawdy entertainment of the music hall was increasingly subject to control.30 Indeed, it may have led to some working-​class leisure pursuits, including the initially ill-​disciplined sport of football, becoming increasingly codified from the 1850s onwards. Nevertheless, the argument developed by Cunningham and Bailey assumes that with the pluralism of working-​class leisure came a broad mass culture of the working class which resisted the social control that the middle class threatened. Such views have been supported by Stephen Jones and Ross McKibbin, who also differentiated sport and leisure primarily along class lines.31 Yet this raises the question –​how important was class in leisure activities? Douglas Reid, Peter Borsey and, most obviously, Patrick Joyce, have rejected the pre-​eminence of class in favour of work, gender, ethnicity, age and community. Joyce’s book Work, and his articles on the same subject, argue that whilst there may be some consciousness of class in working-​class leisure there is no evidence of class consciousness, for the varying experiences of workers do not necessarily constitute a class culture as such. He further argues that work, religion and other factors might well have more resonance than class in all aspects of working-​class life.32 By the 1980s and 1990s historians of British leisure had largely come to accept three main points. The first was that working-​class leisure activities were enduring and resistant to change. Second, that they were pluralistic rather than homogeneous. Third, that they were subject to continuing attempts at social control. However, there remained much debate about the extent to which class itself was important as a determinant of working-​class leisure. Joyce had rejected class as a basis for leisure, finding it of marginal importance against work religions, gender and other issues, and his views were partly supported by Andrew Davies in his study of the declining importance of class leisure in Manchester and Salford, where he suggested that gender, generational and regional differences cut across the dominance of class in leisure.33 To Davies the diversity of leisure in working-​ class communities has ‘reinforced a growing recognition of the limitations of a class-​centred approach’.34 This is also gently hinted at by V. A. C. Gatrell, who, on the issues of policing, enforcing the law and social control, has argued that the police were not prepared to act in this partial class manner, as the truncheons of the middle classes, and operate for the state against the working class. Rather, he feels that they sought to impose a type of ‘policeman state’ where the police maintained order by acting as the ‘impersonal agents of central authority’ enforcing the law regardless of the influence of pressure groups whilst being pragmatic in doing what was necessary and what was possible.35 In the final analysis, Gatrell’s

8

8

Going to the dogs

approach suggests that the police would tolerate gambling and greyhound racing as long as it kept broadly within the letter of the law, and endure it and take a pragmatic view of it when the law was broken, regardless of its class base. Other work has suggested that class by itself does not necessarily dominate leisure. The Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm, in his work on the differences in suburbs, casts doubt on the exclusivity of class in defining leisure and this has been further emphasised by Mike Savage, who questioned the social homogeneity of the working classes following his study of a Trade Enquiry conducted by the Board of Trade which indicated that outside London uniform single-​class communities were not the norm and that most communities were marked by urban and suburban differences.36 In summary, then, it would appear that working-​class leisure was interwoven with regional, urban, suburban, age and gender issues, as well as class. Yet whilst class was not necessarily the dominating influence, it remained a potent force in determining how some working-​class leisure activities were viewed. Despite many competing interests, some sports, such as greyhound racing and gambling on the horses and on the football pools, were overwhelmingly dominated by class issues, if not necessarily a sense of class consciousness, because of the plurality of working-​class leisure interests. The debate about the class basis of leisure and social control raged on into the twenty-​first century. In 2004 Brad Beaven took up the issue in his book Leisure, Citizenship and Working-​Class  Men in Britain.37 Whilst essentially revisionist and post-​modernist in focus, denying the broad-​sweeping statements about working-​class leisure and sport pursuits, Beavan argued that one must not overstate the differences between the working classes or underestimate the participation of the poorer workers in the institutions of commercial leisure. He further maintained that there was considerable interaction between working-​class leisure and middle-​class reformers about the quality and meaning of citizenship though successive middle-​class campaigns for rational recreation failed. He argues that working-​class leisure maintained its distinctiveness even as mass culture emerged. Also, commercial leisure activities adapted to the needs of the working class. Whereas some historians have seen the demise of traditional working-​class culture, from nineteenth-​century commercialisation or inter-​war suburbanisation, Beavan stressed continuity rather than change, and participation rather than passivity. Essentially, he viewed the working classes as participants in the creation of their own culture or cultures even as they interact with the middle classes because of the porous nature of class boundaries. Though heavily based upon a regional study of the Midlands, Beavan’s work argues that the middle classes were concerned with the quality of citizenship and felt that the hedonistic nature of popular leisure and culture made some of the working class unfit to play their full and proper role in the community. Nevertheless, to Beavan, the middle classes were powerless to prevent the continuation of popular working-​class leisure.

9

Introduction

9

This view is further endorsed by Sonya Rose, who argues that during the Second World War the middle-​class and Establishment efforts to control and scrutinise working-​class leisure gave way to the attempt by the wartime government to control all leisure.38 Thus the current state of the opinion is still divided as to whether or not leisure was class-​based but tends to agree that there was a prevailing middle-​ class desire throughout the nineteenth and early and mid-​twentieth centuries to control any working-​class leisure which did not seem rational and responsible in the modernised industrial communities of the age, and that there was an equally strong desire by the working class to resist that control. This conflict of opinion and action is evident in the debate about gambling where the overarching emphasis is placed upon the economic and social impact of gambling on the working classes. Many contemporary figures39 of the early twentieth century, and particularly Seebohm Rowntree, felt that gambling, and particularly working-​class gambling, had increased in the twentieth century and had had a deleterious impact upon working-​class lives.40 Yet, in contrast to this, many more recent writers, such as Carl Chinn41 and Mark Clapson,42 have argued that whilst gambling was a pervasive, often illegal, part of working-​class life, it was just a ‘bit of a flutter’ and was manageable within working-​class budgets. Indeed, the numerous surveys of the 1930s and 1940s indicated that the average bet for the working class in all gambling forms was relatively low, probably as low as 2s 6d (10p) to 3s (15p) in the late 1940s compared to double that bet by the middle classes.43 It is certainly the case that the NAGL and religious groups were fearful of the social and economic cost of working-​class gambling. Yet, there are no accurate figures about the exact scale of gambling. Indeed, during the inter-​war years gambling estimates varied widely, and it was often inaccurately assumed that most stakes were lost. The Spectator of 16 April 1923 estimated gambling turnover at £450 million per year. W. J. Randall, of the Turf Guardians, suggested gambling at £100  million in the mid-​1920s.44 Evidence presented to the Royal Commission on Betting, Lotteries and Gaming (1949–​51), the Willink Commission, speculatively suggested an annual turnover of between £200 million and £400 million per year. However, since so much of gambling was illegal, there are no verifiable figures for gambling in Britain and particularly so for working-​class gambling, other than for legal gambling which is recorded and may be subject to tax.45 Whatever the estimates, the institutional middle-​class view was that gambling was not appropriate to the relatively impoverished and economically marginal position of the working class. Opponents of gambling put forward three main arguments for their opposition to working-​class gambling:  that the ‘profligate’, ‘indigent’ and ‘feckless’ working class could not afford to gamble; that it would corrupt women and children; and that it would create a something-​for-​nothing culture. The NAGL had initiated the Street Betting

10

Going to the dogs

10

Act of 1906, which made street betting a criminal offence as an addition to the nineteenth-​century legislation against gaming houses. Off-​course ready-​ money gambling of the working classes was made illegal whilst the legal-​on course and off-​course credit betting of the middle class remained legal and untouched.46 The radical weekly Truth made much of this class division in the treatment of gambling and, in October 1938, wrote that: ‘The man of means can back his fancy with a starting price office if he is unable to go to the racecourse but Alf the Tried and Trusted, the bookie of the street, is harried by the police.’47 Mr J. Jones, Labour MP for West Ham Silverstone, expressed similar views when speaking at the second reading of the Betting and Lotteries Bill in 1934: The evils of gambling are only discovered when working men start gambling, then it becomes a moral offence. I can go to Throgmorten Street to-​morrow morning and see a more responsible kind of gambling; nobody thinks of calling it street betting. In some streets in my division I can see the detectives picking up an odd man here and there who is taking a betting slip. The other people can gamble with impunity. Those who put a shilling on a horse are heading for Dartmoor but those who put thousands down are not gambling at all: they are only acting in a business-​ like manner … There ought not to be one law for the rich and another for the poor which is the case today.48

Historiography of greyhound racing Nevertheless, whilst working-​class leisure and gambling have drawn significant discussion on class discrimination, the hostility of middle-​class organisations and the surviving powers of working-​class interest, there has been very little academic discussion on greyhound racing as a gambling sport, although many generic questions and themes on leisure and sport have emerged from its limited corpus of knowledge and debate.49 The least controversial debate has concerned the origins of the sport; did greyhound racing emerge from an established past or was it fundamentally a new sport? It is well known that coursing and whippet racing were its precursors in Britain, although modern greyhound racing was shaped by the influence of developments in the United States. Much more vital has been debate over the extent to which modern greyhound racing was a working-​class sport. Ross McKibbin, in his book on Classes and Culture: England 1918–​1951 (1998), portrayed greyhound racing as ‘not a socially inclusive sport’ and that it was ‘genuinely proletarian’, with ‘only a few high-​born people attending it out of a sense of slumming it and sporting bohemianism’.50 Jeff Hill also described it as ‘almost exclusively working-​class in character’.51 Brian Belton’s study of greyhound racing in West Ham assumes its essential appeal to the working classes.52 Successive governments of the twentieth century, as will

11

Introduction

11

become evident, accepted much the same point. Yet it has also been asserted that it must not be assumed that greyhound racing was solely the preserve of the working-​class gambler. Indeed, John Stevenson has recognised its cosmopolitan nature.53 More emphatically, Mike Huggins has revealed that whilst those attending greyhound tracks were increasingly working class in the late 1930s, with new and smaller tracks opening, there was a fleeting interest from middle-​ class attenders in the late 1920s and early 1930s, particularly at the larger tracks with parking facilities catering for the rapid expansion of middle-​class car ownership. Indeed, it is also true that the middle class became involved in many other aspects of the sport, such as investing in tracks and owning the dogs. Huggins maintains that the middle classes were drawn to greyhound racing because it was ‘emblematic of modernity’, citing J.  B. Priestley’s well-​known description of its as being ‘part of the new, modern, postwar England’.54 However, he notes that this middle-​class interest declined from the mid-​1930s as it moved towards more hedonistic and fashionable leisure pursuits. Nevertheless, he argues that the myth that greyhound racing was almost exclusively working class apparently arose because the Greyhound Racing Protection Association (GRPA) juxtaposed horse racing against greyhound racing, giving the impression that horse racing was an upper-​class pastime whilst greyhound racing was the ‘great new democratic sport’ of the working class. Greyhound racing thus became ‘the working man’s turf ’ or ‘poor-​man’s racing’ in the minds of many by the mid-​1930s by misrepresentation.55 Huggins’ argument is further enhanced by the suggestions that the middle classes, essentially the lower middle classes, were deeply financially and commercially involved in developing the greyhound tracks, and the obvious implication being that sections of the middle classes made speculative ventures to turn a quick profit through the popularity of the sport. However, this apparent myth of greyhound racing becoming a working-​class sport may soon have become reality as the sport became increasingly the preserve of a small proportion of regular working-​class bettors. Contemporaries and historians have also asked what was the impact of greyhound racing upon working-​class bettors, their families and the wider community? Was it a ruinous financial activity which impoverished the working class or was it ‘a bit of a flutter’, manageable within working-​class budgets? The former view was certainly one held by the opponents of gambling even though more recent writers such as Carl Chinn and Mark Clapson have rejected it.56 Many Labour politicians, though by no means all, and the Attlee Labour governments (1945–​51) added to this a fear that it undermined British industrial production during and immediately after the Second World War. According to Norman Baker, as already mentioned, the Attlee governments linked greyhound racing to the faltering the post-​war recovery.57 Thus greyhound tracks became ‘Canine Casinos’ gaining ‘pariah-​like status’ not because of any prejudice against greyhound racing, or even class discrimination by the Establishment, but because

12

12

Going to the dogs

of a fear that they would damage Britain’s economic recovery.58 Yet given the evidence presented by Baker, as well as the considerable evidence of anti-​greyhound racing prejudice of civil servants in government records, this view is questionable. Indeed, Daryl Leeworthy has countered the suggestion that greyhound racing interfered with the local economy and, by implication, the national economy. He argues that, in South Wales at least, greyhound racing created economic, social and leisure opportunities, not disastrous economic and social problems.59 To Leeworthy, greyhound racing was an important employer and evidence suggests that as early as 1934 there were about 7,000 people employed at greyhound tracks and that this number had grown to 4,140 permanent staff (3,258 men and 882 women) and to 14,809 part-​time employees on the seventy-​three NGRS tracks alone, although another 120 to 130 tracks existed, by 1949.60 The implication is that the total number of directly employed full-​time and part-​time workers at all tracks may well have been almost twice that number –​say 30,000, with many more employed in supplying the tracks with trained greyhounds, equipment and food. These issues and questions relating to the impact of greyhound racing on individual and community life hover around the observation of Sir John Gilmour, a Home Secretary in the 1930s, that gambling changed fundamentally for the worse with the arrival of greyhound racing providing more betting opportunities for the working class. Not surprisingly, greyhound racing often became the ‘whipping boy’ for gambling in general, and for wartime and post-​war economic failures in particular. It was often attacked on the assumption that it was not a rational recreation. However, it is possible that greyhound racing created some economic opportunities for the working class and acted as an escape from ennui for a minority of those who attended alongside a small hard core of professional and semi-​professional gamblers. Its supposed impact upon the living standards of the working class and industrial production may well have been exaggerated. Assuming that greyhound racing was a working-​class sport, what did it actually add to the variety of working-​class leisure? More specifically how was it organised, and what did it offer in its relatively brief period of supremacy in the inter-​war years and the years immediately following the Second World War when, after the cinema and the football pools, it was financially the third largest leisure pursuit in Britain? It is clear that whilst the NAGL and the opponents of greyhound racing felt that it impoverished the working class, Daryl Leeworthy61 and Mark Clapson have argued that greyhound racing, apart from providing economic opportunities, widened the cultural and leisure activities of working-​class communities. Indeed, along with Huggins and others, they have noted the large investments in constructing tracks and creating the infrastructure of a sport which locked into the local, essentially working-​class, community. At another level, the working class bred and trained their own greyhounds for the flapping traps, as well as acted as

13

Introduction

13

gatemen and took on the other employment opportunities provided by the tracks. They also attended the tracks for the spectacle they offered. There are other more obvious questions that arise from the issues and debates about leisure and gambling which relate to greyhound racing. Why, for instance, did greyhound racing grow so quickly? Why did it receive its pariah-​like status with the churches, local authorities and the Establishment? Why did it upset the public authorities? In the broader sphere of the history of greyhound racing, what does its history reflect about the attitude of the authorities to working-​class gambling and leisure pursuits in general? Were the social-​control attempts to restrict greyhound racing part of the middle-​class assault on the belief that it added considerably to the ‘wasteful expenditure’ of working class on gambling? Could the attacks upon it be seen as part of an attempt at the social control of a mass culture as part of the legitimising of citizenship raised in the recent debates by Cunningham, Bailey, Beaven and others? Were the attempts to use the police to control and close tracks part of this campaign against greyhound racing because the Establishment and the middle classes did not see it as a form of rational recreation? Despite the level of public institutional hostility towards greyhound racing, did the police adopt the culturally neutral, and possibly minimalist, Gatrell’s ‘policeman’s-​state’ approach in maintaining public order? If so, why did they do this and what impact did it have on the sport of greyhound racing? How did the sport survive until the late 1940s when the first post-​war Attlee Labour government imposed discriminatory taxation upon the greyhound totalisators and the bookmakers who attended greyhound tracks? Did this start a train of events that led to its demise or were there other changes in the behaviour of society that made it difficult for the various business models of greyhound racing to operate effectively and profitably? In summary, then, there are several interlinked questions. They focus upon the origins and rapid growth of greyhound racing, the class of the bettors, the social and cultural development of the sport, attempts at social control, and the reason for its decline from the late 1940s onwards. Argument In responding to these broad questions, it will be argued that greyhound racing emerged as a new mechanised sport based upon an established tradition of dog racing. Indeed it became a nationally organised niche sport for the working classes based upon the finance of a large number of small-​scale middle-​class investors in the tracks, who constructed numerous tracks, adopted a variety of business models and generated new technology. Small-​scale working-​class and middle-​class breeders and trainers built up a service industry of greyhounds to race on the tracks. It became an immensely successful sport in its early years,

14

Going to the dogs

14

becoming an active part of local working-​class culture, but was faced with a serious attempt by the NAGL, the churches, and the middle-​class Establishment to curb its activities in a way which was not so evident in most other sporting and gambling activities, and particularly in horse racing. The anti-​gambling organisations objected to greyhound racing because it involved gambling, feeling that it was not a rational recreation and one that caused poverty and low moral standards amongst the working class. The incessant pressure the anti-​gambling groups placed on the Home Office to ban the sport was largely rebuffed, the Home Office and the police failing to see gambling at greyhound meetings, as Gatrell’s work implies, as a problem beyond the need to enforce the law with a light touch. In any case, a core, of about 30 per cent, of MPs in the House of Commons (about 200 MPs), composed mainly of Conservatives but also of some Labour MPs, formed a barrier to attempts to ban the sport. As a result, the sport prospered, provided jobs and opportunities, as well as cheap entertainment, ‘an American night out’ for the working classes. Nevertheless, at the end of the Second World War, when the influence of the anti-​gambling organisations had greatly diminished, it faced the discriminatory taxation of the post-​war Attlee Labour governments and the Betting and Gaming Act (1960) which drove gambling from greyhound tracks to the off-​course bookmakers, and it declined slowly to the edge of oblivion to become little more than a servant of the demands of the television schedules and streaming into betting offices. In other words, it enjoyed a very successful, if somewhat precarious, existence in the sporting and gambling history of Britain for about a quarter of a century, during which the forces of gambling and anti-​gambling invariably came into serious conflict, before moving slowly towards its twilight years from the 1950s onwards. Notes 1 The National Archives, Kew, for HO 45/​14222 /​499163/​1, where these comments are on the on the inside and outside of the outer cover of the file. The various Home Office (HO), Board of Trade (BT), Customs and Excise (CUST), employment (NF), Housing and Local Government (HLG), and Metropolitan Police files (MEPOL or MEPO), and other variously names government files, referred to in this book are all to be found in the National Archives at Kew. 2 Sir Robert Peacock was the Chief Constable of Manchester from 1898 until his death at the end of 1926. He was vehemently opposed to greyhound racing which had developed in Manchester. His successor, John Maxwell, was less concerned. The opinions of chief constables did vary but often on issues of the cost of policing the tracks. In HO 45/​ 14222/​499163/​2, however, he wrote that ‘The coursing of the mechanical hare is free from any taint of cruelty’ and adds that there was no evidence that ‘the young in particular fall prey to the bookmakers wiles’.

15

Introduction

15

3 HO 45/​ 14222/​499163/​1. 4 Mark Clapson, A Bit of a Flutter: Popular Gambling and English Society c. 1831–​1961 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992), p. 146. 5 Mike Huggins, ‘“Everybody’s Going to the Dogs”? The Middle Classes and Greyhound Racing in Britain between the Wars’, Journal of Sport History, 34.1 (Spring 2007), 97–​ 120. Also, G. A. Stoddard Kennedy, Going to the Dogs (London: National Emergency Committee of Christian Churches, 1928). 6 Daily Express, 10 October 1927. 7 Guardian, 24 March 2017. 8 HO 45/​14222, Part  1, 449163/​82 contains a file on ‘Greyhound Racing and the Electronic Hare’, and includes a variety of cuttings from newspapers such as The Field, 29 December 1927, which indicates the range of religious opinions. 9 Mike Huggins, ‘Betting Sport and the British, 1918–​1939’, Journal of Social History, 41.2 (2007), 287. 10 There were various pamphlets produced by the National Emergency Committee of Christian Citizens such as H. Carter, Facts About Greyhound Racing; H. Carter, The Betting Scandal at Wembley; T.  P. Kirk, Sport or Plunder; G.  A. Stoddard Kennedy, Going to the Dogs, all published in London during 1928. 11 John Gulland, Canine Casinos (London: National Anti-​Gambling League, 1928). 12 David Dixon, From Prohibition to Regulation:  Bookmaking, Anti-​Gambling and the Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 65. 13 Keith Laybourn, Working-​Class Gambling in Britain, c 1906–​1860s: The Stages of the Political Debate (Lampeter: Edwin Mellen, 2007), pp. 78–​87. This draws from letters that were in the Library of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, in Gamb 7, but now deposited in the Borthwick Institute at the University of York. 14 Ibid., particularly pp. 35–​41. 15 Huggins, ‘Betting, Sport and the British, 1918–​1939’, 283–​306. The Chief Constables of Manchester, Peacock and Maxwell, were particularly concerned about greyhound racing developing on their patch. 16 HO 45/​14222. 17 HO 45/​14222/​499167/​174, in a draft memorandum on John Buchan’s Local Option Bill, 1928. 18 HO 45/​14222/​499163/​183, referring to a speech made in the House of Commons by John Buchan on 11 May 1928, quoting from Fifth Series, Parliamentary Debates, Commons, 11 May 1928, vol. 217, col. 548. Also look at Daily Herald, 5 April 1929, for an article by Buchan on ‘Gone to the Dogs’. 19 HO 45/​14222, Part  2 /​499163/​173. There is an irony here that King Alfonso abdicated in 1931. 20 Huggins, ‘Betting, Sport and the British, 1918–​1939’; Norman Baker, ‘Going to the Dogs  –​Hostility to Greyhound Racing in Britain:  Puritanism, Socialism and Pragmatism’, Journal of Sports History, 23 (1996), 97–​119. 21 Baker, ‘Going to the Dogs’, 119. 22 J. Ramsay MacDonald, Gambling and Citizenship (London: National Anti-​Gambling Association, 1905). 23 Wray Vamplew, The Turf: A Social and Economic History of Horseracing (London: Allen Lane, 1976), p. 225, deals with the way in which a private members’ bill led to the

16

16

Going to the dogs

racecourse Betting Act of 1928, which allowed for the setting up of totes at horse race meetings. Promoted by the Jockey Club this was supported by the government but whilst it might have reflected some change in opinion on horse racing this was not evident in the tote debates of the early 1930s in connection with the greyhound tote. 24 Huggins, ‘ “Everybody’s Going to the Dogs”?’. 25 Daryl Leeworthy, ‘A Diversion from the New Leisure: Greyhound Racing, Working-​ Class Culture and the Politics of Unemployment in Inter-​War South Wales’, Sport in History, 32.1 (2012), 53–​73. 26 Hugh Cunningham, Leisure in the Industrial Revolution (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1980). 27 Geoffrey Best, Mid-​Victorian Britain 1851–​1875 (London:  Littlehampton Book Service, 1971). 28 Ibid. 29 Cunningham, Leisure in the Industrial Revolution, p. 90. 30 P. C. Bailey, Music Hall: The Business of Pleasure (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1981); Peter Bailey, ‘Leisure, Culture and the Historian: reviewing the first generation of leisure historiography in Britain’, Leisure Studies, 8.2 (1989), 107–​27. 31 S. G. Jones, Workers at Play:  A Social and Economic History of Leisure 1918–​1939 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986); Ross McKibbin, Classes and Cultures: England 1918–​1951 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998); Ross McKibbin, ‘Working-​Class Gambling in Britain 1880–​1939’, Past & Present, 82.1 (1979), 147–​78. 32 Patrick Joyce, Work, Society and Politics: The Culture of the Factory in Late Victorian Britain (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1980); Patrick Joyce (ed.), The Historical Meaning of Work (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1989), Patrick Joyce, Vision of the People:  Industrial England and the Question of Class (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1991). 33 Andrew Davies, Leisure, Gender and Poverty:  Working-​Class  Culture in Salford and Manchester 1990–​1939 (Buckingham and Philadelphia:  Open University Press, 1992). He argues that there were gender differences, that teenagers often did not follow the leisure habits of their fathers, and that variations in regional policy cut across any notion of a class-​centred leisure for the working class. 34 A. Davies and S. Fielding (eds), Workers’ Worlds: Culture and Communities in Manchester and Salford 1880–​1939 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992), p. 10. 35 V. A. C. Gatrell, ‘Crime, Prevention and the Policeman-​State’, in F. M. L. Thompson (ed.), The Cambridge Social History of Britain 1750–​1990 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 243–​310, particularly p. 260. 36 M. A. Savage and A. Miles, The Remaking of the British Working Class, 1850 to 1940 (London: Routledge, 1994); J. Lawrence, Speaking for the People: Party, Language and Popular Politics in England, 1867–​1914 (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1998); J. Lawrence, ‘The British Sense of Class’, Journal of Contemporary History, 35 (2000), 307–​18. 37 Brad Beaven, Leisure, Citizenship and Working-​Class  Men in Britain, 1850–​1945 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004). 38 Sonya O. Rose, ‘Sex, Citizenships and the Nation in World War II in Britain’, American Historical Review, 103 (1998), 1147–​76.

17

Introduction

17

39 Rev. J. Glass, Gambling and Religion (London:  Longman, Green and Co., 1924); P.  Green, The Fight against the Betting Evil:  A Trumpet Call by Rev. Peter Green, Canon of Manchester, Chaplain to H.M.  the King (n.d.); MacDonald, Gambling and Citizenship; J. L. Paton, The Rights and Wrongs of Gambling (London:  NAGL, n.d.); Rev. E. Benson Perkins, The Problem of Gambling (London:  Epworth Press, 1919); Carl Chinn, Better Betting with a Decent Feller: A Social History of Bookmaking (London: Aurum, 2004 edition). 40 B. Seebohm Rowntree, Poverty and Progress:  A Second Survey of York (London: Longman, Green & Co, 1941), p. 403. 41 Chinn, Better Betting with a Decent Feller; Clapson, A Bit of a Flutter. 42 Clapson, A Bit of a Flutter. 43 Laybourn, Working-​Class Gambling in Britain, pp.  162–​3; Royal Commission on Betting, Lotteries and Gaming (Willink, 1949–​51), Final Report, pp.  36–​7. The Hulton Readership Survey of 1949–​1950, the Social Survey on Betting, the Sherman Survey submitted to the Royal Commission, and others, offered slightly different figures but were broadly within the range indicated in the main text. The Social Survey suggested a weekly stake of about 2s 6d whilst the Hulton Readership Survey suggested than men staked about 3s 10d (19p) and women about 2s (10p). 44 Rev. E. B. Perkins, Betting Facts:  Being an Account of the Facts on Betting Given in Evidence Before the Select Committee of the House of Commons on Betting Duty (London: Wesleyan Methodist Church, 1925). 45 HO 335/​29; HO 335/​52. 46 G. Reith, The Age of Chance: Gambling in Western Culture (London: Routledge, 2002); Laybourn, Working-​Class Gambling in Britain, p.  34; D. Dixon, From Prohibition to Regulation, Bookmaking, Anti-​Gambling and the Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 56–​9. 47 The Truth, 13 October 1938. 48 Fifth Series, Parliamentary Debates, Commons, 1934, vol. 291, 18 June–6 July, cols 1192–​3. 49 Apart from the other articles and books mentioned in this chapter there is Mike Cronin, ‘Arthur Elvin and the Dogs of Wembley’, Sports Historian, 22 (2002), 100–​ 14; Colin Griffin, ‘Going to the Dogs:  Some Further Evidence’, Journal of Sports History, 25 (1998), 601–​4; and Keiran Foley, ‘Going to the Dogs: A Social History of Greyhound Racing 1926–​1960’ (unpublished MA thesis, Lancaster University, 1998). Chloe Trippier researched the Albion Stadium, Salford, for an MA at the University of Salford in 2013. Books such as Mike Huggins and Jack Williams, Sport and the English Between the Wars (London: Routledge, 2006) are useful but have very little on greyhound racing, most of which is confined to p. 65. 50 Ross McKibbin, Classes and Culture in England 1918–​ 1951 (Oxford:  Oxford University Press), pp. 362, 384–​5. 51 Jeff Hill, Sport, Leisure and Culture in Twentieth Century Britain (London: Palgrave, 2001), p. 38. 52 Brian Belton, When West Ham went to the Dogs (Stroud: Tempus, 2002). 53 J. Stevenson, British Society 1914–​1945 (London: Penguin, 1984), p. 386. 54 Huggins, ‘Everybody’s Going to the Dogs?’, 105–​6.

18

18 5 5 Baker, ‘Going to the Dogs’, 99. 56 Chinn, Better Betting with Decent Feller; Clapson, A Bit of Flutter. 57 Baker, ‘Going to the Dogs’. 58 Ibid., 98. 59 Leeworthy, ‘A Diversion from the New Leisure’. 60 HO 335/​77. 61 Leeworthy, ‘A Diversion from the New Leisure’.

Going to the dogs

19

1

The rise of greyhound racing in Britain, 1926–​45: the politics of discrimination

Hare coursing was common throughout Britain in the nineteenth century and whippet racing popular in London and the North but it was not until 1876, when greyhounds chased a mechanical hare (a false trail or quarry) at Welsh Harp racecourse in Hendon, North London, that modern mechanised greyhound racing began.1 This flicker of activity provoked little interest and the working classes remained loyal to whippet racing, where dogs were released to run across a field following lures attached to ropes and encouraged on by people waving flags. Nevertheless, there was clearly a British nineteenth-​century pedigree to greyhound racing and an infrastructure of types that favoured its rapid development. Notwithstanding this early failure, the idea of modern mechanical greyhound racing was revived in 1912 by Owen Patrick Smith, of the United States, who opened the first professional oval dog track with a mechanical hare at Emeryville, California, in 1919. Here, he attached to it a ‘certificate system’ of betting that led to the emergence of the pari-​mutuel betting system, whereby all bets are placed together in a pool from which any taxes and the ‘house take’ are removed and the payoff odds calculated by sharing the pool among all the winning bets. This was to become known as the totalisator, or the tote, in Britain where it competed at the track with the independent bookmakers for bets. From these small beginnings the idea of operating a mechanical hare on an oval track was introduced into Britain in 1926 by the American Charles Munn, and a number of British businessmen. Following the example of the newly-formed American International Greyhound Racing Association, they launched the Greyhound Racing Association, which held a six-​race meeting at Belle Vue Stadium, a converted old dog-​racing track in Manchester, on 24 July 1926.2 From then onwards, the sport of greyhound racing mushroomed, reaching 13.7 million attendances in 1928, 18 million in 1931, and 20.8 million in 1932 on NGRS tracks alone. The urban centres of London, Glasgow and Manchester dominated these fi ­ gures –​London accounting for more than nine million attendances, Glasgow 2.34 million and Manchester about 1.74 million in 1932.3 By the late 1930s the number of tracks fluctuated

20

20

Going to the dogs

between 200 and about 220, as they opened and closed, and attendances were in the region of thirty-​two million, as indicated in Table 1.1.4 Despite the threatened legislative challenges in the late 1920s, the ‘Tote crisis’ of 1932–​34, the Second World War and the Attlee years, greyhound racing did not begin its long decline until the late 1940s and early 1950s, when attendances may have reached more than forty million on the NGRC ‘licensed tracks’, the ‘unlicensed tracks’, known as ‘flapping tracks’, and the small, itinerant ‘tracks of eight days’.5 In contrast, by the early twenty-​first century attendances were down to two million. In the first three decades of its existence greyhound racing faced an embattled existence, which raises a number of important questions. Why did it grow so quickly to become one of the top three spectator sports in Britain within a decade? Who invested in it (see ­chapter  3)? Which social classes attended the tracks? Why was it prone to internal conflict? Why did it face immense external religious and Establishment opposition? And why (although this question is more the basis of ­chapter 2), in the 1950s, was it facing a long, slow and relentless decline having withstood for many years the hostility of the anti-​gambling organisations and the nonconformist churches whose power was apparently waning? Above all, and throughout, why did greyhound racing seemed to be perpetually the pariah of British gambling sports? The answers to these questions are not always obvious but, on balance, the evidence suggests that greyhound racing was largely financed by small-​scale middle-​class investors, alongside a few prominent wealthy investors who wished to cash in on the gambling aspect of dog racing and investments in tote machines and mechanical hares, although there were big financiers at the large tracks who were often on the council of the NGRS and had shares in numerous greyhound companies (see ­chapter 3). In the main, greyhound racing attracted the urban working-​class punters who were given ready and legal access to the ready-​money gambling denied them off the course. Yet throughout greyhound racing was riven with fractious organisational conflict between the larger NGRS tracks, running under the rules of its self-​appointed NGRC, and the smaller ‘unlicensed’ (by the NGRS) provincial tracks, often known as flapping tracks, and their various organisations such as the British Greyhound Tracks Control Society (BGTCS), amongst others, and, from 1947, the Provincial Greyhound Tracks Central Office (PGTCO). The NGRS/​ NGRC was also frequently in conflict with the bookmakers, often represented by the National Bookmakers and Associated Joint Protection Society and the National Association of Bookmakers, which opposed the very existence of the tote. As a result, greyhound racing was always vulnerable to the strong opposition of relatively small, though powerful, religious and political groups, who did not regard it as a rational recreation for the working classes. Such opposition may have diminished as the twentieth century progressed, as Mike Huggins has suggested, but greyhound racing was particularly discriminated against in the late 1940s and declined from then onwards.6

21

The rise of greyhound racing, 1926–45

21

Table 1.1  Annual attendances at greyhound tracks in Britain, 1927–​2017 Year

Attendances at tracks NGRS/​NGRC

1927 1928 1929 1930 1931 1932 1935 1938 1942 1946 1947 1948 1949 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972

BGTCS/​PGTCO

5,656,686 13,695,275 15,855,275 17,119,120 17,906,917 20,178,760

25,203,553 25,200,000 22,549,079 21,200,000 20,900,000 19,900,000 18,400,000 17,900,000 16,600,000 16,500,000 15,400,000 15,300,000 14,500,000 12,800,000 12,000,000 11,500,000 11,200,000 10,500,000 9,900,000 9,100,000 8,000,000 7,400,000 7,200,000 6,400,000

6,500,000 6,516,396

Total (minus independent tracks and tracks of ‘eight days’)

32,000,000 36,000,000 47,000,000 39,000,000 36,000,000 31,703,553 30,000,000 26,000,000

The new National Greyhound Racing Club unites the NGRS and the PGTCO in 1972 1973 6,100,000 (c. 4.6 m. NGRS/​C and 1.5m PGTCO) (continued )

22

Going to the dogs

22 Table 1.1 Cont. Year

Attendances at tracks NGRS/​NGRC

1975 1977 2007

BGTCS/​PGTCO

Total (minus independent tracks and tracks of ‘eight days’)

6,200,000 6,500,000 3,200,000

Greyhound Board of Great Britain (formed in 2009) 2009 3,000,000 2017 2,000,000

3,000,000 2,000,000

Sources: There are no totally accurate figures on attendance at greyhound tracks. Normally the NGRS and PGTCO figures are available but there were independent tracks, as there are in 2017, whose attendances do not find their way into the total listed figures, and the temporary, itinerant, ‘tracks of eight days’, allowed under the 1934 Betting and Lotteries Act. The figures in the table are drawn from evidence in the following. HO 45/​15853/​663794/​4, figures from a NGRS letter dated 30 June 1953; HO 335/​87, PGTCO evidence and memorandum submitted in 1950 to the Royal Commission on Betting, Lotteries and Gaming, para. 22 for attendances at Grade 1 to Grade 4 tracks in 1950; HO 335/​102, Royal Commission on Betting, Gaming and Lotteries (1949–51), Final Report, para. 152; HO 335/​77, NGRS evidence to the Royal Commission on Betting, Gaming and Lotteries (1949–​51), and letter 15 January 1951; HO 45/​24210; BS3/​ 26, NGRC and British Greyhound Racing Federation evidence to the Royal Commission on Gambling (the Rothschild Commission), June 1976, Appendix B; Laybourn, Working-​Class Gambling in Britain, pp. 189–​90.

Beginnings Major L. Lynne Dixon, Brigadier-​General A. C. Critchley, a Canadian living in England and known as ‘Critch’, who was briefly MP for Twickenham from 1934 to 1935,7 Charles A. Munn, an American who was in the cement industry, and Robert Grant junior, an American director of Barclay’s bank, gathered together to form the Greyhound Racing Association (Manchester) Limited (GRA) in October 1925. Munn showed Critchley photographs of an electric stadium in Oklahoma, in the United States, and Critchley recognised that mechanised greyhound racing could become the ‘poor man’s racecourse’ and promoted the sport with the initial £22,000 needed to float the company.8 The company was chaired by Sir William Gentle, a former army officer and a retired chief constable of Brighton.9 The opening of its track as Belle Vue offered an ‘American-​style’ night out with gambling, for a 1s 6d (7.5p) entry charge. There were only 1,700 people at the first meeting, and it incurred a loss of £50 (about £5,000 at 2017 values) on the night, but crowds of up to 25,000 were being attracted by the spring of 1927 and the valuation of the NGRS shares had risen from one shilling (5p) on

23

The rise of greyhound racing, 1926–45

23

the Stock Exchange to £37–​10s (£37.50) in 1926.10 Unlike modern-​day Belle Vue meetings, which attract about 2,000 bettors and a dozen or so bookmakers, the early meetings were normally attended by about 25,000 bettors and about 100 bookmakers competing with the tote. Greyhound racing had become an overnight sensation, the crowds being drawn by the buzz, lights, atmosphere and gambling of the race tracks. In placing greyhound racing into its context it should not be forgotten that these developments were occurring after a long gestation and at the cusp of a rapid expansion boom in greyhound racing throughout the world. The first greyhound race using an artificial lure occurred, as already indicated, in a field near Welsh Harp, Hendon Way in North London in September 1876.11 The ‘hare’ was dragged along by a rope attached to a windlass worked by hand, The Times reporting, under the title ‘Coursing by Proxy’, that in future coursing might become unnecessary for ‘The new sport is undoubtedly an exciting and interesting one’, and that there was not the ‘faintest shadow of the reproach of cruelty attaching to it’ as the greyhounds ran a distance of 400 yards in a straight line after the artificial hare.12 However, the sport never developed and it is generally recognised that Owen Patrick Smith, of Oklahoma in the United States, was the founder of modern greyhound racing having promoted a race with greyhounds following a dummy hare at Salt Lake City in 1907. After several ventures he patented a dummy hare in 1912 and was able to use his invention of a crudely built track at Emeryville, California, in 1919. A year after this success he built a track in Tulsa and then another track at Hialeah, in Florida, a state which became, and still is, the centre of the sport in the United States. The growth of the sport in the United States was unabated and about 160 tracks were opened in the 1920s.13 The sport also grew in other countries and by the late 1920s there were fifteen tracks in Ireland (including the popular Dunmore Park in Belfast), tracks in Australia, at Chantilly in Paris, and greyhound racing had also begun in Belgium.14 In these hectic early formative years, Critchley and the other directors became involved in forming the Greyhound Racing Association Trust Ltd in Britain with capital of £998,442, and this financed the formation of nineteen tracks, including Belle Vue in Manchester, which saw the first British greyhound meeting in July 1926, and the White City and Harringay, in London, Hall Green in Birmingham and Powderhall in Edinburgh (see Appendix 1).15 In December 1927 the NGRS was formed to represent the commercial interests of the various tracks and in early 1928 Munn, Critchley and the others also formed the NGRC.16 Dominated by Dixson, the Racing Director, and Critchley, the Judge, the NGRC was formed to set up the rules for greyhound tracks on all NGRS ‘licensed’ tracks. The NGRC claimed to be ‘a body of independent gentlemen not financially interested in any track, which ensures that the promoters are responsible persons with sufficient capital to enable them to lay out the proposed tracks’.17 In 1932, the NGRC

24

24

Going to the dogs

rules operated on forty-​five NGRS tracks and it claimed that ‘everything is being conducted according to the Rules’ (Appendix 1 suggests forty-​three in 1933). Indeed, the NGRS and the NGRC became almost interchangeable bodies and their acronyms were often used indiscriminately, and incorrectly, as alternatives for one another in parliamentary enquiries and in government papers. The NGRC sought to act like the Jockey Club in horse racing but never commanded the full authority of the industry or the support of government even though it sought to work with the state to control greyhound racing, to prevent Sunday meetings, and to remove the independent and smaller ‘flapping tracks’ which seemed to offer the main threat to the creation of a legitimate greyhound racing industry.18 In 1928, the Home Office surveyed the state of greyhound racing in Britain as it appeared at the end of 1927. It produced a reflective and, sometimes, contradictory report on how far greyhound racing had developed during its first full year, driven by the criticisms of Winston Churchill (then Chancellor of the Exchequer) MP and also John Buchan MP, who was promoting the ‘Dog Racing Bill’ to give local authorities the powers to prevent the development and proliferation of greyhound tracks.19 This report reflected that the headquarters of the GRA had moved from Belle Vue to the White City, which had been built in 1904 for the 1908 London Olympics, and had opened Harringay and had sixteen other tracks by the end of 1927.20 Two of its intended tracks –​Crystal Palace, in London, and the Isle of Man –​failed to open, the NAGL having raised a petition of 43,434 signatures against the opening of the Crystal Palace track and the Tynwald (Isle of Man Parliament) having passed a betting and gaming bill prohibiting gambling other than on existing horse race meetings. The report further noted that there were seventeen tracks operating in 1927, sixty-​seven in construction, and that another fifty or so companies were contemplating opening tracks, although other numbers in the report suggest higher figures.21 All the operating tracks were being run by managers and the stewards who had often been officers in the army or naval officers, for this gave the owners a chance to emphasise the respectability of the sport and also permitted the owners to operate a tote for their financial advantage as an owner-​manager of a track could not be associated with the tote betting that came in during 1929. Although the two listings of tracks the report provided are not identical, having probably being gathered at different times in 1927, it is clear that tracks had been opened at Breck Park (Liverpool) on 23 April 1927; Kings Heath (Birmingham) on 21 May; Elland Road (in Leeds, though not at the football ground) on 16 July; Knowle (Bristol) on 23 July; Henlow (privately owned and a straight track) on 1 August; Stanley (Liverpool) on 17 August; Hall Green (Birmingham) on 24 August; Aylston Road (Leicester) on 24 September; Greenfield (Bradford) in October; Fullerton Park (Leeds) 4 October; and Raikes Park (Bolton) on 10 December.22 These tracks quickly established a programme of events to attract the working-​ class bettor, although, as Mike Huggins has quite rightly suggested, there was

25

The rise of greyhound racing, 1926–45

25

certainly a middle-​class interest in the sport in its early years, not just from investors and dog owners but amongst attenders as well.23 Indeed, middle-​class car-​owning bettors were clearly present, as indicated by the busy roads near tracks, the large scale of the car parking and off-​road parking at or near tracks. There were estimated to be at 200 to 300 motor cars, along with taxis and trams, at the meetings at Belle Vue in October 1926.24 The Metropolitan Police were similarly recording ‘considerable numbers of cars near the White City’ (London) with, in one instance, sixty of the 150 car parking places taken and many cars parking on the main and side roads.25 The Town Clerk of Hackney stated, in his letter to the Under-​Secretary of State of the Home Office on 4 January 1932, that ‘each night there are hundreds of cars and a char-​a-​banc passing the roads near the tracks’.26 There were about 1.1 million cars, out of about 2.4 million motor vehicles, on the roads of Britain at the beginning of the 1930s and most of these were expensive and owned by the middle classes before Morris and Austin started producing their £100 models in the mid and late 1930s, which even then were barely affordable to the working classes.27 The NGRS tracks also offered two or three enclosures to cater for the needs of the different classes and different type of bettors. The tracks ran their own programmes, often varying between about six and eight races per meeting, on afternoons or evenings, but there was the added attraction of national competitions to give the sport a more cohesive and appealing image. The final of the Greyhound Derby, the first one of which was for a £1,000 prize, was held at the White City, London, with the top three dogs from the Northern and Southern finals contesting the event. The first final was held in October 1927 and won by Entry Bridge, the daughter of the famous coursing dog Hopsack, who had previously won the Southern final and then went on to be unbeaten for two years.28 The Greyhound Derby was won by the legendary wonder dog Mick the Miller in 1929 and 1930, his immense success boosting interest from the press and the general public and helping to extend the appeal of greyhound racing.29 The Greyhound Mirror and Gazette reflected that ‘Greyhound racing is still in its infancy, but already it has produced a popular favourite as idolised as any hero, cinema star, footballer or boxer in history.’30 The first Champion Hurdle was also held at the White City on 15 October 1927 and won by Bonzo. The Oaks, for bitches, was first held on 12 October 1927 and won by the Three of Spades. There was also the Northern Flat Championship race run at Belle Vue. Catford ran the Greyhound Grand National, West Ham the Greyhound Cesarewitch, Wembley the Coronation Stakes and the St. Leger, whilst Wimbledon staged The Laurels.31 From the start, then, the top greyhound races were named after famous horse races, the titles of which would have been instantly recognisable to both the horse-​racing and the gambling public. They fleetingly produced new ‘canine’ sporting heroes, although perhaps only Mick the Miller has earned lasting fame.32

26

Going to the dogs

26

Table 1.2  Attendances at NGRS greyhound tracks in London, Manchester and Glasgow, 1928–​32 Year

London

Manchester

Glasgow

1928 1929 1930 1931 1932

6,451,417 7,848,638 8,619,217 8,608,382 9,623,156

1,402,988 1,705,756 1,724,406 1,708,433 1,743,814

1,457,673 1,542,633 1,607,431 2,037,350 2,335,954

Source: HO 45/​15853/​663794/​4, figures from a NGRS letter dated 30 June 1953.

This rising interest in greyhound racing focused upon three major cities  –​ London, Manchester and Glasgow –​whose tracks, in the late 1920s and early 1930s, provided about 65 per cent of the attendances at NGRS tracks. Indeed, as Table 1.2 reveals, London alone was responsible for about 45 to 47 per cent of the total recorded attendances at NGRS tracks in the early years of racing, as it did throughout its existence until recent years. As will be indicated in ­chapter  3, the rapid growth of greyhound racing between 1926 and 1932 was based upon an enormous financial investment from the middle classes in creating the infrastructure for a new sport, and exerted a considerable impact upon working-​class employment in urban communities. However, the sport, and its economic, urban and moral impact, was highly contested and produced enormous political and economic in-​fighting which did not help in dealing with the protracted and damaging hostility it faced from the forces of anti-​gambling, which did not view it as a rational recreation. Indeed, the external forces of the anti-​gambling organisations in many ways increased the political and economic turbulence greyhound racing faced, even as the NGRS/​ NGRC presented its organisation as respectable as it moved to drive out of existence the non-​respectable and shady flapping tracks. The internal politics and organisational rivalries of greyhound racing From the start the organisation of greyhound racing in Britain was riven by intense and fractious internal rivalry between the large and small tracks and their organisations, and additionally between the large track owners and the bookmakers. Indeed, until the 1970s, and throughout the years between the 1920s to the 1960s, greyhound racing was essentially divided between the NGRS tracks, the ‘official tracks’, and the smaller ‘flapping’ tracks of London and the provinces. The latter were initially under the control of the BGTCS, formed in 1932 by owners of twenty tracks such as that of Breck Park, Liverpool, and those tracks operated by the Bolton Greyhound Racing Society. They were associated with the

27

The rise of greyhound racing, 1926–45

27

Allied Greyhound Racecourse and Owners’ Association (AGROA), with a group of about 300 greyhound owners, many of whom ‘owned and train greyhounds … as a hobby’, including the owners of the ‘flapping’ tracks of Charlton Stadium, Edmonton Stadium, Dartford Stadium, Romford Greyhound Track, and Luton and Dunstable Greyhound Stadium.33 Organisations for the flapping tracks came and went but almost all these flapping tracks eventually became affiliated to the PGTCO, which, when it was formed in 1947, had 119 affiliated tracks. Some of these were the large and medium-​sized provincial tracks with tote facilities but the majority (seventy-​one) had no tote facilities because they were too small to afford them.34 The differences between the NGRS and the provincial flapping tracks were profound. The NGRC clearly catered for the larger tracks with more facilities that could meet the higher standards it required, whilst the BGTCS/​ AGROA/​PGTCO met the wider range of smaller tracks, with poor and variable facilities, unable to meet the exacting standards of the NGRS/​NGRC or excluded from the NGRC because they were too near to existing NGRS tracks. The result was that both groupings and organisations were driven by different interests, objectives and practices and, for the first forty or fifty years of their existence, came into bitter internecine conflict as the NGRS sought to take over the sport and drive out the flapping tracks. The official NGRS tracks had first emerged in the mid-​1920s, as already indicated, when the Greyhound Racing Association (Manchester), formed in 1925, became the Greyhound Racing Association Trust Ltd, and this widened its structure to form the NGRS in December 1927. Out of this came the NGRC, initially dominated by Critchley (the Judge) and Dixson (the Racing Director), to establish and enforce the rules of the sport. It was presided over by Lord Askwith, an expert on industrial relations. Apart from associating with eminent figures it was studded with ex-​military and naval officers and personnel, many of whom acted as the stewards and judges at NGRS greyhound tracks, thus giving it the appearance of legitimacy and respectability. However, the NGRS and the NGRC were never able to gain the total control of the sport that they so desired. Indeed, they held influence over only about fifty-​six to fifty-​nine of the 200-​plus greyhound tracks that operated in the 1930s and only seventy-​seven of the 200 or so tracks operating in 1947.35 The interests of the NGRS and the flapping tracks were markedly different from the flapping tracks. The NGRS/​NGRC tracks represented the larger tracks, offered a wide range of facilities to their customers, wished the tote to dominate gambling, aimed to restrict the presence of the competing bookmakers, as much as was legally possible, wanted to license and control the whole sport, and to present to the public the image of being respectable and responsible, indeed rational. In 1928 the NGRC appointed Lord Kilmorey as its president in a desire to establish its legitimacy,36 and indicated that it wished to keep ‘greyhound racing absolutely clean’ on its forty-​three tracks, which owned 8,000 dogs at that

28

28

Going to the dogs

time.37 Yet, whilst challenging Churchill’s moral indictment of greyhound tracks, it accepted that ‘everyone is in absolute agreement about the evil of allowing youth to indulge in the habit of betting’.38 Indeed, having gained a House of Lords ruling in 1929 which provided a loophole for establishing on-​course totes at greyhound tracks, the NGRC sought to equate itself with horse racing’s Jockey Club by forming the Greyhound Totalisator Board in October 1931. There was a clear ambition to dominate the sport and to lay down the rules for all greyhound racing. It is revealing that in a deputation to the Home Secretary in November 1933, led by Lord Askwith, Major-​General Edward Douglas Lord Loch, one-​ time Lord in Waiting to King George V and Chairman of the NGRS, remarked: May I blow my own trumpet. We have honestly tried to control and regulate greyhound racing. We have been told that, ‘Yes, you are trying to regulate it and control it, but you are only trying to regulate and control it for your own benefit.’ That may be, but I do not think it is entirely, if the case is examined, a fair statement. We have deliberately tried to control it for the public benefit. Of course our own interests are there, I cannot disguise that, they must be, but we have tried as well to control it for the public interest.39

In disparaging terms he criticised the flapping tracks where ‘The owner is a bookmaker. He owns the track, he owns the dogs, the majority of the bookmakers are syndicates, and that about 80 per cent of his patrons [enter] without any admission [fee] and [he] simply makes his money’.40 This sweeping statement was largely untrue. The flapping tracks, which normally had fewer, and poorer, facilities, were far more diverse in their betting arrangements in their early years in order to ensure their financial survival, and were more open to attracting bookmakers to their meetings, even if there was a competitive situation between the interests of the track owners where there were tote facilities. The smaller tracks without the tote relied entirely upon bookmakers to offer betting facilities, and especially so from the late 1940s when many of those who had totes closed them down and increasingly relied upon the gate money along with the sales of drink and food for their income. These tracks vehemently opposed NGRS control and asked the pertinent question ‘Is there any sport where the sole control is invested in the people who provide the capital, run the show and receive the profits?’41 Bookmakers also were often in conflict with the NGRS, which aimed to drive them off their tracks, and the BGTCS and the flapping tracks were supported by the National Bookmakers’ Protection Association (NBPA). In November 1933 Banyan, the NBPA paper, stated acidly that: ‘The monopoly asked for by the Greyhound Racing Society is equal to a firm of brewers asking Parliament to pass a Bill limiting the number of breweries to fifty and giving them the right to issue and control licenses and confined the whole industry to a few hands.’42

29

The rise of greyhound racing, 1926–45

29

The bitter animosity between the NGRS and the flapping track organisations was particularly evident in the 1931–​32 debate on the holding of greyhound meetings on a Sunday. The NGRS/​NGRC tracks opposed the Sunday opening of greyhound tracks –​as well as the opening of cinemas –​in 1932 and 1933, particularly in the evidence given to the Royal Commission on Betting, Lotteries and Gaming (chaired by Sir Sidney Arthur Taylor Rowlatt) whilst the flapping tracks emphasised that, often, in the absence of costly totalisator, facilities some of their tracks had to open on Sunday to ensure they gained enough ‘gate’ money to survive. The ‘Sunday opening’ debate started with the widespread campaign of the Lord’s Day Observance Society, the churches and the anti-​gambling organisations to maintain Sunday as a day of rest. They demanded the end of dog racing on a Sunday, and in response Sir William Jowitt (an ex-​Liberal who became a Labour MP and Attorney General in Ramsay MacDonald’s second Labour government of 1929–​31) wrote to the Home Secretary (J. R.  Clynes) advocating a selective policy, asking for no action to be taken against whippet racing but supporting the prohibition of Sunday greyhound track meetings since ‘the use of such tracks on Sundays interferes with the amenities of others as is a mere device by which undesirable people gather together to indulge in an orgy of gambling’.43 The Metropolitan Police were asked for their opinion and made it clear that they did not attempt to stop Sunday opening unless there were disturbances and that legal action could, in any case, be taken under the Lord’s Day Observance Acts and particularly under the Sunday Observance Act of 1780.44 It was also clear that the government would not act, the Home Secretary suggesting that there was insufficient time available to discuss what was clearly a complex issue where there were other sports operating on a Sunday, and also because of changes in the attitude of the British people. One civil servant advised him that ‘these Acts, however, are no longer in harmony with a large body of public opinion’ and another that ‘we have no intention of raking up the Sunday Observance Acts’.45 Lt. Col. Moore-​Brabazon promoted a private member’s bill to Parliament, accompanied by a blizzard of letters to the Home Secretary, to enforce the ban on Sunday opening in 1931 but withdrew it in favour of a NGRS-​promoted bill, largely because his bill would have entailed the police taking the details of every person at a Sunday meeting as under the 1780 legislation all attendees could be fined up to £200 each. This was deemed highly impractical.46 The NGRS-​sponsored Dog Racing Bill was introduced into Parliament on 9 February 1932, and more narrowly focused upon the owners who permitted dog racing with a mechanical hare on a Sunday, rather than the spectators. It proved a deeply divisive piece of legislation as indicated by a letter from J. Smith, of Peckham, to the Home Office. Sent on 19 February 1932, and directed at the House of Commons, it read: To Right Hon MPs, I, as an Englishman and a lover of fair play, beg your help to give and get fair play for a number of the British public who are at present unorganised.

30

30

Going to the dogs The National Greyhound Racing Society have promoted a Bill which was introduced into Parliament on the 9th February 1932 to stop greyhound racing on Sundays. I would like to point out that in the event of this Bill being passed it would throw a number of persons out of employment, and also interfere with about 50,000 of the British public who patronize the so-​called Unlicensed Tracks. [Many of whom attended meetings several times per week.] I earnestly ask you before voting for or against this Bill, that you use your influence to have the views of the so-​called Unlicensed Tracks and the Public who patronize them placed before the Committee dealing with this Bill.47

There was, indeed, much opposition to the NGRS-​sponsored bill from the ‘unlicensed’ or flapping tracks and it ultimately faltered, as did a subsequent bill promoted by Oliver F.  G. Stanley MP.48 Nevertheless, what this debate demonstrates is the bitter tensions and struggles that were developing between the NGRS/​NGRC and flapping tracks for the control of greyhound racing. Other organisations supported the BGTCS in its opposition to the NGRS. Leslie Burgon MP, in association with the AGROA, suggested that greyhound racing provided ‘a large section of the community an opportunity for healthy recreation’ and that he and the organisation he represented were also particularly concerned to maintain Sunday opening for the small dog trainers. He wrote that:  ‘To a large proportion of the latter, Sunday is the only day of the week when they are free to participate of such diversions as some such means of entertainment.’49 Such views were anathema to the NGRS, which presented its case in a letter to the Home Office and Home Secretary on 30 June 1933 in which it re-​affirmed its support for a controlling statutory body, or Control Board, which it saw as being itself, wished for a reduction in the number of race tracks, demanded the prohibiting of Sunday racing, supported the prohibition of tracks designed simply to encourage betting purposes only, and demanded regulations that ensure that racecourses should be subject to strict supervision in ‘the interest of the public’.50 It highlighted the problem, as it saw it, in The Greyhound Racing Yearbook for 1933, one of its annual publications, which, amongst listing of tracks, contained the attendance details of unlicensed flapping tracks in London. These, indicated in Table 1.3, reveal that all the flapping tracks held meetings on a Sunday and that in eight, where Sunday attendances could be measured against weekday attendance, seven had two or three times the attendances on Sunday that they had on weekdays. This internecine conflict occurred at the height of the ‘Tote crisis’, when totalisators on greyhound tracks were declared illegal and when the flapping tracks, few of whom had tote arrangements and relied on the course bookmakers, were much less affected. The battle for Sunday closure was lost by the NGRS, although the 1934 Betting and Lotteries Act did change the economic and political landscape of greyhound

31

The rise of greyhound racing, 1926–45

31

Table 1.3  Attendances at the twenty-​one ‘unlicensed’ London tracks in the week ending 8 July 1933 Tracks

Brixton Charlton Crayford Dagenham Dartford Edmonton Hackney Wick New Cross Perry Hill Stratford Walthamstow Wandsworth Also Sunday racing at Park Royal Waltham Cross

No. of meetings

Sundays

Weekdays

2 1 2 1 2

4 4 3 3 5 9 4 3 2 7 4

2 2

Romford Watford (2 tracks)

Sidcup Welling

Estimated average attendance Sundays

Weekdays

700 1300 300 550 600 850

750 450 300 250 200 400 1,350 2,500 200 250 600 1,250

400 600

Southall

Attendance per meeting, week ending 8 July 1933

650

1,800 2,450

650 1,500

Temple Mills

Twenty-​one unlicensed tracks in all. Source: H0 45/​15853/​663794/​4, letter from NGRS, 30 June 1933.

racing by imposing new controls and licensing on greyhound racing and the running of the tote and all permanent tracks moved away from Sunday racing. It also lost its underlying demand for a Control Board for greyhound racing, its hope for acting in such a way being thwarted by the BGTCS, which advocated that any such control body should be representative of all the bodies concerned in greyhound racing and also by the fact that government preferred to work through the powers it gave to local authorities under the Betting and Lotteries Act of 1934.51 However, the NGRS, ingratiating itself further to the general public and to local communities, often became more involved in campaigns opposing the opening and planning permission for non-​NGRS flapping tracks and in promoting local planning controls, primarily, it would appear, in its own interests. This conflict of interests was exacerbated between 1932 and 1934 when the NGRS supported Hackney Town Council in opposing the opening of the Hackney Wick greyhound track on the land that had been previously owned by Clapton Orient Football Club, at Millfield Road, Hackney. The track was to be

32

32

Going to the dogs

built about a mile and a half away from the existing NGRS track at Clapton by a limited company providing the substantial sum of £55,000 for the venture. The NGRS had not allowed the new company to join the NGRS because its track was too close to the track at Clapton. There was supporting evidence from the Metropolitan Police about the congestion problems it would cause whilst at the same time ‘serving no useful purpose’ and from Hackney Council, which felt that that there would be a ‘recrudescence of hawking and trading in the vicinity’ that it would have difficulty dealing with.52 To A. Gilbert, the managing director of the new company, this action was driven by the self-​interest of the NGRS in monopolising the sport for its own gain. He argued that: The controlling body, the National Greyhound Racing Society, which has under its banner in London, Clapton, West Ham, Harringay, White City, Wimbledon and Wembley is nothing more than a self-​elected body, appointed by the promoters of the leading companies. No wonder that a small operation like ours is turned down in an effort by the NGRS to suppress fair and square competition. The London tracks do not want competition. They have their own committees which dictate the policy of the track in regard to prices of admission, prize money, etc. And all the while they continue to make enormous profits.53

In its attempt to dominate the sport the NGRS constantly presented itself as the clean and honest face of the sport, suggesting that the non-​NGRC tracks, the unlicensed tracks, were corrupt in their practices. Indeed, in response to an attempt in 1932 to set up a track in Southall, in London, which the NRGS/​ NGRC would not give a licence to, the NGRS slurred the flapping tracks by stating that: ‘It is a well-​known fact that on unlicensed tracks the public are continually being gulled by the use of fictitious names of both owners and dogs, and as unlicensed tracks are only responsible to the promoter. There is no remedy against them and the abuses that occur on them.’54 Much the same story emerged in other parts of London, such as Lambeth. The NGRS clearly saw itself as the body which would clean up the sport, make it respectable and control its activities in order to meet the needs of local authorities, oppositional groups and respectable society, which was demanding controlled and rational recreation. It is wise to remember, however, that the Council of the NGRS were a self-​appointed set of men serving their own financial interests as Lord Askwith admitted to the Home Secretary on 23 November 1933. This becomes clear if one looks as the composition of the Executive Committee of the NGRS in the early 1930s when it was stretching its tentacles of financial and organisational control throughout the sport. Lord Askwith, President, and a director of the White City Racing Association, was associated with Belle Vue, White City, and the Carntyne track (Glasgow). Sir William Gentle, Vice President, and chairman of directors of the Greyhound Racing

33

The rise of greyhound racing, 1926–45

33

Association Ltd, held shares in Harringay, White City, and the Powderhall (Edinburgh) and Hall Green (Birmingham). Major-​General the Lord Loch was chairman of the directors of the Greyhound Racing Association and connected with Harringay, White City, Hall Green, Powderhall and Marine Drive (Edinburgh). The Council also contained the great and the good. Alderman Sir Sidney Freemantle was chairman of directors of the Associated Greyhound Racecourse Ltd, promoting tracks at Hull, Kings Heath (Birmingham), Burnley, Dundee and, with the Scottish Greyhound Racing Society, was promoting the Carntyne track. Brigadier-General A.  C. Critchley, the managing director of the Racing Association Ltd, had interests in the tracks at Harringay, White City, Powderhall, Hall Green, Marine Drive, and was also managing director of the White City (Manchester), and with the Greyhound Association was promoting both Belle Vue and the White City (Manchester). Lt. Col. Browne was a director of the Scottish Greyhound Racing Co Ltd and had previously been a director of the Carntyne track. W. H. McGrath was a director of Wembley Stadium Ltd. H.  Garland Wells was managing director of Clapton Stadium Ltd and chairman of other greyhound organisational interests. Captain M. W. A. P. Graham was the late Director of the White City (Manchester) Greyhound Association but by now a director of that company in amalgamation of the Greyhound Racing Association (Manchester) Ltd. W. J. Cearns was chairman and director of the South London Greyhound Racing Association promoting greyhound racing on the Wimbledon track. Lt. Col. E.  L. Mears was managing director of Albion Greyhound Ltd promoting tracks at Salford and the Albion track in Glasgow. Sir Lewis Dane was chairman and a director Glasgow Greyhound Racecourses Ltd, promoting racing at the White City (Glasgow). James B. France was chairman of Glasgow Greyhound Racecourse Ltd and also promoting greyhound racing at White City (Glasgow). At a more modest level Lt. Col. G. R. Powell was merely a track owner.55 Interestingly, the NGRC, formed by the NGRS to provide the rules of the sport, defined itself as a ‘body of independent gentlemen’ free from financial interest in the tracks.56 In one sense this was correct since a variety of independent officers from the armed forces seemed to make up the Club and were usually the judges and stewards presiding at meetings. However, this claim is still a little disingenuous given that the NGRC was formed by the owners and directors of the NGRS tracks, who were deeply financially engaged in greyhound racing. In addition, in the early years, Critchley, who had substantial interests in various tracks, was the Judge, and others such as Dixson, the Racing Director, also had financial interests in greyhound racing. Not all was as transparent and independent as was claimed. The NGRS continued to promote its own interests in Parliament. The 1933–​ 34 debate over the legalising of the greyhound tote saw Sir Philip Dawson MP, and a group of seven other MPs, meet the Home Secretary to suggest the need

34

34

Going to the dogs

for legalising the tote in support of the NGRS and to claim that about 200 MPs were supporting his idea. Mr Clarry MP went so far as to suggest that there was a powerful group of MPs supporting greyhound racing in the House of Commons and attacking the ‘illogical and unfair distinctions’ it faced and the need for ‘equality between the different sports’.57 It is difficult to establish the veracity of such a claim, particularly given the fact that debates and votes in the House of Commons tended to be on gambling rather than particularly upon greyhound racing, but given the fact that the Betting and Lotteries Act of 1934 lay down new rules for a legalised greyhound tote, rejecting the recommendation of closure recommended by the Royal Commission on Lotteries and Betting (1932–​33), this may not be an exaggeration. Indeed, leading Labour figures, such as Nye Bevan, the famous MP for Ebbw Vale between 1929 and 1960, seemed to favour greyhound racing at the Tredegar speedway track in 1929, two years before it also opened as a greyhound track in 1931, and attended the annual meeting of the NGRS in 1933.58 The Home Secretary would have been well aware of the power of the greyhound lobby in the House of Commons and made no charge of exaggeration against the claim. He was clearly fully aware of the political power of the NGRS. The NGRS carried solid support of perhaps up to 30 per cent in the House of Commons, an influence which could not be matched by the flapping tracks. It was often its voice that was heard in Parliament and the Home Office during the inter-​war years –​powerful enough to blunt extreme opposition to greyhound racing but often not sufficient to win the day for its own ideas on solely controlling the sport. However, as will become evident, after the Second World War the flapping tracks became better organised by the PGTCO and both voices were heard more equally by the Royal Commission on Betting, Lotteries and Gaming (Willink Commission) of 1949 to 1951. Thus, throughout the early and mid-​twentieth century greyhound racing in Britain remained deeply divided. It was so on Sunday racing, in response to the issues of local government licensing, and many of the other issues that were to emerge in the 1930s and 1940s. The NGRS presented the sport and its organisation as respectable and well-​organised, indeed licensed, in order to stave off criticism from political and religious anti-​gambling pressure groups. It dissociated itself from the rest of the industry –​which represented two-​thirds of the tracks though considerably less than a third of the attendances –​for not operating by the tight rules of the NGRS, having no control of the dogs that often raced under different names on different tracks, and for being less than scrupulous in their activities. The approach of the NGRS did not help greyhound racing to gain the full influence and respectability it sought and this might be why its appeals to governments and to royal commissions failed to strengthen its claim to having the same status and the same conditions of horse racing in Britain in the face of a vocal, if declining, opposition to gambling and greyhound racing. It was only in

35

The rise of greyhound racing, 1926–45

35

1972, when greyhound racing was in decline, that the NGRS and the PGTCO came together to form the new National Greyhound Racing Club (NGRC), and such conflict was tempered. The early factionalism within greyhound racing may account for the difficulties greyhound racing faced turning its undoubted parliamentary support into a legislation which would give it the status of horse racing, which its promoters so longed for. However, it was also faced with fearsome opposition from the forces of anti-​gambling. Chadbards and sabbitarians: the National Anti-​Gambling League, religious and the Establishment hostility to greyhound racing and the Monte Carlo type ‘Canine Casinos’ From the beginning of greyhound racing the NGRS, the BGTCS and other affiliated and associated greyhound organisations were faced with mountainous opposition to their very existence as an agency for legal working-​class gambling. There was an immediate reaction against greyhound racing from the NAGL, the Evangelical Free Churches, the Industrial Christian Fellowship, and many other groups opposed to gambling in all its forms.59 The NAGL, formed by Seebohm Rowntree, the York-​based Quaker businessman and social investigator, in 1890 had long opposed all gambling but found it much easier to target working-​class, than middle-​class, gambling. It was alarmed at the greyhound gambling frenzy and incensed that of those attending greyhound racing meetings ‘30 per cent were women and girls’ and that the ‘great majority were young men’.60 The NAGL felt that gambling caused poverty and moral decline. Gambling at greyhound tracks fulfilled all its suspicions and expectations. John Gulland, of the NAGL, also produced Canine Casinos, a pamphlet full of wild exaggerations about the iniquities and social cost of greyhound racing and gambling –​a feature of many NAGL publications in which it would appear that all that was staked was lost.61 The critical comments of many religious bodies was strongly supported by the National Emergency Committee of Christian Citizens, which produced a booklet entitled Facts about Greyhound Racing in 1928, quoting the Manchester Evening News’ complaint of 29 October 1927 that women were attending the tracks and ‘it trembled at what might happen to these women in the future’. The religious body also alleged that greyhound racing was ‘the most serious and spiritual peril affecting our generation’.62 Its views and demand for legislative action were, it is claimed, supported by nine city councils, thirty-​five town councils, eleven committees on town councils, fifty-​seven urban district councils and more than 100 municipal authorities.63 The Mayor of Brighton stated that there had been a strong vote against opening a greyhound tracks in Brighton –​7,514 against a track and 2,189 in favour –​whilst reflecting that local authorities could not stop the construction of greyhound tracks and that the Brighton greyhound track was, at that stage, under construction. There had been a strong campaign

36

36

Going to the dogs

against greyhound racing in Manchester, the mayor opposing it in 1928, and declaring it ‘more a nuisance than an industry’,64 following up on a campaign for its prohibition in the previous December, highlighted and galvanised by the Manchester Guardian.65 In nearby Bolton the intention to open the Little Hutton Greyhound Track, at Salford Road, led to the refusal of the council to grant the licence needed by local bye-​laws (which were subsequently found to be unable to stop the construction for a track), which led to protests from the track owners and an avalanche of condemnation of greyhound racing in December 1927 and the beginning of 1928 from the Annual Autumn Festival of the Bolton Federation of the Church of England’s Men’s Society, which felt that greyhound racing was ‘damaging the best interests of the Sport and a serious menace to the well-​being of Young Manhood of our Town and Country’.66 This criticism was supported by the Bolton and Farnworth Congregational Group Church, a Quarterly Meeting of Officers and Representatives of thirteen churches in Bolton  –​including Methodists, Congregational, and Church of England  –​who expressed their opposition in December 1927 and were supportive of the Association of Municipal Authorities in their condemnation of greyhound racing on 10 March 1928.67 Four years later, in 1932, opposition to greyhound racing in Manchester was revived by Peter Green, Canon of Manchester, who stressed that councils, who were powerless to stop it, should be given new powers to stop its corrupt practices that were designed to beat the punter.68 In the late 1920s and early 1930s greyhound racing was attacked on moral grounds by many other individuals zealous in their opposition to gambling. Indeed, on 25 July 1927 Lt. Col. Sir Walter Gibbon sent a letter to the Home Secretary stating that ‘betting is indulged by people who cannot afford to gamble’ and that greyhound racing was ‘neither more or less than removing the Casino at Monte Carlo to England, except that the dogs are removed from the roulette wheel’.69 The Manchester Guardian reported on the abuses in Manchester and the presence of women backers and boy bookmakers, and of the protest meetings at Whitefield Memorial Tabernacle, Tottenham Court Road and London.70 On 27 October 1927 the Manchester Watch Committee called upon the Home Secretary to introduce legislation to abolish greyhound racing, complaining of a ‘carelessness’ and contempt for morality amongst the young men of Manchester.71 In May 1928 George Cottrill was sentenced by the magistrates to a £5 fine or twenty-​one days in prison as a result of loitering just outside a greyhound track at Pendleton, in Lancashire, with boys of thirteen to sixteen years, taking 1d (0.4p) bets from them.72 Such attention, hostility and action was driven on by the Manchester, Salford and District National Council of the Evangelical Free Churches. Using the words of a letter sent by a John Heath to the Reverend Thomas Nightingale, its Secretary, claimed that the greyhound race ‘gate’ was between 10,000 and 15,000 people, that the greyhound tracks were making

37

The rise of greyhound racing, 1926–45

37

£900 per night, that there were people attending in invalid chairs and also a perambulator, that gambling by young men was the ‘great and real business’.73 It criticised the police for merely regulating traffic and looking on, and supporting the Resolution of the Federation, passed the previous Friday, ‘deprecating the increase in betting through the races as furthering one of the most serious and moral perils affecting our generation’.74 Critically, it added, in Nightingale’s words: ‘The race was started by the blowing of a bugle by a man in Khaki. I took him to be a soldier. Is the Army lending men for this?’75 Driven by similar concerns, Winston Churchill, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, wrote a letter to the Home Secretary on 13 December 1927, warning of the spectacle of the ‘animated roulette boards’ and adding that his criticism was not part of a ‘Rich and Poor’ argument, though he felt that if there had to be one law for the rich and one for the poor it would be on gambling ‘since the former gamble with luxuries and the latter with the housekeeping money for food and clothing’.76 The Home Secretary agreed and, on 30 April 1928, he informed the Cabinet that greyhound racing’s ‘mushroom growth’ had increased enormously the facilities for betting and threatened increased poverty.77 The greyhound racing community responded to this early fusillade of hostility in a letter to the Home Office on 22 December 1927. Rejecting the pressure to abolish greyhound racing the writer suggested that working men were merely diverting money from horse racing and football betting and that it was ‘better for the working man to spend an evening in the open watching his money being carried, and so obtain greater enjoyment from it, than placing his money at home or a horse which he never sees’.78 Greyhound racing was presented as a healthy open-​air pursuit which removed the working man from the public house, where he would spend three-​quarters of his income, and prevented him, under the influence of drink, ‘becoming a wild beast to his wife and family’ for he was not taking them to the race track. It was admitted that there was child betting but suggested that it was more prevalent in horse racing and the football pools, and the writer felt that the betting of about a shilling on each race, and six or seven shilling on the night, did not carry any worrying financial concerns for working-​class families. In the next few months, and particularly in March 1928 when there was a concerted effort by borough and district councils, the Bishop of Wakefield, the Canon of Manchester and many others to press forward with a bill to empower local authorities to control the licensing of greyhound tracks, the pro-​greyhound racing lobby struck hard.79 Lord Askwith, President of the NGRS, defended the sport in a deputation from the NGRS to the Home Secretary, suggesting that the control of juvenile betting should be applied to all sports and reflecting that the King of Spain, who had been taken to the London White City on a tour of Britain, had suggested that ‘that it was the greatest remedy for anarchy that he had ever seen’.80 Pressing the point, Askwith emphasised the positive social

38

38

Going to the dogs

impact of greyhound racing, noting that ‘the returns of the public houses went down 27 per cent in the neighbourhood of the racecourse, and when racing ceased in early November that amount went very speedily up again’. Indeed, he also noted that savings of the working classes had increased in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester and Salford. Stretching the point further, he stressed that greyhound racing was an immensely patriotic sport for ‘the tracks have employed a large number of ex-​officers’, many of whom were in difficulty, and that ‘We all thought it was an opportunity to do something for those who had done something for their country’. In the final analysis greyhound racing was presented as being a responsible activity, driven by a patriotism, associated with pageantry, and was both a rational and reasonable sporting activity. It was an image that was unlikely to persuade its sceptical middle-​class, religious and political opponents. In the midst of this debate John Buchan, the famous novelist and MP, enlisted the support of 100 Labour, fifty Conservative and thirty Liberal MPs in an unsuccessful bid to press for the Dog Racing (Local) Bill designed to allow local authorities to decide whether or not to license local greyhound tracks with the implicit threat that licences might not be granted.81 Eventually, on 11 May 1928, supported by at least 200 MPs,82 Buchan used Churchill’s statement about greyhound racing being ‘an animated roulette board’ and then referred to the greyhound track as being an ‘illuminated ribbon of turf ’ whilst introducing the second reading of his Bill, adding that dog racing would in urban areas ‘destroy the amenities of the neighbourhood’.83 The Bill then moved on to the Committee stage where, as already indicted, it ran into difficulties over which local authority would be responsible for issuing the licences. By that stage the Home Office staff were already clear that the Bill was not practical: I do not think that this is a workable or desirable proposal. As I understand it, it means that if in a Town Planning area a Dog Company applies for Town Planning approval, the local authority can only give approval on Town Planning grounds, [and] cannot consider the question of betting and cannot attach conditions re betting; and yet grant [approval] will be effective under the Bill.84

The Bill was finally abandoned on 17 July 1928, formally so on 27 July, much to the annoyance and consternation of the Wesleyan Methodist Conference, the National Emergency Committee of the Christian Churches and the more general anti-​gambling lobby. Indeed, the Archbishop of Canterbury declared his alarm at the weight of evidence showing the ‘serious social consequences ensuing’.85 Notwithstanding this setback, the issue of local government control and licensing of greyhound tracks remained alive and, indeed, became the basis of renewed efforts to establish more powers for local government. The existing legislation gave local government little scope for controlling greyhound tracks. The 1925 Town Planning Act limited the power of councils to those criteria

39

The rise of greyhound racing, 1926–45

39

prescribed for town planning and gave no automatic right to refuse an application for a greyhound track other than on grounds of amenity and sanitary conditions. It only allowed control of ‘land which is in the course of development and agreed to be likely to be used for building purposes’ except in certain circumstances. The 1932 Town and Country Act widened the scope of planning schemes but the main technical difficulty remained and that scheme could only be challenged if the scheme went beyond its stated aims, which would only be known after approval.86 In the final analysis, it was clear that ‘Planning was not an effective weapon to stop greyhound tracks because action can only be taken once the scheme is approved. In other words the greyhound track might be in operation and then under planning regulations, which take time to proceed, the greyhound tracks have made profits’.87 The Home Office candidly admitted to the London County Council that ‘at the present time we have no powers to prevent the building of greyhound tracks’.88 As already seen, the Hackney Wick greyhound track in London –​referred to disdainfully as being financed by three commission agents, a publican and a company director –​could not be stopped in 1932 despite Hackney Council declaring that there was no room for parking and that the ‘the track is altogether unnecessary for the needs of the neighbourhood’.89 Lambeth Council also challenged the opening of greyhound tracks in its jurisdiction on the grounds of the impact upon the neighbourhood and transport but was also unable to prevent their construction.90 In 1932, Lambeth Council surveyed the impact of greyhound racing on the neighbourhood and concluded that the area was ‘too far built up for dog racing course to be laid out, that the greyhound track was going to be opened next to a very important Church’, and that an application made to it on 27 February 1931 for the track to be built at Crystal Palace was a shock for the Council, which found that its powers to prevent the track being built were limited under the 1932 Town and County Planning Act.91 Nevertheless, over the next eighteen years the applications of some greyhound tracks were blocked. Indeed, the NGRS claimed to know of local authorities, operating within the imperfect legislation available to them, rejecting about sixty applications to set up tracks, although it is not at all clear how many were able to bypass local authority opposition and eventually able to open.92 Yet, it made the point that, once opened, ‘We know of no case in which the local authority has exerted its powers to refuse the renewal of a licence, except at Stockport where the re-​issue of the licence was held up between July 1947 and October 1948 on Town Planning grounds’.93 There were renewed attempts to introduce something along the lines of the 1928 Dog Racing (Local) Bill in 1932 and 1933. As previously mentioned, the private member bill of Lt. Col. J.  T. C.  Moore-​Brabazon, which would have prevented dog racing on a Sunday and would have introduced local control,

40

40

Going to the dogs

was mooted at the end of 1932. The Moore-​Brabazon Bill was supported by the Urban District Councils94 and the Daily Express95 but was attacked by the Manchester Guardian as being promoted by the ‘Chadbards and sabbitarians who shrieked out from the village pumps’.96 In any case, Sir John Gilmour, the Home Secretary, had informed the Prime Minister that there were problems with the Bill and that the Home Office saw no way to support it.97 The Council of Christian Ministers on Social Questions Joint Committee, described by one civil servant as ‘a very influential body’ which emphasised that ‘Dog racing exploited the very poorest’, also supported the various campaigns for local control and the banning of the tote.98 Although the Bill was abandoned in March 1933 there was another attempt to introduce a Dog Race (Local Option) Bill on 13 March 1933, but it was withdrawn on 25 April 1933. Introduced by Rhys Davies (Labour MP for Westhoughton, trade unionist, pacifist and temperance campaigner), the original Bill of 370 words swelled to 2,320 words and eventually, in the Committee stage, became convulsed in a debate about which local authorities should be responsible and was withdrawn.99 This was to the dismay of the Urban District Council Association which much later met Home Office officials on 17 November 1933, an occasion when Mr Fraser, Chairman of the White City in Glasgow, complained of the swindling of the ‘unlicensed’ tracks.100 The government had already pre-​empted the parliamentary bills by setting up a Royal Commission on Lotteries and Betting (1932–​33) and could rightly point to the need to delay further action against dog racing.101 By that time the Home Office felt that councils had exaggerated the impact of dog racing on their communities, had overstated the corruption of dog racing, and was convinced that the £5 million invested in dog racing had led to an almost exemplary development of a sport operating largely under the aegis of the NGRS/​NGRC, even though local opinion, the local county councils, the churches and the NAGL still felt that it should be opposed. The matter was finally resolved by Betting and Lotteries Act of 1934 which gave local authorities the powers to license permanent greyhound tracks and the police licensed the temporary flapping tracks, ‘the tracks of eight days’, that allowed for the occasional greyhound meeting often held in farmers’ fields. These events were fought against a background of controversy over the legality of the dog totes. The state of greyhound racing in 1932 and the ‘Tote crisis’, 1932–​34 By the end of 1932 greyhound racing was in a prosperous position despite the almost rabid opposition to it and despite having to operate at the height of an economic depression intensified by the Wall Street Crash of 1929. The number of tracks had risen from one in the summer of 1926 to around 200, although their number was constantly changing. Attendances at the forty-​three NGRS

41

The rise of greyhound racing, 1926–45

41

tracks increased from 5,656,686 in 1927 to 20,178,760 in 1932.102 About 70 per cent of the attendances at the NGRS, as previously indicated, occurred at tracks in three urban areas of London, Manchester and Birmingham –​though this ignores the fact that the 140 or so tracks, including non-​NGRS unlicensed ones in London and provincial tracks, were probably also attracting up to ten million attendees. In 1933 the NGRS glowingly suggested that it had paid out £388,463 in prize money in 1932 (about £9,000 for each of its tracks), paid Entertainment Tax of £222,550, Land Rates of £42,790, and had paid charities £17,950 in advertising its responsible contribution to the community and the nation.103 Adjusted figures, reported by Mr Groves MP who was a supporter of the control of the support by the NGRS/​NGRC, suggests some slight changes and that by December 1932 there were 187 tracks in operation, of which fifty-​ four were NGRS tracks operating under NGRC rules, sixteen were with the BGTCS, and six with the more recently formed AGROA.104 David Miers, in his book Regulating Commercial Gambling (2004), maintains that the Home Office, and therefore the government, had been indifferent to greyhound racing, drawing no moral judgement. As will become evident in ­chapter  6, it kept an open mind on the criminal potentialities of greyhound racing.105 Indeed, in a climate where Stanley Baldwin’s Conservative government (1924–​29) had left greyhound racing to its own devices he felt that the greyhound tracks had taken advantage of their position. From 1929 the owners of the large tracks introduced their own totalisator pool betting arrangements, using a machine that allowed for instant calculation of odds and a system operated by clerks. They sought to capture more betting revenue for their on-​course totes from on-​course bookies. By drawing in money for their totalisators, and taking between 10 and 12 per cent of the pool, they could earn money and were able to reduce entry fees to the tracks. He is right in suggesting that these arrangements became a great concern to the Home Office and MPs at the time of the ‘Tote crisis’ of 1932–​34, at a time when the Royal Commission on Lotteries and Betting was deliberating and when Parliament began to debate what became the 1934 Betting and Lotteries Act.106 The Home Office had not previously acted against the greyhound tote because two court cases had legitimised the greyhound totalisator. The first, in 1929, was the Attorney General v.  Luncheon Sports Club case in which the House of Lords decided that a sports club that operated a totalisator on a credit basis for its members, taking a small percentage, did not actually engage in betting with its members. This safeguarded the 248 off-​course tote clubs that had emerged independently of greyhound tracks. The second, the case of Shuttleworth v. Leeds Greyhound Racing Company Co., in early 1932, arose from the action of the Leeds Stipendiary magistrate, Horace Marshall, in deciding that the operation of a greyhound totalisator was not an offence under the 1853 Betting Houses Act.107 This case had arisen when I. Shuttleworth, a Leeds bookmaker and Secretary of

42

42

Going to the dogs

the Northern Bookmakers and Backers’ Protection Society Ltd, took the Leeds Greyhound Racing Company to court for infringing the 1853 Act. The attitude of the Home Office was to change significantly when Shuttleworth appealed to the High Court against the decision and Lord Hewart, Justice Avory and Justice Branson reversed the decision on 16 December 1932, indicating that greyhound totes were in contravention of Section 1 of the Betting Act of 1853 and also the Tote Act of 1928.108 At first the various greyhound companies and off-​course tote clubs remained in full operation.109 Belle Vue (Manchester) continued to operate with its 200 clerks, although it quickly began to operate on a ‘Non-​Profit Tote’ and Breck Park (Liverpool) did the same.110 Other tracks did much the same but as the ‘Tote Tangle’ continued the situation changed rapidly, especially as the Home Secretary declared that the law would be enforced without delay –​even though there was a suggestion that there would soon be legislation to legalise dog totes.111 With this uncertainty, the dog tracks began dismissing tote staff. The Raikes Park Track of the Bolton Greyhound Racing Company dismissed forty-​five of its clerks and raised its two entry fees from sixpence to one shilling and from one shilling to two shillings and its number of meeting was reduced from nine to seven per week. The newly-opened Parkside Greyhound Sports Stadium at Moor-​end, Hunslet, Leeds, closed down its totalisator, leaving gambling to the bookmakers.112 Greyhound totes were soon closed down throughout Britain with a large loss of jobs. In December 1932, the Scottish Office in Edinburgh reported that in Scotland 892 persons had been affected by the closing down of the dog totes on its twenty-​five tracks, 715 of them being part-​time, and that within a few weeks forty-​five men and thirty-​five women were claiming unemployment benefit as a result of losing their jobs.113 Yet there was confusion and, whilst most totes closed, after some initial hesitation, a few remained and some developed ways of bypassing the ban. Despite the worst fears of track owners most tracks were not initially raided by the police though there was sporadic police action following a raid at the end of December 1932 on the tote at Nottingham where a ‘No-​profit system’ was in place.114 At this point John Maxwell, Chief Constable of Manchester, announced that the law would be enforced.115 There were police summonses at a Preston track for the use of the tote.116 In the wake of this, and the closure of the tote, attendances fell from 5,000 to 104 and, according to the Chief Constable of Preston (C. B. Watson), largely driven by the consequent rise of entry prices from 6d (2.4p) to 1s (5p) to 2s (10p) and the fact that ‘Women do not bet with the same freedom [as with the tote] with bookmakers and their numbers have dwindled consequently’.117 The Scottish Football Association banned all dog racing at its football grounds.118 Consequently, the number of on-​track totes fell from 105 in December 1932 to four by the February 1933, although some re-​opened, and closed, thereafter.119 Over the same time period the number of off-​track tote clubs fell from 248 to fifteen, though some were contesting their

43

The rise of greyhound racing, 1926–45

43

existence in the courts where there were many cases pending.120 Two men –​John Lyons and James Molyneux Rawlinson –​were arrested at the Welsh White City greyhound track in Cardiff and charged with being keepers of a betting house.121 Late in 1933 these occasional actions were still continuing at tracks such as The City Greyhound and Sport Club track, Legrams Lane, Bradford.122 At this point the various greyhound associations began to pressure Parliament for the greyhound totalisator to be continued. Commander Oliver Laiker-​ Lampson MP led a deputation from the NGRS to the Home Secretary. It included Lord Lovat, Captain Arthur Evans MP, Col. Moore-​Brabazon MP and Major Phillips, and suggested that 10,000 people were employed on totalisators and would lose their jobs if the tote was not legalised immediately. A subsequent estimate suggested that the figure would have been 15,000 in the provinces and 2,000 in London,123 whilst shortly afterwards the weekly John Bull stated that ‘at least 14,000 men have been thrown out of work’.124 Lord Loch of the Greyhound Racing Association demanded the formation of an organisation of greyhound totes equivalent to the Racecourse Betting Control Board operating for horse racing.125 The BGTCS sent a deputation to meet the Home Secretary. The business community, with its Conservative connections in the House of Commons, began to draw upon its influence in an attempt to defend working-​class gambling. The Greyhound Racing Totalisator Control Board, set up by the NGRS in 1931, discussed the situation as did the Northern Association of Tote Club Proprietors. Mr H. Garland Wells, chairman of the Greyhound Racing Totalisator Control Board, fumed that: ‘It is a monstrous disregard of both the facts and of public opinion that greyhound racing should be denied equality of treatment with horse racing on the matter of betting.’126 Critchley suggested that there should be a differentiation between the off-​course tote clubs, which might remain illegal, and the greyhound totes.127 By early 1933 there was a strong belief that the government would act quickly and introduce a tote bill related to the needs of greyhound tracks. Although it was reported that ‘the Prime Minister himself, Mr Baldwin, and Lord Hailsham are against the extension of legalised betting, it was also recognised that “Greyhound Racing is well represented in the House” ’.128 Such optimism proved misleading and on 7 February 1933 Sir John Gilmour, the Home Secretary, reiterated the suppression of the tote club and greyhound totes, and indicated that he would be awaiting the final report of the Royal Commission before considering new legislation.129 This alarmed the greyhound lobby and Captain Arthur Evans, MP for Cardiff and a member of the NGRS, reflected that the Royal Commission was ‘grandmotherly and intolerant’ and unlikely to favour greyhound totes.130 Lord Askwith raged against the collective self-​interests opposed to greyhound racing.131 This provoked a battle between the pro-​tote and anti-​tote camps and a wider debate about gambling. The greyhound-​track lobby continued to

44

44

Going to the dogs

emphasise that the greyhound totalisators provided employment, represented the public will, and were being unfairly treated when compared to horse racing. The anti-​gambling and anti-​tote organisations stressed the social and economic insecurity that the totalisators had produced. Mr Chamberlain of the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) complained of the increase in gambling amongst the young in the last ten years, naturally exaggerating the true level of the working-​class flutter.132 The Christian Social Council (CSC), representing most of the Christian churches, except the Roman Catholics, suggested that there had been a great rise in gambling ‘with disastrous social consequences’ and ‘growing financial wastage and moral disorder’.133 By mid-​ February 1933 of the 101 totes that had been in operation in December 1932 only four –​one in Essex and three in Lancashire (two of them in Liverpool)  –​were still operating.134 As a result several stadiums closed, the most obvious example being the Hull (Craven Park) Greyhound Stadium which went out of existence at the end of 1933 before re-​emerging ‘on a cold wintry afternoon in February [6 February] 1941’.135 Nottingham Greyhound Stadium ceased operating in August 1933. Yet some new greyhound stadiums opened, perhaps as a result of their construction being overtaken by events, one being the New Cross track which was opened in June 1933.136 Faced with this situation Rhys Davies, Labour MP for Westhoughton, pressed for a Dog Racing (Temporary Order) Bill to make some arrangements for the dog tote to continue until the government made a decision about its future. Conscious of the power of the working-​class voter he stressed that there were twenty million working-​class attendances at dog tracks compared with only four million attendances, mainly by the professional class, at horserace meetings.137 There was clearly a fear of offending the newly enfranchised working-​class majority by favouring the gambling of the middle classes and the professional classes whilst imposing draconian controls on the gambling of the working classes. The prevailing mood seemed to support Davies and suggested that ultimately the government was prepared to make the dog tote legal.138 Nevertheless, a delayed government decision created a hiatus that weakened the financial position of many tracks now dependent upon gate receipts for their survival.139 It was estimated that the average track tote pool in 1931 had a turnover of £180,000 per year, although one Scottish track did take £244,138 and twenty-​five others also took more than £200,000 and up to £400,000 per year.140 Since most tracks took between 10 and 12 per cent of the tote pool it would appear that on average each track was taking about £22,000 year in 1931, though there was wide variation and that year the Clapton Stadium tote turnover was £440,000 with a greyhound proprietor’s rake off of 11.8 per cent –​a not inconsiderable sum of £52,250.141 Inevitably, track incomes, mainly from the gate receipts and tote, fell substantially in 1933 following the tote ban. The net revenue or gross profit of Clapton Stadium fell from £68,242 in 1932 to £24,666 in 1933,

45

The rise of greyhound racing, 1926–45

45

and the Albion Greyhound Stadium (Glasgow) from £32,906 to £15,274. The Associated Greyhound Racecourse Co. Ltd (with three tracks) found its profits falling from £16,289 to £3,801.142 The Greyhound Racing Association –​which owned the White City (London), Harringay, Hall Green, Brighton, Powderhall, Maine Gardens and Edinburgh greyhound tracks –​saw its profits almost halved from £168,002 in 1932 to £88,130 in 1933. Most greyhound tracks continued to operate although some, such as York and Nottingham, expired.143 Many increased their entry charges and a few attempted to operate credit totes although these were soon abandoned. Although examined further in ­chapter 6, which deals with the policing of the tracks, it is clear that the tote clubs all but expired, as had totes on greyhound tracks. On 16 December 1932 there had been 248 off-​course tote clubs and this figure was down to fifteen on 20 February, to add to the dramatic decline in on-​course greyhound tracks already noted.144 In some areas, such as Liverpool, the ‘human tote’ was set up by ex-​employees, who ran a bookmaking operation separate from the track owners and offered, in a variety of forms, odds based upon the pool of money received from the bettors. It was an operation frequently observed, and prosecuted, by the police and often involved the bookmaker mimicking the tote by estimating the odds by operating with an assistant for each dog and working out the pool from how many bets were placed with each man.145 Yet there was further intense pressure being placed upon the greyhound tracks by the anti-​gambling lobby. The NAGL, the Rev. W. Thompson Elliott, Vicar of Leeds and Canon of Ripon, the Rev. Peter Green, Canon of Manchester, the Rev. E. Benson Perkins, superintendent of Brighton Central Mission (Methodist Church), B. Seebohm Rowntree, and F. L. Williams, President of the Methodist Church, registered their ‘very strong opposition’ to any departure from the Royal Commission on Lotteries and Betting (1932–​ 33) recommendations which included a ban on tote betting and the restriction of the number of days of racing.146 The Council of Christian Ministers on Social Questions Joint Committee pursued the same objectives, the Rev. Perkins stating that ‘the Churches recognised their own responsibility in attempting to check the gambling habit’.147 Faced with such renewed and intense opposition the NGRS and the BGTCS, despite their rivalry, unified to oppose a ban on greyhound totes. Major Rt. Hon Ormsby-​Gore MP was most forceful in his statement to the Home Secretary, in which he argued:  ‘What is fair for a man at Ascot is similarly fair for the man at his local greyhound race tracks.’148 He could not see how the government could ‘deliberately countenance what is practically one law for the leisured class and one for the working class’. Yet he felt that whilst the sport was that of the working man it was not to be regarded as ‘an antidote to social unrest’ that Lord Askwith had claimed it to be. He also argued that tote facilities, costing between about £13,000 and £30,000 to install, were important because ‘Their

46

46

Going to the dogs

manufacture established a new industry employing several thousand skilled engineers and workers’, and stressed that tracks without the tote would leave ‘the bookmaker with a monopoly’.149 Captain North MP made much the same points in the House of Commons, in welcoming the government decision to defer any final decision on the greyhound tote until after the Final Report of the Royal Commission (1932–​33) was published, urging ‘the Government [to take] very careful consideration to the interests of all those who will be affected by their final decision be they owners, employees, or promoters of such tracks’.150 The greyhound fraternity continued their pressure on the government in a powerful counter to the anti-​gambling lobby. Letters, memorandums and deputations abounded. One from the greyhound owners strongly supported the NGRS/​NGRC, stressing that without the tote and the money it provided for prize money  –​the bookmakers paying nothing to prize money  –​‘all but the most wealthy owners would have to give up racing’.151 It also rejected the control of local councillors who had no expert knowledge of greyhound racing. The 102 signatures included a wide range of middle-​class owners, ranging from Lady Chesham to Captain R. B. Ricketts (a Scottish farmer), W. Taylor Parkes (a solicitor) and W. F. Lovell (an engineer).152 The ‘Tote crisis’ remained unresolved until the National Government finally rejected the suggestion of the Royal Commission on Lotteries and Betting. In 1933 it concluded that given the continuing uncertainty about the totalisators that the greyhound tote should remain prohibited arguing that it ‘involves grave social evil as providing practically unlimited facilities for continued gambling’.153 The Home Office rejected view and argued that since on-​course betting was not illegal the decision was an unwarranted invasion of privacy  –​a view which anticipated the approach later adopted by the Royal Commission on Betting, Lotteries and Gaming (Willink, 1949–​51) after the Second World War. Nevertheless, the Home Office maintained that there had to be regulation and this became evident in its support for the 1934 Betting and Lotteries Act, that eventually gave greyhound proprietors the right to operate the totalisator for their own gain but restricted them to only 6 per cent of the pool, about half the previous level of the track-​owners’ tote take. The House of Commons debates on the 1934 Betting and Lotteries Bill became a repository for the bitterness between the gambling and the anti-​gambling fraternities. The National Government had decided upon introducing a wide-​ ranging bill to deal with a variety of gambling activities but Sir John Gilmour, the Home Secretary, made it clear that the advice of the Royal Commission would be ignored and that his real concern was to deal with the social problem of gambling. On greyhound racing he stated that: The position as I see it, and as the Government sees it, has been materially changed since the development of greyhound racing since 1926. There are only seven horse

47

The rise of greyhound racing, 1926–45

47

racecourses within 15 miles of Charing Cross [the Metropolitan Police District] with 187 days of racing, whereas in the same area there are 23 greyhound tracks with over 4,000  days racing within a year. Greyhound racing has brought off-​ course betting facilities, often as an almost nightly event, into most large urban centres of the country.154

The government proposed, in Clause 1 of the Bill, to restrict greyhound racing, with gambling, to 104 days a year, excluding Good Fridays and Sundays when no racing would be allowed, and to no more than eight races per meeting within a timeframe of four hours.155 In response to the demands of the greyhound lobby that they would need 156  days racing on London tracks and 208 on provincial tracks, Gilmour (Home Secretary) provocatively suggested that as greyhound organisations had indicated in their evidence to the Royal Commission that greyhound racing was not really about gambling they would be free to hold any number of meetings as long as there was no tote gambling beyond 104 days per year. He was taking them at their word. The NGRS replied by suggesting that tracks would now operate for two days per week instead of three but that their incomes would fall by a third, speculating that one London track would see its tote pool fall from £802,512 per annum to about £526,000.156 The Bill passed through the Commons and the Lords with few amendments, though after bitter debates. The opponents of greyhound racing continued to emphasise the dangers it threatened for the family: the Carntyne track, near Glasgow, had established a nursery ‘So that mothers can leave their children in the nursery while they go to gamble’ and the Harringay track, in north London, equipped a playground where children could be left. The playground included ‘Two see-​saws and a round sandpit complete with spades and buckets’.157 John McGovern, the Independent Labour Party MP for Glasgow Shettleston in which the Carntyne track was located, agreed that it was ‘a most degrading sight’ to see women taking children to the nurseries on this track, before going on to describe his two visits to the gloomy atmosphere of the dog meetings, although there was no disorder.158 Mr Buchanan MP, in an ironic comment made to Mr T.  Williams, Labour MP for Don Valley (1922–​59), stated that: ‘Everybody knows that women began to attend when the totalisator was introduced. Now that the totalisator has gone the attendances of women and children every week is on the decrease.’159 He was firmly against the legalisation of the totalisator. Nevertheless, the main criticism was that many greyhound tracks had been running unregulated and illegal totalisators where they determined the amount of money that would be returned to the winning punters. Indeed, as the Bill was being debated, it was claimed of the Manchester company formed in 1931 (probably the White City) that it was using a totalisator and, that

48

48

Going to the dogs in 1931 declared a dividend of £212,000. One man invested £100 and has been paid £6,000 a year ever since. Another guaranteed the company at the bank for a few thousand pounds, and he has drawn over £7,000 a year ever since. These fellows ought to be on the means test and know the meaning of poverty. King Solomon’s mines cannot compare with the money that has been raked in out of greyhound racing and yet these people tell us that it is clean, honest and fair as any other sport.160

This type of comment was strengthened by the fact that the South London Greyhound Racecourse Ltd made a profit of 14.58 per cent in 1928–​29, paid a dividend on investment of over 50 per cent in 1929–​30, and 125 per cent in 1931–​ 32. A Glasgow track was also earning £120,000 from its totalisator.161 Not all tracks ran their own totalisator but the Royal Commission of 1932–​33 indicated that 130 of the 187 tracks, slightly more than other estimates suggest, did so. Both Conservative and Labour MPs were divided on greyhound racing and the tote. Whilst many emphasised the moral dangers of the sport and the financial exploitation, D. G. Logan, Labour MP for Liverpool Scotland constituency, stated that on his visit to a dog track he had ‘not seen anything cleaner in sport’, that ‘I saw nothing in that particular track than would offend anybody’, and that not 1 per cent of ordinary men and women ‘who engage in steady betting ever frequent the dog tracks’.162 Brigadier-​General Critchley was also briefly able to add his defensive comments of the sport as MP for Twickenham in 1934 and 1935 –​though these were largely towards the end of the passing of the Bill and related more to its implementation.163 The 1934 Betting and Lotteries Act legitimised tote gambling at greyhound tracks but also brought the whole sport under control. Greyhound tracks had now to apply for an annual licence to the Watch Committee of the local authority and initially that could cost up to £50 and, one estimate suggests, as already indicated, that up to sixty tracks had their licences refused between 1934 and 1949 and 1950.164 Only permanent tracks were allowed to operate the tote and other gambling on 104 days, with the possible addition of four special days, and arrangements were made for temporary tracks to operate eight days per year. As a result the imbroglio over greyhound racing was resolved and, although some firms had ceased operating, the tracks began to prosper again. In towns where there were several tracks an arrangement was made for them to operate on different nights and different times, so that they did not clash. In the Manchester area, Salford operated on a Tuesday and Friday night and Belle Vue on a Wednesday and Saturday.165 Some tracks operated three times per week in summer and once per week in winter. With such ingenuity greyhound racing continued to expand until the Second World War and beyond. Indeed, there were twenty-​five million attendances in 1938 at fifty-​nine NGRS/​NGRC tracks and possibly up to thirty-​eight million attendances at all tracks.

49

The rise of greyhound racing, 1926–45

49

The impact of the Second World War and continuing discrimination The economic and political constraints on greyhound racing re-​emerged during the Second World War, which brought with it the immediate closure of greyhound racing tracks, and indeed all places of entertainment, under the Orders of the Defence Regulations. Chief constables and local authorities throughout Britain enforced the regulations and reported back to their local Watch Committees.166 Yet it would appear that attendances bounced back quickly on some London tracks when the immediate restrictions were eased.167 These regulations were eased fairly quickly but were then subject to the discretion of the local authorities and Watch Committees before being regularised by the Public Entertainment Act of 1942. It declared that ‘racing shall take place on not more than one day a week on each track, and that meetings shall not take place except in the afternoon of Saturday or bank holidays’.168 Watch Committees normally met their obligations to fix 104 days and special days under the 1934 Act but noted that it was ‘modified’ by the 1942 Act, charging no more than £25 for a licence, instead of £50, in recognition that greyhound tracks would have only one Saturday meeting, instead of two meetings per week.169 These restrictions lasted until just after the end of the war and there was a full return to the 1934 Act from the summer of 1946.170 These constraints had a major impact on the activities of greyhound racing. As with other entertainments, greyhound racing was banned on the outbreak of war. It was then allowed for one day per week per track, occasionally two, by many of the local authorities before being restricted to one meeting per week on a Saturday from 1942 until 1946. The dog tracks had hoped for a return to two days per week in 1940 and 1941, once the restriction on the opening of places of entertainment was removed. This did not occur and there was, in 1941, considerable debate about the holding of trial races, as illustrated by the events at the Darnall greyhound track, in Sheffield, which had mid-​week dog trials, with up to sixty members of the general public present. The Sheffield police deemed that these trials contravened Clause 2 of the Orders of the Defence Regulations. Mr Aldridge, of the NGRS, pressured for this to be allowed but a Home Office civil servant reflected the official mind in advising the Home Secretary that: ‘The Order is not concerned with betting with the entertainment thereof, in other words, the Order is concerned to prevent people wasting their time by watching dog racing not to prevent them wasting their money by betting.’171 In the end it was decided that the trials could be held ‘providing admission was restricted to Owners, Track Officials and Press Representatives, and the general public excluded’. This restrictive attitude was reflected in the views of Sir Stafford Cripps, who had recently returned from ambassadorial duties in Russia. Cripps, speaking in the House of Commons in March 1942, was reported to have associated

50

50

Going to the dogs

greyhound racing and boxing with black marketeering, spivs and idleness. Cripps’ accusations were investigated by Mass Observation (MO), which suggested that he had placed ‘exaggerated emphasis’ on ‘the immorality and decadence in Britain’ it was supposed to represent. The problem was that the war was going badly for Britain and that politicians were looking for an excuse and unfairly lambasted greyhound racing. MO also pointed out that in surveys 46 per cent of public wanted a ban on horse racing, 34 per cent on greyhound racing, and 20 per cent on boxing, and that the singling out of an essentially working-​class sport was not only wrong but discriminatory.172 Nevertheless, for the duration of the Second World War greyhound tracks operated once per week and from 1942 that had to be a Saturday afternoon or evening or a bank holiday and was subject to unfair political criticism. The reason for the continuation of sport and greyhound racing during the Second World War has been subject to study by Matthew Taylor, which looked at greyhound racing, football and horse racing.173 He argues that the wartime government felt that it was important for morale to continue with sporting activities but reveals that there was never an official government attitude or policy on the matter. In the end, sport was subject to a range of shifting conditions –​war work, transport and public opinion  –​which varied throughout the war. The criticism of Cripps rather suggests this to be the case and that greyhound racing was not even going to be treated as equivalent to other sporting activities in wartime. Despite such disdain greyhound racing survived the war, increasing its appeal. Initially, police attendance returns for London suggest that at first wartime attendances fell substantially, except on Saturday nights. Harringay normally averaged 7,500 but its crowds fell to 1,100 in October 1939 and Stamford Bridge had 3,468 attenders at the beginning of October compared to the normal crowd of 5,200. The White City (London) stadium found that its crowds fell but had attendances of 13,349 on 2 October which was above the normal 12,000 average in a stadium designed for 90,000.174 On 13 October 1939 it had a crowd of 6,600 against the normal attendance of 12,000. Also, on 13 October New Cross had a crowd of 2,080 compared with its normal 3,900. However, a comparison of the attendances of four large tracks for 1936, 1942 and 1946 revealed that these tracks had 3,300,000 attendances in 1936 at 424 meetings, meaning that the average crowd was 7,812; 1,765,000 attendances at 200 meetings in 1942, indicating an average crowd of 9,628 for fewer meetings; and, in the peak year of 1946, 6,300,000 attendances at 434 meetings, with an average crowd of 14,585.175 It would appear that once the pattern of wartime greyhound racing was normalised the working-​class bettor began to attend more, and was spending more money on the tote –​buoyed up by the full employment income of wartime –​than they had done before the war. Tote turnover was £40,312,801 in 1938, £32,066,466 in 1939 and as low as £30,144,529 in 1940 before rising

51

The rise of greyhound racing, 1926–45

51

rapidly to £36,668,859 in 1941, £49,989,183 in 1942, £60,382,219 in 1943 and £74,845,814 in 1944. In 1945, the year the war ended, the tote turnover rose to over £137,715,273 based upon the 105 tote-​operating tracks.176 The recovery was palpable, despite greyhound racing suffering from the whims of wartime policy makers. Conclusion The emergence of mechanical greyhound racing in Britain was rapid and part of a wider international growth that occurred in the United States, Australia, France and other countries during the mid-​1920s. It gained interest and rapid growth throughout Britain as a result of an early tradition of dog and whippet racing. It reached its peak in the first twenty years of its existence, emerging to provide leisure and gambling opportunities especially for the working classes, and was primarily an urban, rather than rural, activity. It was potentially a highly profitable, if precarious, venture but increasingly confined and cramped by gambling controls, issues of planning permission, wartime controls and fuel problems that went beyond those imposed on many other sports. The dominating feature of its early years is that even in an age when the controls on all forms of gambling were becoming more relaxed, anti-​gambling bodies, the NAGL and religious groupings, operating through the House of Commons and the House of Lords, were able to create a situation where greyhound racing was discriminated against, particularly in its operation of the tote. In contrast to other sports such as the more middle-​class sport of horse racing, time and again, it faced the oppositional bias of politicians, civil servants and local authorities. Churchill, Buchan and Cripps worked against it, and for the interests of anti-​ gambling organisations. A  large body of MPs, usually said to be up to 200 and drawing from all parties but mainly from the Conservative Party, defended it throughout the 1930s and beyond, sufficient to prevent its abolition by a group of more than 200 MPs, again drawn from all parties but mainly from the Conservative Party. Yet greyhound racing was never able to overcome the feeling that it was not the rational and respectable activity that its essentially working-​class supporters were supposed to indulge in and it was not helped in this by the fractious nature of the relationship between the NGRS tracks and the flapping tracks, and by the conflict between the tote tracks and the bookmakers. Hostility towards gambling in general might have eased in the course of the inter-​war years, as Mike Huggins has suggested, but that does not appear to have been the case with greyhound racing where accusations and evidence of class bias persisted. Nevertheless, following the Second World War the future looked promising for the sport though economic conditions and taxation were to quickly project the industry into a downward spiral which saw it lose out to off-​course gambling.

52

Going to the dogs

52 Notes

1 HO 45/​14222, Part 1. 2 Ibid. On the Americanisation of British sport and leisure there is a wealth of recent literature emphasising the importance of this in the inter-​war years, including the following:  David Slater and Peter J. Taylor (eds), The American Century:  Consensus and Coercion in the Projection of American Power (Oxford:  Blackwell, 1999); Rob Kroes, Richard Rydall and Doeko Bosscher (eds), Cultural Transmissions and Receptions:  American Mass Culture in Europe (Amsterdam:  VU University Press, 1993); George McKay (ed.), Yankee Go Home (and Take Me with U): Americanization and Popular Culture (Sheffield:  Sheffield Academic Press, 1997); and David W. Gutzke and Michael John Law, The Roadhouse Comes to Britain: Drinking, Driving and Dancing, 1925–​1955 (London: Bloomsbury, 2017). 3 HO 45/​15853/​663794/​4, figures from a NGRS letter dated 30 June 1953. 4 The Royal Commission on Lotteries, Betting and Gaming (1932–​33), Final Report (London: HMSO, 1933), Cmnd 3441, para. 142. This was chaired by S. Rowlatt and is sometimes known as the Rowlatt Commission. Paragraph 142 indicates that there were 187 tracks operating in December 1932 and 220 a year later. 5 On various websites there are unexplained estimates of a total of 133 registered tracks (117 in England, eleven in Scotland and five in Wales linked to the NGRS) and 256 known Independent tracks, to have operated in Britain since 1926. It is quite possible, given the high death rates of tracks, that these figures are correct and, in addition, there were certainly some companies that never got as far as opening tracks which suggests that well over 400 to 450 greyhound companies have been formed in Britain. 6 Huggins, ‘Betting, Sport and the British, 1918–​1939’. 7 A. C. Critchley, Critch! The Memoirs of Brigadier General A.  C. Critchley (London: Hutchinson, 1961). He was a keen amateur golfer and in 1939, with his son, won a silver medal at the World Bobsleigh Championships. Also look at the Guardian, 23 December 1927 and, for his obituary, Guardian, 10 February 1963. 8 Clapson, A Bit of a Flutter, p. 144. 9 A. Croxton Smith, Greyhound Racing and Breeding (London: Gay and Hancock Ltd, 1927), indicates that the first directors of the Greyhound Racing Association Ltd were Sir W. Gentle JP (Chairman), Brigadier-​General A. C. Critchley (Vice Chairman), Mr Robert Grant, Jun., Major L. Lyne Dixon (often spelt Dixson). Mr F. A. Luna JP and Mr F. S. Gentle. 10 Belton, When West Ham went to the Dogs, p. 33. 11 HO 45/​14222, Part 1, introductory material. 12 The Times, 11 September 1876. 13 Belton, When West Ham went to the Dogs, p. 44. 14 HO 45/​15853/​663974, Home Office survey of greyhound racing in Britain in 1927. Belton, When West Ham went to the Dogs, pp. 28–​31 presents similar information. 15 HO 45/​15853/​663794, indicates that the GRA found its Crystal Palace track stopped because of a petition of 43,434 signatures against it and a similar situation occurred as a result of opposition in the Isle of Man. 16 HO 45/​14222, Part 1, comments on cover.

53

The rise of greyhound racing, 1926–45

53

17 HO 45/​14709/​512758/​2, in a letter from Robert Baggallay, Secretary of the NGRC to the Home Secretary, 12 January 1932. 18 The Greyhound Year Book 1933 (London: Welbecson Press, 1933), p. 69, indicates the respectable nature of the sport by listing the main officers, the stewards, the judges, timekeepers, kennel managers, the veterinary surgeons and others attached to the NGRS and the GRA. Apart from Critchley, who was well known, there was Lt. Col. A. D. Cameron down as a director and Major Hopkiss as one of the official veterinary surgeons. 19 HO 45/​15853/​663794/​13. 20 In London it had White City, Harringay and Crystal Palace. In the provinces it had Birmingham (Hall Green), Bradford, Brighton, Cardiff (White City), Edinburgh (Powderhall in north Edinburgh), Isle of Man, Leeds (Fullerton Park), Leicester, Liverpool (Stanley), Manchester (Belle Vue), Margate, Nottingham (White City), Plymouth, Portsmouth, Newcastle (White City) and Stoke. 21 HO 45/​14222, Part 1, 4999163/​78 suggests that there were 131 greyhound companies formed in 1927. 22 HO 45/​15853/​663794. 23 Huggins, ‘ “Everybody’s Going to the Dogs”?’, 401–​21. 24 HP 45/​14222, Part  1/​449163, referred to in a statement by John Heath to the Secretary of the Evangelical Free Church, the Reverend Thomas Nightingale. 25 MEPO 2/​1776/​57/​46/​31, report on the White City 27 February 1932. 26 HO 45/​14709/​512758/​28, letter of 4 January 1932. 27 Keith Laybourn with David Taylor, The Battle for the Roads of Britain: Police, Motorists and the Law, c. 1890–​1970 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2015), p. 6. 28 HO 45/​15853/​ 663794. 29 The Greyhound Year Book 1933, p.  10, indicates that Mick the Miller was owned by Mr Arundel, won thirty-​six races and £8,685 prize money, and that he won the English Greyhound Derby in 1929 and 1930, the Cesarewitch in 1930 and the St. Leger in 1931, at 525 yards, 600 yards and 700 yards, respectively. 30 Quoted in a supplement entitles ‘Sports Book Special’, Observer, 4 January 2004. 31 HO 45/​15853/​1673793/​13. 32 HO 45/​15853, 663794. 33 HO 45/​15853/​663794/​28, file dated November 1933. 34 HO 335/​87, Memorandum on the Totalisator by the Provincial Greyhound Track Central Office to the Royal Commission on Betting, Lotteries and Gaming (1949–​ 51), p. 25. It had 119 tracks of varying quality and provision from Group 1 down to Group 4, the numbers being seventeen Group 1 tracks (with totes and 1,000 to 1,500 attenders at meetings), thirty-​one Group 2 tracks, twenty-​three Group 3 tracks, and forty-​eight Group 4 tracks, with no tote facilities with fewer than 500 attenders, and often less than 300. 35 Royal Commission on Betting, Lotteries and Gaming (1949–​ 51), Final Report (London: HMSO, 1951, Cmnd 8190), 103 and Appendix II. 36 HO 45/​14222/​499167/​177, referred to in an NGRS deputation visit by the NGRS to the Home Secretary, led by Lord Askwith, and introduced by Col. J. T. C. Brabazon-​ Moore on 19 April 1928.

54

54

Going to the dogs

3 7 Daily Express, 23 April 1928. 38 HO 45/​14222/​4888/​163/​173, deputation of the NGRS to the Home Secretary, 19 April 1928. 39 HO 45/​158853/​663794/​31, NGRS Deputation to the Home Secretary, 23 November 1933, p. 3 of twenty-​three pages of minutes, in a section of evidence given by Major General the Lord Loch. 40 Ibid. 41 HO 45/​15853/​663794/​29, memorandum and evidence from the British Greyhound Track Control Society, 1933. 42 HO 45/​15853/​663794/​28, a letter from the National Bookmakers’ Association in November 1933 containing a copy of Banyan, November 1933, vol. 2. 43 HO 45/​14709/​512758/​21, in letters to Sir William Jowett, and one from Kendal to the London County Council, 31 December 1930. 44 HO 45/​14709/​512758/​3, connected with a letter sent by the Bedford County Chief Constable. 45 HO 45/​14709/​512758/​6. 46 HO 45/​14709/​512758/​37. 47 HO 45/​14709, 513758/​34. 48 HO 45/​14709/​512758/​33, 34, 37, 42. 49 HO 45/​15853/​663794/​3, letter of Mr Burgan MP dated 26 September 1933. 50 HO 45/​15853/​663794/​4, letter from the NGRS to the Home Secretary, 30 June 1933 signed by the officials of the NGRS including Lord Askwith, Lord Loch and Sir William Gentle. 51 HO 45/​ 15853/​ 663794/​ 34 suggests that the BGTC wanted a Control Board consisting of an independent chair, two government representatives and two each from the NGRS and the BGTCS. 52 HO 45/​14709/​512758/​16, letter of the Metropolitan Police 28 October 1931 and letter from Hackney Council 4 January 1932. 53 HO 45/​14709/​512758/​28, letter of A. Gilbert. 54 Ibid., letter of Col. Robert Baggallay, Secretary of the NGRS. 55 Ibid., attached to a letter from A. Gilbert. 56 HO 45/​14709/​512758/​28, letter of Col. Robert Baggallay, Secretary of the NGRS. 57 HO 45/​15843/​659060/​165; HO 45/​15853/​663794/​1, item dated 5 July 1933; HO 45/​15843/​659060/​20; and Daily Express, 26 May 1933. All these indicate that about 200 MPs favoured legalising the greyhound Tote. 58 Leeworthy, ‘A Diversion from the New Leisure’, 62; The Times, 14 February 1933. 59 HO 45/​24222/​Part 1, 499163/​55. 60 HO 45/​14222, memorandum dated 7 October 1926. 61 Gulland, Canine Casinos. 62 HO 45/​14222, Part 1, 144963/​90. 63 HO 45/​14222, Part  1/​1499163/​980, a report on the deputation of the National Emergency Committee of Christian Citizens to the Home Secretary, 26 March 1928. 64 Manchester City News, 14 January 1928. 65 Manchester Guardian, 9 December 1927.

55

The rise of greyhound racing, 1926–45

55

6 6 Bolton Archives, ACCF/​9/​29/​. 67 Ibid. 68 Manchester Evening News, 22 and 26 November 1932. 69 HO 45/​14222/​499163/​11. 70 Manchester Guardian, 9 December 1927. 71 Daily Mail, 28 October 1927. 72 Manchester Guardian, 19 May 1928. 73 HO 45/​14222, Part 1/​499163/​1, letter dated 7 October 1926. 74 Ibid. 75 Ibid. 76 HO 45/​14222, Part 1/​449161/​55. 77 HO 45/​14222, Part 1, letter from the Home Secretary to Churchill, 20 December 1927 and quoted from the Cabinet Papers, CP 143 for April 1928. 78 HO 45/​14222, Part 1/​499163/​69. 79 HO 45/​14222/​499163, items 125, 128, 138, 143, 150, 155 and 160. 80 HO 45/​ 14222, Part  2, sub-​ file 499163/​ 173. The deputation occurred on 19 April 1928. 81 HO 45/​14222, Part 1 and HO 45/​14222 Part 2/​499163/​177, which deals with a discussion between Mr Buchan and the Home Office over the Bill on 19 June 1928. 82 Daily Mail, 32 March 1928. 83 HO 45/​15266, in an eight-​page statement from Parliamentary Debates. 84 HO 45/​14222, Part 2/​499163/​205, comments on the cover. 85 HO 45/​15853/​663794/​2, in a letter from the Archbishop of Canterbury which contained a pamphlet by the Rev. E. B. Perkins on The Serious Social Consequences of Gambling (n.d.). 86 HO 45/​14709/​512758/​37, letter dated 24 February 1932. 87 HO 43/​14709/​512758/​45. 88 Ibid., deputation by the London County Council to the Home Secretary, 24 November 1932, p. 2. 89 HO 45/​14709/​512758/​16. 90 HO 45/​14709/​512758/​45. 91 Ibid., letter from the Lambeth County Council to the Home Secretary, 24 November 1932. 92 HO 335/​87, NGRS memorandum to the Willink Commission, p. 2, item 7. 93 Ibid., p. 2, item 8. 94 HO 45/​ 15266/​ 654649/​ 38, memorandum letter of Urban District Councils 11 October 1932, calling for local authorities to be given responsibility for all sporting events, declaring that these should be in the hands of the ‘representatives of those who live in the districts’. 95 Daily Express, 1 December 1932. 96 Manchester Guardian, 3 December 1932. 97 HO 45/​15266, letter from Sir John Gilmour to James Ramsay MacDonald, the Prime Minister, 29 November 1932. 98 HO 45/​15266/​654649/​38, Urban District Council Association memorandum. 99 HO 45/​15267.

56

56

Going to the dogs

1 00 HO 45/​15853/​663794/​27. 101 HO/​15266, Reasons against the Dog Race (Local Options) Bill. 102 HO/​15853/​663794/​4. Look at Appendix A for the list of NGRS tracks in 1932. 103 Ibid., letter from the NGRS to Home Secretary, 30 June 1933. 104 HO/​45/​15853/​663794/​1 in a file on Mr Groves MP, supporter of the NGRS, produced in June 1933 for discussion on 5, 6 and 14 July 1933 where he was going to be asking to statutory control of greyhound racing. 105 David Miers, Regulating Commercial Gambling:  Past, Present and Future (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). 106 Ibid., pp. 309–​10, drawing from HO 45/​14709/​512758/​45 (November 1932). 107 Official Report, Fifth Series, Parliamentary Debates, Commons, 1934, vol. 291, June 18–​July 6, 27 June 1934, col. 1136. 108 Manchester Evening News, 16 December 1932. 109 Daily Herald, 17 December 1932; Manchester Guardian, 17 December 1932; Salford Daily Despatch, 17 December 1932. 110 Manchester Guardian, 23 December 1932. 111 Ibid. 112 Daily Herald, 17 December 1932. 113 HO 45/​14709/​659010/​168. 114 HO 45/​14709/​659020/​15. 115 Manchester Guardian, 21 December 1932; Manchester Evening News, 21 December 1932. 116 Manchester Guardian, 21 December 1932. 117 HO 45/​16279, two letters from the Chief Constable of Preston (C. P.  Watson), dated 17 February 1933 and 21 February 1933. 118 HO 45/​16279, 22 December 1932. 119 HO 45/​14709/​659020/​15. 120 Ibid. 121 Manchester Evening News, 11 January 1932; (Hull) Daily Mail, 11 January 1933. There are lots of similar cases reported in HO 45/​14709/​512758 about Hackney, the London tracks and some provincial tracks. 122 HO 45/​15863/​663794/​14, the letter on this being dated 17 October 1933. 123 Manchester Guardian, 21 December 1932 and 10 February 1933. 124 John Bull, 18 February 1933. 125 Salford Daily Despatch, 14 February 1933. 126 Manchester Evening News, 10 January 1933. The deputation included J.  Shand (Chairman), Mr William Brown (Rochdale), Mr Wrightson, Captain Moffat (Newcastle) and Captain Davidson (Secretary). 127 Daily Express, 8 February 1933. 128 Ibid. 129 Ibid. 130 Daily Express, 12 January 1933. 131 Manchester Guardian, 13 January 1933. 132 Manchester Guardian, 11 January 1933. 133 Manchester Guardian, 9 February 1933.

57

The rise of greyhound racing, 1926–45

57

1 34 Manchester Guardian, 16 February 1933. 135 First (Souvenir) Issue, Craven Park Greyhound Stadium and Hull Kingston Rovers Official Year Book 1961 (Hull: Craven Park, 1961), p. 6. 136 HO 45/​14709/​684649. 137 Official Report Fifth Report, Parliamentary Debates, Commons, vol. 247, 15 February 1933, cols. 1104–​5. 138 (Hull) Daily Mail, 16 February 1933. 139 Fifth Report, Parliamentary Debates, Commons, vol. 277, 28 April 1933, Rhys Davies, col. 481. 140 HO 45/​16319. 141 HO 45/​16317. 142 Ibid. 143 HO 335/​87, on the PGTCO evidence to the Royal Commission on Betting, Lotteries and Gaming (1949–​51), p. 2, item 6, dealing with track expiries before the 1934 Act. 144 HO 45/​16279/​65920/​5, in a file dealing with the Liverpool Police Chief Constable. 145 Ibid., and discussed in detail in ­chapter 6. 146 HO 45/​15853/​663794/​22. 147 HO 45/​15853/​663794/​25. 148 HO 45/​15853/​65906/​201, a six-​page statement from Major the Rt. Hon. Ormsby-​ Gore, MP. 149 Ibid. 150 Official Report, Fifth Series, Parliamentary Debates, Commons, vol. 274, No. 30 Wednesday 15 February, 1933, col. 1090, Captain North. 151 HO 45/​15853/​663794/​39, letter from the greyhound owners. 152 HO 45/​15853/​663794/​39. 153 HO 45/​15267. 154 Fifth Series, Parliamentary Debates, Commons, vol. 292, 27 June 1934, col. 1137–​9. 155 HO 45/​16319/​678073/​190. Brigadier-​General Critchley wanted the minimum number of races raised to ten but felt that the range should be between eight and twelve. He also argued that the new restrictions would bring down the tote pool on one London track from £802,512 to about £470,000, much to the detriment of greyhound racing on that track. 156 HO 45/​16319/​673073/​190, in a letter and memorandum from Brigadier-​General Critchley. 157 Ibid., col. 1156, quoting T. Williams, Labour MP for Don Valley. 158 Ibid., col. 1212. 159 Official Report, Fifth Series, Parliamentary Debates, Commons, vol. 19, no.  97, 15 November 1934, col. 120. 160 Ibid., col. 1158. 161 Ibid., col. 1159. 162 Ibid., col. 1160. 163 Ibid., 13 November 1934, vol. 94, cols. 1919–​20. 164 HO 338/​87, the PGTCO evidence to the Royal Commission on Betting, Lotteries and Gaming (1949–​51).

58

58

Going to the dogs

1 65 Clapson, A Bit of a Flutter, pp. 151–​2. 166 Salford Watch Committee, Reports 1938–​9, 11 September 1939. 167 MEPOL 2/​3486 letter from TRA Ltd to the Assistant Commissioner of Scotland Yard, 10 and 23 October 1939. 168 HO 186/​741/​140/​25/​1, 1941–​43, 4 May 1942, pp. 59–​60. 169 Ibid., p. 160. 170 Ibid., 1946–​47, p. 96. 171 HO 186/​741/​140/​25/​6. 172 Mass Observation (MO), File Report, ‘Some thoughts on greyhound Racing and national unity’, March 1942; Keith Laybourn, ‘ “King Solomon’s mines cannot compare with the money raked in by greyhound racing”:  Greyhound Racing and its Critics and the Working Class c. 1926–​1951’, Labor History, 5 (October/​November 2014), 607–​21. 173 M. Taylor, ‘Sport and Civilian Morale in the Second World War’, Journal of Contemporary History (2016), iFirst, 1–​24. 174 MEPOL 2/​3486. 175 Royal Commission on Betting, Lotteries and Gaming (1949–​51), Final Report, p. 151. 176 Laybourn, Working-​Class Gambling in Britain, Table  4.5, pp.  189–​90. HO 45/​ 24210/​8175/​43, in a letter dated 31 January 1944 suggests alternative figures for Great Britain of £36,038,887 in 1938, £43,027,643 in 1941 and £47,166,277 in 1942. The London figures for the three years, in respective order, were £22,238,791, £22,876,878 and £23,897,048. HO 335/​1 contains the Royal Commission on Betting, Gaming and Lotteries, Final Report, published in March 1951 and this, p. 29, paras 101–​2, indicated the figures given in the text.

59

2

Discrimination and decline: greyhound racing in Britain, 1945 to the 1960s

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

60

60

Going to the dogs

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

61

Discrimination and decline

61

Table 2.1  Greyhound tracks in Britain in 1948 Country England Scotland Wales Totals

NGRS tracks 67 8 2 77

Non-​NGRS tracks 91 30 11 132

Total 158 38 13 209

Source: HO 335/​77, evidenced of the NGRS to the Royal Commission on Betting, Gaming and Lotteries (1949–51), Final Report, Appendix A.

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. 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;

62

Going to the dogs

62 Table 2.2  The totalisator take at the British tracks,1938–​45 (£s)

Greater London area (20 tracks) Durham and Northumberland Rest of England and Wales Scotland Total

1938

1944

1945

22,593,525

33,443,243

69,452,194

2,617,536

4,897,635

8,620,062

10,891,289

30,169,111

48,843,097

3,250,489 39,352,839

6,335,825 74,845,814

10,800,020 137,715,273

Source: HO 45/​24210/​812576/​64, British tote statistics for 1949.

£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. 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

63

Discrimination and decline

63

Table 2.3  Dog-​tracks: total annual totalisator stakes in Britain (1944–​49) and at the eight leading London dog tracks (£ million)

Total annual totalisator turnover Number of tracks operating a totalisator 21 London tracks

1944

1945

1946

1947

1948

1949

£74.8 m

137.7

199.2

131.5

99.6

85.6

107

101

112

138

£33.4

69.4

149

127

103.4

64.9

48.1

43.7

51.9

49.4

48.3

51

17.6 11.0 10.9 7.4 5.8 9.0 5.4 4.7

10.8 7.4 6.0 4.5 3.7 3.9 3.8 3.3

7.9 5.7 4.2 3.2 2.7 2.9 2.9 2.5

(%) % of all totalisator stakes

44.7

Leading London tracks White City Harringay Wembley Walthamstow Clapton Wimbledon Catford Wandsworth

50.4 £ (million)

£7.1 £4.3 £4.0 £2.8 £1.9 £1.8 £1.7 £1.5

13.5 7.9 8.0 5.4 3.9 5.8 3.6 3.3

6.8 4.8 4.3 3.0 2.2 3.1 2.2 2.3

Source: HO 45/​24210/​812576/​64, British tote statistics for 1949.

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.

64

64

Going to the dogs

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

65

Discrimination and decline

65

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

66

66

Going to the dogs

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,

67

Discrimination and decline

67

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 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. 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

68

Going to the dogs

68

Table 2.4  Estimates of betting on greyhound racing and horse racing, 1946–​53 (tote and bookmakers) Year

Betting on greyhound racing Estimate

1946 1947 1948 1949 1950 1951 1952 1953

Betting on horse racing Tote tax (10%)

Fall from 1948

£ million

£ million

250 450 210 200 160

300 450 350 450 425

9,473,184 8,494,007 7,055,851 6,665,348 6,472,133 6,169,551

10.3 25.5 29.6 31.7 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.

Table 2.5  Falling levels of tote turnover, pool owners’ deductions (6 per cent) and Pool Betting Duty, 1945–​49 (£) Year

Tote turnover

Pool deduction (owners)

1945 1946 1947 1948 1949

124,914,411 189,540,300 119,529,873 87,306,407 77,509,990

7,494,805 11,372,000 7,171,712 5,238,884 4,656,589

Pool Betting Duty

8,730,641 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.

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

69

Discrimination and decline

69

Table 2.6  Number of bookmakers on some major tracks, 1948–​50 Track

Wembley, London 2 shilling ring 4s ring 8s ring Kings Heath, Birmingham 1s 9d ring 2s 9d ring 4s 6d ring Powderhall, Edinburgh 2s ring 4s ring Belle Vue, Manchester 2s ring 4s ring White City, Glasgow 1s 6d ring 3s 6d ring Plymouth 1s 6d ring 3s 6d ring

Number of bookmakers 1948

1950

60 22 11

24 8 3

14 11 5

7 3 3

60 21

15 12

85 16

27 10

30 20

9 9

12 18

5 7

Source: HO 335/​77, evidence, papers and correspondence of the National Greyhound Racing Society the Willink Commission, 1949–​51, memorandum, para. 29.

However, the larger tracks, such as Wembley and Kings Heath, Birmingham, had three betting enclosures, as indicated in Table 2.6. 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:

70

Going to the dogs

70

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). 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 Table 2.7  Number of bookmaker licences issued in January of each year, 1949–​53

One enclosure (£12) Two enclosures £6 licence £24 licence More than two enclosures £6 licence £18 licence £48 licence Total

Jan. 1949

Jan. 1950

848

702

350

332

407

5,207 2,474

5,078 2,660

4,736 1,995

8,408 2,274

5,317 1,971

4,111 1,288 597 15,279

3,471 1,102 537 13,459

3,297 959 419 11,756

3,729 1,013 420 13,307

3,388 946 356 12,385

Source: CUST 49/​4252/​219/​54.

Jan. 1951

Jan. 1952

Jan. 1953

71

Discrimination and decline

71

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,

72

72

Going to the dogs

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. 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

73

Discrimination and decline

73

Table 2.8  The tote take and other tax paid on six tracks in 1949 (the figures do not match exactly) Track Belle Vue (25,000 capacity) Walthamstow (40,000 capacity) West Ham (40,000 capacity) White City, London (75,000 capacity) Blackpool Greyhound and Sports Company

Money staked

Pool Betting Duty

To bettors

To operators

£1,970,800

£197,079

£1,655,289

£118,440

£3,043,055

£304,295

£2,556,153

£182,577

£1,829,509

£180,856

£1,639,586?

£108,932

£6,748,059

£674,750

£5,668,499

£404,852

£761,907

£76,191

£639,980

£45,745

Source: HO/​45/​24210/​817566/​98.

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

74

74

Going to the dogs

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.

75

Discrimination and decline

75

Table 2.9  The decline in the number of greyhound racing tracks, 1951 and 1977 1951 Number of courses Number of courses under NGRC rules Number of tracks with totalisator facilities Aggregate annual attendance £ million at 1977 prices Total stakes on totalisator NGRC tracks Non-​NGRC Estimated turnover of bookmakers off-​course

1977

198 (210 licences) 68

107 48

138

76

21.2 million

6.5 million

313.1 279.3 33.8 98.5

70 70.6 4.4 358

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.

76

Going to the dogs

76

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 1 Baker, ‘Going to the Dogs’. 2 HO 335/​87, evidence of the PGTCO to the Royal Commission on Betting, Lotteries and Gaming (1949–​51), p. 1. 3 Royal Commission on Betting, Lotteries and Gaming (1949–51), Final Report, p. 26; copy of the Final Report, HO 335/​1; HO 335/​1. 4 Clapson, A Bit of a Flutter, p. 146. 5 Ibid., p. 99. 6 Ibid., pp. 27–​8. 7 Ibid. 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. 8 Ibid., p. 152; Laybourn, ‘ “King Solomon’s mines cannot compare with the money that has been raked in by greyhound racing” ’. 9 W. 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. 10 Baker, ‘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. 11 Report of a Conference of the Urban District Council Association, 30 January 1948, The National Archives, HLG 5​ 2/​1423. 12 Letter dated 10 September 1948 in The National Archives HLG ​52/​1423. 13 Letter 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. 14 Letter from Rev. W. Whittle, 15 September 1948, to Kearsley Urban District Council, Bolton Archives, AK/​6/​67/​9. 15 HO 385/​87, PGTCO evidence to the Royal Commission on Betting, Lotteries and Gaming (1949–​51), p. 3, paragraph 11 on ‘tracks of eight days’. 16 The National Archives, HLG 5​ 2/​1422, dated about 1947.

77

Discrimination and decline

77

1 7 The National Archives, HLG 5​ 2/​91698/​1. 18 HO 45/​24210. 19 Baker, ‘Going to the Dogs’, p. 103; Daily Herald, 10 April 1946. 20 Richard Farmer, ‘ “All Work and No Play”: British Leisure Culture and the 1947 Fuel Crisis’, Contemporary British History, 27 (2013), 22–​43. 21 The Times, 18 March 1946; The Star, 18 March 1946; Daily Herald, 12 and 14 March 1947. 22 Manchester Guardian, 12 March 1947; Daily Express, 12 and 17 March 1947. 23 HO 186/​741. 24 HO 45/​21932. 25 Ibid. 26 Ibid., 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. 27 HO 45/​21932. 28 HO 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). 29 Fifth Series, Parliamentary Debates, Commons, 12 November, vol. 444, cols. 405–​8. 30 Royal Commission on Betting, Lotteries and Gaming (1949–51), Final Report, p. 151. 31 Ibid., Cmnd 8190, para. 103, Appendix II. 32 Manchester Guardian, 7 April 1948; The Times, 7 April 1948. 33 MEPO 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. 34 Ibid., p.  5, para. 19 of printed statement to the Royal Commission (Willink, 1949–​51). 35 Ibid., p. 5, paras 23–​8. 36 HO 335/​77, evidence, papers and correspondence of the National Greyhound Racing Society, 1949–​51. 37 CUST 49/​4252/​219/​5, para.  30. 38 Ibid., p. 16, para. 88. 39 Ibid., p. 16, para. 89. 40 HO 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). 41 Ibid. 42 See ­chapter 3. 43 HO 335/​77, letter from John Aldridge to A. W. Peterson, 15 January 1951. 44 MEPO 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.

78

78

Going to the dogs

45 HO 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. 46 Ibid., Appendix L and also Appendix M. 47 CUST 49/​4251/​219/​1954. 48 CUST 49/​3504/​4479/​199. 49 Ibid. 50 CUST 49/​4216. 51 Ibid. 52 CUST 49/​4216. 53 HO 335/​81. 54 HO 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. 55 Ibid. 56 HO 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 57 HO 335/​887. 58 Carl 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. 59 Royal Commission on Gambling, Lotteries and Gaming (Willink, 1949–​51) and the Royal Commission on Gambling (Lord Rothschild, 1976–​78). 60 Royal Commission on Gambling, Final Report, 1978, vol. 1 (London:  HMSO), Cmnd 7200, para. 10.7, Table 10.1. 61 Leeworthy, ‘A Diversion from New Leisure’. 62 Cripps 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.

79

3

‘Animated roulette boards’: financing, operating and managing the greyhound tracks for racing the dogs, c. 1926–​61

Modern mechanised greyhound racing emerged overnight in 1926, but it had a long pedigree ranging back to coursing in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. What was new and distinct about it was that greyhounds were now to be run on oval tracks with the use of a mechanical hare and within a stadium –​ except on the temporary ‘tracks of eight days’ allowed to be set upon agricultural land or spare land under the 1934 Betting and Lotteries Act, and operating on open ground with no properly laid out track. The development of the new type of greyhound tracks represented an enormous financial investment in both the building of the tracks and the infrastructure of the sport, and it is not surprising that greyhound racing became one of the fastest growing areas of expenditure on leisure and sport. Indeed, it soon became the third largest commercial sporting activity in inter-​war Britain.1 A basic uniformity of stadium design and organisation, regardless of size, emerged to characterise the sport, with new tracks being opened at new stadiums, such as Wembley, alongside those opened at established football grounds, such as Stamford Bridge, or at athletic tracks such as the White City in London.2 However, imposed upon this were a set of variable arrangements and conditions. Individual owners and companies with one or two tracks, large corporate companies with several tracks, and organisational groups often operated by different codes, and by different practices aimed at attracting different types of bettors, and responded to varying local economic and urban demands. Indeed, no two tracks were exactly alike. By the mid-​1930s the servicing of these tracks was provided by about 25,000 full-​time and part-​time workers, whose number had probably risen to at least 28,000 by 1950. These staff operated the gates, the amenities, the kennelling, the racing and the tote, and were supplemented by up to 12,000 bookmakers in the 1930s (down to about 4,000 in the 1950s as seen in ­chapter 2), whose presence was tolerated more on the small flapping tracks than on the larger tote-​based NGRS/​NGRC tracks. Thousands of people were also connected with breeding greyhounds. Therefore, there can be no accurate figure for the number of people directly and indirectly employed in the sport,

80

80

Going to the dogs

on a full-​time, part-​time or private basis, though it is unlikely to have been less than 50,000 in the late 1930s and the late 1940s, to which might be added the many thousands of private greyhound owners. Greyhound racing was thus an interrelated complex of track organisation and action, and service industries, and a major employer in the leisure and sporting industries of Britain and urban local communities –​particularly in the large urban centres of London and Manchester, and their suburbs, and in Glasgow. Naturally the emergence of the new modern materialist culture of the greyhound track, the epitome of modernity during the inter-​war years, raises questions about its growth and organisation. Who financed greyhound racing? What were the essential and ubiquitous features of a greyhound track and gambling? How were the tracks managed? How did the tracks differ in their business practice in dealing with their customers to meet the immensely variable conditions in which they operated? Who was employed on the tracks? And what impact did they have upon their local communities? On the whole, the evidence suggests that the tracks were financed by the lower-​ middle class with an eye for a quick profit, as Mike Huggins has noted, and by some engineers, anxious to profit from their patent on their own tote machine. They were clearly complex and varied organisations which provided employment for a significant number of the local community. They were also managed by a professional group of managers whose very presence ensured that the owners could earn an income through their tote pool take, managers of the tracks not being allowed to be associated with the pool. However, there were clearly distinct differences between the larger NGRS/​NGRC tracks and the, generally, much smaller ‘flapping tracks’, which encouraged the development of different business models –​the former being driven by one based upon the tote whilst the latter were increasingly dominated by the need to earn gate money, which itself was dependent upon the presence of the bookmakers to attract the bettors. The fact is that the tracks often operated in different ways to meet the needs of their differing customers and geographical and regional differences, although there was a base of essential features in their organisational activities. As for their acceptance, it has already been established that greyhound tracks appealed to local working-​class communities in order to dispel the hostility of the anti-​gambling middle classes that they were not offering a rational recreation. Part of that process was for the NGRS/​NGRC to establish its legitimacy as a well-​organised and regulated sport, running to a recognised and responsible routine, operating a fraud-​free tote system and a proper register of greyhounds, with which to inspire confidence and reliability. The fact is that this legitimacy was only partly established before the consolidation of the sport in the early 1970s, the apparent large profits from the gambling that took place on the tracks never quite allowing greyhound racing to be regarded as a legitimate business and a rational recreation, even though those profits were very substantially reduced after the passing of the 1934 Betting and Lotteries Act.

81

Operating the greyhound tracks, c. 1926–61

81

Investing in the tracks and the small-​scale middle-​class and professional investor Investing in any new sporting and gambling venture was, and remains, a risky business. This was particularly true of greyhound racing where many investors were carried away with the reports of high returns without assessing the basic risks involved. As the sport became popular the number of greyhound companies and tracks mushroomed within the space of two or three years as businessmen and small-​scale middle-​class punters speculated to earn money from its growth. In 1926 there were only three greyhound companies in Britain –​the Greyhound Racing Association, initially financed by William Gentle who provided the initial £22,000 to finance the floating of the company, the Liverpool Greyhound Club and another Greyhound Racing Associated Trust Ltd (with £1  million nominal capital).3 By 1927 another 116 companies, such as the British Greyhound Club, Leeds Greyhound Association Ltd, the Bradford Greyhound Association, Middlesbrough Greyhound Association, Bolton Greyhound Racing Co. Ltd, Wembley Stadium (with a £230,000 notional share issue), West Ham Greyhound Racing Ltd (with £125,000 nominal capital and £120,000 issued capital) and Arms Park (Cardiff), and Ilford Stadium Group (£40,000 nominal capital), were registered.4 In March 1928 there were 172 (175 by April) registered greyhound companies, although according to John Buchan MP, only about forty were actually open for business.5 There were initial fears that the sport would fall as quickly as it rose. Indeed, in 1929, the Daily News published an article entitled ‘Greyhound Racing Bubble:  Many Investors May Lose Life Savings’, reporting on a sorry state of affairs of the Greyhound Racing Associated Trust and the decline of its share values from 6s 6d (32.5p) to 6d (2.5p).6 The article also listed the declining share values of many other stadiums. Wembley Stadium deferred shares were down from a high of 10s 6d to 4s; West Ham deferred shares had fallen from 5s 7.5d to 3d; the White City (London) deferred shares were down from 5s 7.5d to 6d; and the White City (London) preferred shares down from 10s to 2s 6d. In 1929 the Home Secretary believed, exaggeratedly and inaccurately as it turned out, that greyhound racing would soon expire.7 Indeed, some of these early companies did not survive long enough to open for business. The Southern Course Racing Stadium Company, based at Sydenham in south London, was registered on 12 August 1927 and liquidated on 16 January 1928, not having opened a track though having bought some dogs.8 Its main instigator was the engineer Ernest Allday Coleman, from Birmingham, who was promoting his own invention the Coleman Steeplechase Electric Hare. His other directors included Robert Osborne Graham of Dorking, William Proner, Joseph Brown and John Lacey, a London merchant. Many other companies were also formed but quickly went out of existence. The Midland Dog

82

82

Going to the dogs

Racing Association was formed on 24 August 1927 but ceased on 3 January 1930.9 The European Racing Company Ltd, formed to open tracks in Germany, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, opened in 1928 and expired in February 1929.10 The Metropolitan Dog Racing Association was registered on 17 April 1927 but ceased trading on 3 January 1930 and the Touring Greyhound Race Ltd registered on 22 August 1927 was dissolved on 11 July 1929.11 The Greyhound Racing Association (South Wales) survived rather longer and opened a track, but only lasted from 10 August 1927 until 4 April 1939.12 Others teetered on the edge of existence, sometimes surviving receivership. The Nottingham Greyhound Racing Company Ltd was registered on 15 August 1927, with the ubiquitous Critchley as one of its directors as well as shareholders. It almost expired in August 1933, nine months after greyhound totalisators had been declared illegal, but was saved and continued until 1948.13 Investment in greyhound racing was clearly a risky activity even in its early boom years. One can fairly speculate that those who invested obviously thought of the owners’ rake-​off from the tote, often 10 or 12 per cent between 1929, when greyhound totes began to operate, and before the state imposition of the 6 per cent tote take limit in 1934 (not increased until the Betting and Lotteries Act of 1971). Yet they did not always take account of the costs of employing a manager to run the course and the cost involved in constructing and operating a track, the staff, and the whole business of stabling, training and timing greyhounds, and the providing of prize money. Regardless of the costs, by the end of 1927 there were 131 greyhound companies registered with £3,744,250 of nominal capital, with issued capital at £868,561 5s 6d and debenture and other charges registered at £94,700.14 Although there were huge variations this meant that the average cost of each track, mainly NGRS tracks, was around £30,000 in the late 1920s, and this is partly confirmed by the fact that Harringay, an above-​average sized track built for 50,000 people (3,000 seated and 47,000 on spectator terraces) was opened on 13 September 1927 at a cost of £35,000.15 Thereafter, costs obviously rose steadily over time as a result of inflation but with substantial differences depending upon the locations and the size of the track, though few NGRS tracks were opened after the late 1940s. There is limited specific information on the actual costs of the larger NGRS tracks but the smaller flapping tracks offer some indication of the scale of the investment. In 1950, the PGTCO indicated the cost of construction of its 119 large and small provincial flapping tracks, by then organised into Group 1 to Group 4 tracks. The records of twelve of its seventeen Group 1 large tracks with good facilities and the tote, like the NGRS tracks, indicated that their total building cost was £407,061, an average of £33,922 per track. The records of its nineteen of its thirty Group 2 tracks, which offered tote facilities but which were substandard to the Group 1 tracks, indicate that they cost £377,134 at an average cost of £19,848. The costs of

83

Operating the greyhound tracks, c. 1926–61

83

the six of its twenty-​three Group 3 tracks, which were substandard but offered the tote until the late 1940s, indicates a figure of £88,659 and an average track cost of £14,774. Ten of its forty-​four Group 4 tracks, which were of a very poor standard of building and facilities, was £44,796 at an average cost of £4,480.16 One can surmise from all this evidence, allowing for some inflation of costs and partial information, that between the 1920s and the late 1940s, apart from the very large tracks, the average high quality NGRS and provincial flapping tracks cost about £30,000 to open in the 1920s and around £40,000 in the late 1940s. The Grade 1 PGTCO flapping tracks varied little from the NGRS tracks, whilst Grade 4, the cheapest, with few facilities and relying upon entry charges for their existence, cost less than £4,000 in the 1930s and possibly around £4,500 in the 1940s. There were exceptions to the rule such as Hackney Wick, a flapping track because it was deemed to be too close to another NGRS track rather than that it did not meet NGRS/​NGRC standards, which opened in 1932 at a cost of £55,000.17 The greyhound bettor who attended meetings was therefore met by a wide range of betting experiences, and immensely varied facilities. Yet precisely who invested in these greyhound companies? The surviving, and often patchy, records of the Board of Trade reveal the middle-​class and professional nature of many of the investors. Greyhound Racing Track (Touring) which survived from only 1928 to 1931, was run by William Lenmarch and Graham James Hill, both accountant clerks who invested £800 in Ordinary and Preference shares.18 The Greyhound Association of South Wales, operating from 1927 until 1939, was even more emphatically financed by the professional middle class. Although Sir William Benjamin Gentle (the ex-​Chief Constable of Brighton, Director of the Greyhound Racing Association, and on the Council of the NGRS and one of its vice-​presidents) initially invested with it in 1928, the directors and main shareholders were Henry Howarth Hardman, a solicitor from London, Geoffrey Maurice Marie-​ Gushin, a solicitor from Pennarth, and Kenneth Thomas, a stockbroker from Cardiff. By 1935 only Marie-​Gushin, of the original directors, remained and he was in the company of two new solicitors –​George Robert Powell and Sir David Hughes Morgan  –​and Dudley Howard Pratt who had no employment but was possibly a ‘gentleman’.19 The records of the Nottingham Greyhound Racing Company Ltd are more revealing since they list all the shareholders. Registered in 1927 and dissolved in 1948, it was one of the first of the post-​Second World War companies to cease greyhound racing as a result of the Tote Pool Duty, followed by Oxford Stadium at Cowley in 1949. The ubiquitous Sir William Gentle is listed as a director alongside the equally ubiquitous Brigadier-​General Critchley. With them there were three directors of a middling sort –​James Alfred Hartropp, a Leicestershire licensed victualler and wine merchant, William Parker, a farmer from Leicester,

84

84

Going to the dogs

and John Farr, a Nottingham brewer. The directors remained the same over the next two years except that Gentle seems to have briefly ceased being a director for a few months before returning and Critchley continued on as simply as a shareholder. In their place appeared Thomas Hatton of Leicestershire, Director of Leicestershire Greyhound Racing Ltd. The company issued 100,000 one-​ shilling shares, raising a nominal capital of £5,000 and at the end of 1928 Gentle held 7,000 shares (worth £350) and Critchley held 1,000 shares (worth £100). Henry Howard Hardman, also listed as a director of the Greyhound Racing Association of South Wales, was a director with 7,000 shares. Hartropp, a director, was the biggest shareholder with 13,500 shares. The other shareholders, often holding only a few hundred shares, included a variety of solicitors, dentists, gentlemen and widows, spinsters, engineers and consulting engineers and Lady R. Manners of Grantham, a widow who held 500 shares worth £250. Many of these shareholders remained with the company until it was dissolved in 1948, and it was Hartropp who dealt with the receiver.20 The monied lower and middling middle class were also evident in many other greyhound track companies. The Portable Dog Racing Track Ltd, formed on 6 September 1927, was promoted by Edward Gillett, of Middlesex, Thomas Frank Gillett, of Peterford, an engineer, and Woodward Gillett. Geoffrey A. Brown, a solicitor, two solicitors’ clerks (Edward Titterton and P. R. Kimver) also invested, as did a clerk (Harold F. Mee). The company lasted until 1930.21 The City and Provincial Dog Racing and Trackster House Ltd, formed 27 October 1927 and dissolved on 12 November 1929, had four directors, all with 15,000 one-​shilling shares –​Arthur Freeman, a London gentleman; Thomas Rushton, of Brixton, a theatre manager; Percy Chapman, a licensed victualler; and Ernest Howarth, of Brighton, an accountant.22 The surviving records, admittedly mainly of short-​lived failures, thus suggest that there were a number of rich businessmen like Critchley, Gentle and Hartropp who invested substantial amounts of money in a variety of greyhound ventures. However, beyond them it appears that most investors were relatively modest and small-​scale  –​accountants, solicitors, solicitors’ clerks, merchants, beerhouse keepers, and the like  –​who had a few hundred pounds to invest. They were undoubtedly attracted to the prospect of the reported big profits to be made by the new booming sport and its tote but many did not appreciate how complex a financial and organisational activity greyhound racing was. There were also a significant number of engineers who invested in greyhound tracks, probably inspired by the prospect of promoting the machinery and engineering of greyhound tracks, and particularly with the prospect of making money from their own tote machine inventions. They had money but were perhaps the ‘less monied class’ that the London Evening News referred to in 1928.23 They were the class which the Daily News suggested may suffer badly from the bursting of the ‘Greyhound Racing Bubble’ in 1929.

85

Operating the greyhound tracks, c. 1926–61

85

The structure and infrastructure of a greyhound track: the morphology and operation of the track The greyhound tracks that emerged in the late 1920s and early 1930s were both newly constructed and adapted stadiums of variable size. The first custom-​built stadium, with an oval track, was constructed at Belle Vue, Manchester, on the site of an old dog track, and many other new stadiums followed. Archibald Keir Leitch, a Scottish architect, was responsible for the design of almost forty football stadia built at that time, including Anfield, Goodison Park, Old Trafford, White Hart Lane and Highbury, and also designed the large West Ham Greyhound Stadium in Custom House.24 Walthamstow was newly built in 1932 and opened in April 1933, with the iconic Walthamstow clock tower and an Art Deco parapet. However, as already indicated, some stadiums were already established sports stadia. These included Wembley, opened in 1923 to host the FA Cup and other important cup final events, Stamford Bridge (the home of Chelsea football club) and the White City (London), which had been built for the London Olympics of 1908. These continued to house their alternative sports, just as many new ones, such as Blackpool and Elland Road, also attracted the sports of speedway, stock-​ car racing and other sporting activities, in what often proved to be a mutually beneficial financial marriage of convenience. Greyhound tracks were of many different sizes, confined by the shape and size of the area of urban land into which they had to be fitted. A survey of sixteen greyhound tracks in the London area, conducted in the early 1960s, revealed a large variation in size. Park Royal and Dagenham, at 4.13 acres and 4.19 acres respectively, were the smallest. The famous Walthamstow Stadium covered 7.41 acres, Stamford Bridge covered 11.21 acres, West Ham 16 acres, and the largest dedicated stadium of them all was Harringay at 24.74 acres.25 There is little evidence on the size of many of the smaller provincial tracks but in large part, the Blackpools and the Wombwells of this world covered only three or four acres. Space therefore defined the track, its size, facilities and potential market. The central feature of any permanent stadiums was the track itself, normally with a sand surface, although some tracks like Hendon and Wombwell (Barnsley) initially had a grass track. West Ham was unusual in that its entire surface was raised on wood twelve inches above the ground, which was covered by a matting surface imported from Sweden which merely had to be watered to keep it in good condition.26 Its advantage was that it was a fast track in most conditions and meetings were rarely cancelled because of the track conditions, although some owners were reluctant to run their dogs there because of the potential for hock injuries. Many of the tracks had a circumference of between 360 and about 460 yards (or around 330 to 420 metres), which is pretty much the circumference of the small number of tracks still operating in the twenty-​first century. Belle Vue and Walthamstow tracks were both 440 yards long (402 metres). However,

86

86

Going to the dogs

Catford greyhound track, in London, had a tight 369-​yard circumference and the Hendon track was, at 398 yards, considered to have sharp bends. At the other extreme, West Ham was the largest track in Britain with a circumference of 562 yards, although the track did not quite complete the full circuit.27 Tracks were normally prepared to deal with six to eight traps out of which the dogs would start but six traps became the rule from 1 January 1927. Nevertheless, the first meeting at Belle Vue, in July 1926, had seven traps, whilst in 1932 and 1933 Catford ran races with four and five dogs on seven-​race fixtures. Inside the tracks was the Judge’s Box. On both the inside and the outside of the sand tracks was the mechanical hare. Not all stadiums initially installed the electrical mechanical hare. For its first ten years, 1928 to 1938, Brighton and Hove stadium operated a hare which was wound round the course by hand. Nevertheless, by the end of the 1930s most stadiums had one electrical mechanical hare, normally drawn from a number of systems on offer. Walthamstow, Harringay and Hendon (opened in 1935) operated the ‘Outside Sumner’ but Harringay also operated a second system, the ‘Outside McGee (McKee)’ as well. Owlerton Stadium, Sheffield, also had two mechanical hare systems, the ‘Inside Sumner’ and the ‘Outside McCable’. Catford Stadium operated the ‘Outside Breco Silent’ before it was changed to the more conventional ‘Outside McGee’. Brighton and Hove operated an ‘Inside MacWhirter’s Trackless’.28 When greyhound racing first began it was confined to the afternoons of the summer months because most tracks lacked overhead lighting for evening and winter races. Indeed, prestigious Brighton and Hove did not install electric lighting until 1938, ten years after it opened. However, by the 1930s the sand and grass tracks and the mechanical hare system were in turn often illuminated by electric lighting operating on pylons, on the grandstand, or even on supports overhanging the tracks. All permanent stadiums had some type of grandstand, often attached to the main enclosure. In the smaller tracks these were little more than open sheds, temporary sheds or tents for the occasional meetings of ‘tracks of eight days’ that had no permanent facilities. In the larger stadiums they were much more substantial and offered a wide range of facilities. In the 1930s, for instance, Harringay had a large stadium with some eating and drinking facilities and in 1950 it provided a glass front to its grandstand which allowed it to open a restaurant, fourteen buffet bars and ten licensed bars. The West Ham Stadium had, from the start, one large two-​tiered grandstand with facilities for eating and drinking. At Walthamstow there were two tearooms and a wet and dry bar in the main grandstand, with sixteen tote buildings attached. Brighton and Hove stadium (now known as the Coral Brighton and Hove stadium) had several stands but its grandstand enclosure had eating facilities and later had three buffet bars and seven licensed bars.29 Betting was the life blood of all greyhound tracks and most stadia offered both tote and bookmaking facilities. The NGRS/​NGRC stadiums tried to restrict

87

Operating the greyhound tracks, c. 1926–61

87

gambling to the tote by making it difficult for bookmakers to be present whilst the smaller flapping tracks were far more intent on attracting bookmakers, largely because many of them did not operate the expensive tote facilities before the inter-​war years, and many of those that did gave them up after the introduction of the Tote Pool Duty in 1948 (see ­chapter 2). Above all, these tracks were concerned about the introduction of the Bookmakers’ Licence Duty in late 1948 since some gave up the tote and became increasingly reliant upon bookmakers being present to provide betting opportunities to maintain and boost their gate receipts. Inevitably, then, the essential feature of any greyhound stadium was the provision of betting enclosures. Some of the smaller stadiums had one betting enclosure and a few larger ones occasionally offered four, but, though the number varied over time, throughout the twentieth century most tracks operated with two betting enclosures. Indicative of this is the fact that of 105 PGTCO tracks listed in 1953, generally the smaller flapping tracks, ten had one enclosure, eighty-​seven had two enclosures and eighteen had three.30 Most of the larger NGRS tracks had two or three enclosures (see Table 2.6). The different enclosures catered for different types of bettor and the costs of entry varied accordingly. In the inter-​war years the cost of the enclosure entry charges often varied from one shilling (5p), to two shillings (10p) or 2s 6d (12.5p). By 1950 entry into the best ring at NGRS tracks (mainly for the professional or semi-​professional bettors) cost 3s 6d (17.5p) in the tracks that attracted attendances of less than 2,000, to 4s (20p) for those between 2,000 and 5,000 attendees and six shillings (30p) for those with attendances over 5,000. The charge, as indicated in Table 2.6, for entry to all the best rings in London was about 7s 6d (37.5p). The second-​class ring, normally catering for all other bettors, generally cost four shillings entry across all sizes of stadiums. In the small number of stadiums where there were three enclosures, the poorest enclosure catered to the poor working-​class and occasional bettor, and the normal entry charge was 1s (5p).31 The flapping traps were usually cheaper, with entry charges ranging from 1 shilling to 2 shillings for the first enclosure and 1s 6d to 2s for the second in 1950.32 The majority of tracks, at any time in the history of British greyhound racing, were dominated by the presence of the tote building and numerous points in the stadium at which tote betting could be conducted. The number of tote tracks varied over time because of both the formation and closure of tracks and also because many first operated and then closed their tote facilities because of taxation. Yet it seems that just over 70 per cent of tracks offered totalisator betting between the 1920s and the late 1940s. In the mid-​1940s the seventy-​seven NGRS tracks, and seventy-​one of the 119 PGTCO tracks, offered tote facilities whilst the other thirteen small independent tracks, of the permanent tracks, had no such facilities, as already indicated in ­chapter 2. Contrasting evidence was often

88

88

Going to the dogs

presented to the royal commissions (particularly those of 1949–​51 and 1976–​78) and to the Home Office but it appears that at least forty-​one PGTCO tracks abandoned the tote between 1948 and 1951, and that as a result some of these greyhound companies ceased trading altogether. As indicated earlier in Table 2.9, 138 of the surviving 198 tracks operated the tote in 1951, again suggesting that about 70 per cent of tracks operated the totalisator. Another estimate suggested that the percentage was about 82 per cent of the 196 NGRS and PGTCO tracks, 157 with and thirty-​nine without, at the beginning of 1948, but that owing to the closure of thirty-​two totalisators the position in 1950 was 64 per cent (125 tracks) with totalisators and 36 per cent (71 tracks) without.33 There were also independent tracks in the inter-​war and immediate post-​war years that did not operate the tote. Whatever the date, the evidence suggests that a clear majority of greyhound tracks operated a totalisator throughout the history of British greyhound racing. Later, when the decline on greyhound racing had set in the situation remained similar; in 1977, seventy-​six of the 107 tracks operated the totalisator. Eventually all the flapping tracks not operating the tote closed and all the twenty-​four NGRC tracks and the nine or so independent tracks that survive in the twenty-​first century now operate the tote. Thus the tote building and the tote betting outlets dominated the architecture and morphology of most tracks throughout the history of modern greyhound racing. The closure of the tote on some courses in the late 1940s and early 1950s came as a result of its expense and the imposition of the Tote Pool Duty in 1948. The expense of operating a totalisator had been a defining feature of the division of greyhound tracks for all NGRS/​NGRC tracks had to have such a system to be accepted as one of their ‘licenced tracks’, although there were other requirements which meant that some flapping tracks were excluded even if they had a totalisator. Lord Askwith, of the NGRS, in a deputation to the Home Secretary in November 1933, spoke of the need for a reasonable owners’ take from the tote ‘because the Tote is an expensive investment’.34 Tote machines seem to have cost between £13,000 and £30,000, a significant part of the cost of building a stadium, to install in the early 1930s, and from about £8,000 to just over £30,000, as indicated in Table 3.1.35 The Bell Punch Totalisator Equipment was one of the most expensive systems and was advertised through The Greyhound Year Books.36 The immense variation occurred as a result of the fact that some tracks, like London Track A  and London Track B were electro-​automatic hand-​operated totes whilst Midland Track D was purely hand-​operated. The Scottish Track E and the Welsh Track F were also electro-​automatic hand-​operated totes.37 These substantial costs were borne by the NGRS and the larger flapping tracks because the provision of better facilities (bars, club membership and other facilities mentioned below) was part of the process of legitimising the greyhound tracks, for the tote was presented as being a safe way to bet. In most cases the human operator was present at this time but there were developments

89

Operating the greyhound tracks, c. 1926–61

89

Table 3.1  Cost of tote installation, tote turnover and net profits after costs, 1932–​33 Track Track A London track Track B London track Track C Midland track Track D Midland track Track E Scotland track Track F Welsh track

Cost of installing tote £ 30,452 21,574 480 [?]‌ 8,891 8,799 12,448

Tote turnover £

Profit after costs £

802,512 420,894

88,816 52,328 71,861 10,708 28,752 9,829

90,275 244,318 83,444

Source: HO 45/​15853/​663794/​31, report of a deputation of the NGRS.

towards the introduction of an automatic slot machine. The British Totalisator Manufacturers’ Conference, in its evidence to the Home Office and the Rowlatt Commission (1932–​33) offered the interim reports of the Automatic Electric Company Limited, that the system of feeding bets into an automatic machine made it ‘safe and reduced the risk of fraud’. For with the exception of a small number of employees, whose active moves are open to check, the human element is eliminated altogether from Electro-​Mechanical Totalisator betting. [Human beings] are no more than intelligent automats, and their place could in fact be taken by automated machines of the coin slot type. Such a machine has in fact been developed and has obtained the approval of the Racecourse Betting Control Board [for horse racing].38

Such entirely automatic machines were slow to develop but the fact is that the manufacturers were defending their own industry, a part of which, greyhound racing though not horse racing, was a new British engineering industry development employing several thousand engineers and workers.39 Surrounding the track, the hare, the electric lighting, the grandstand, restaurants, the bars, restaurants, the enclosures and the tote facilities, lay a whole host of other building in the greyhound stadium connected with the running of the races. There would be a room for the judge or stewards, facilities for the operator of the mechanical hare, veterinary rooms, trainers’ rooms, and kennels on all tracks for the isolation of the dogs before the races. The large NGRS tracks had their own kennels and training facilities for their own dogs and those of the better-​off private owner (see ­chapter 4). To attract family groups some of the larger tracks provided facilities for the children, a development which became a contentious issue in the ‘Tote crisis’ period of 1932 to 1934. The Carntyne track, Glasgow, provided facilities for children and Harringay track in north London provided an equipped playground for children.40 This provoked outrage in the House of Commons, where

90

90

Going to the dogs

Mr T. Williams, the influential Labour MP for Don Valley, criticised this feature and was supported by the Independent Labour Party MP Tom Buchanan, but opposed by Critchley, at that time briefly MP for Twickenham in 1934–​35.41 John McGovern, the Independent Labour Party MP for the working-​class constituency of Glasgow Shettleston, in which the Carntyne track was located, felt that it was ‘a most degrading sight to see women and children taking children to nurseries on the track before going on to describe his two visits to the gloomy atmosphere of the dog meetings, although there was no disorder’.42 However, the purpose for the larger tracks was to make greyhound racing an afternoon or night out for the family at a time when the smaller flapping tracks were geared to providing more basic facilities for the male bettor –​the PGTCO flapping tracks indicating that in the late 1940s only about 17 per cent of their crowds were women in the larger Group 1 tracks and about 11 per cent in the Group 2 and 3 tracks.43 In order to retain the loyalty of bettors most tracks provided some type of club facilities for annual members. The Brighton and Hove Club charged Gentlemen ten shillings and Ladies five shillings per annum to use the Members’ Club, and though it is not made clear it would appear that this was on and above the general admission charge to the track.44 The Greyhound Racing Yearbook 1933, and indeed all the annual editions of this book, list the members’ clubs and enclosure costs of all the tracks in Britain. As a result of these various developments the greyhound tracks offered a standard range of facilities but with a wide range of track designs. The Harringay arena had parking near the entrance, with betting enclosures for the tote and bookmakers, on one side, with the track being an elongated but incomplete circle, with bars and other attractions dotted around the left-​hand side of the entrance and bays.45 Clapton Greyhound Stadium had a complete circular track on the perimeter of a 400-​foot long by 200-​foot wide inner circle of land, with a covered stand on one side of the 400-​foot stretch with a bar, and with a bar and dining area on the opposite side. One of the 200-​foot lengths had a smaller stand and the opposite side had the totalisator, a bar and other facilities and was also the entrance to the stadium.46 Hendon stadium had quite a wide circular track with an inner area of 140 foot by 240 foot. The entrance side, off the London North Circular Road (a 240-​foot stretch), had six sheltered bays for betting (though probably only two betting enclosures as such), and to the right of the entrance was an area with a canteen, toilets and various other facilities.47 The new Spennymoor track, opened in 1951, had a long back straight and a shorter home straight, where the two-​shilling enclosure, the club, and the three-​shilling enclosure were located. To the right of the track were the kennels, but there was no tote, probably due to the introduction of the Tote Pool Duty in 1948.48 The whole fabric of the built track and the whole running of the sport required a large army of permanent and temporary staff for its smooth operation. The officials of Wimbledon Greyhound Track summed this up succinctly, stating that:

91

Operating the greyhound tracks, c. 1926–61

91

The trainers of the kennels have to be remunerated, the officials command substantial remuneration. For every meeting there needs to be the officiating steward of the meeting, the racing manager and probably assistant race manager, time keeper, veterinary surgeon, judges, hare controller and engineers, turnstile operator, ground staff, security staff, office staff, publicity staff, and so on.49

But precisely how many people were employed on the tracks and who were they? In 1933 John Bull, the famous patriotic journal of the Great War which was at one time run by the infamous fraudster Horatio Bottomley, stated, during the famous ‘Tote crisis’, ‘so the Tote has been shut down on all licensed dog-​racing tracks, and at least 14,000 men have been thrown out of work’.50 This is almost certainly an underestimate of the employment greyhound racing offered for the whole sport although there are few precise figures on the number of people employed by the greyhound tracks because the number of tracks was forever changing and the figures supplied by the NGRS and the BGTCS/​PGTCO were often for the majority, though not all, of the tracks under their control. A census undertaken jointly by the NGRS and the PGTCO in April 1948 for the National Insurance Advisory Committee found that approximately 96 per cent of part-​time workers employed solely at the greyhound tracks or elsewhere were married women.51 Those statistics produced by a NGRS survey in 1950 were slightly different. They suggested that, on seventy-​three of their seventy-​seven tracks, there were nearly 19,000 full or part-​time employees, as indicated in Table  3.2. The average NGRS track attracting attendances in the thousands, employed about fifty-​four full-​time employees, of whom about eleven were women. On average each NGRS track also employed about 190 part-​time employees, with slightly more women than men. However, it is clear that whilst nine out of ten of those part-​time men held a job elsewhere it was the only employment for just over half the part-​time women employed. Distilling this picture, it is clear that in 1950 the large NGRS tracks employed on average about 246 staff, that just under half were women, but that about 91 per cent of the Table 3.2  Staff employed by seventy-​three of the seventy-​seven NGRS tracks in 1950 Employees Permanent employees Part-​time employees Employed elsewhere Not employed elsewhere Part-​time total Total

Men

Women

Total P/​T

3,258

882

6,693 684

3,802 3,630

10,495 4,314

10,635

8,314

14,809

Total 4,140

14,809 18,949

Source: HO 335/​177 evidence of the NGRS to the Royal Commission on Betting, Lotteries and Gaming (1949–51), Appendix J.

92

Going to the dogs

92

Table 3.3  Employment details of sixty-​two of the 132 PGTCO tracks in 1950 Employment status

Permanent men Permanent women Part-​time employment Employed elsewhere   Part-​ time men   Part-​time women Not employed elsewhere   Part-​ time men   Part-​time women Total

Tracks

Total

Group 1

Group 2

Group 3

Group 4

236 39

187 98

93 28

98 6

614 171 (785)

489 385

542 379

276 74

381 20

1688 858

30 302

13 157

14 26

43 38

1481

1376

511

586

100 523 (3,169) 3,954

Source: HO 335/​87 evidence of PGTCO to the Royal Commission on Betting, Gaming and Lotteries (1949–51).

women employed were part-​time as opposed to full-​time and that it was the only source of employment for just over half the female part-​timers. This picture contrasts sharply with that of the flapping tracks, although here again the evidence is far from complete. Table 3.3, based on a survey conducted in 1950, indicates that almost 4,000 workers were employed in sixty-​two flapping tracks replying to a survey, and since this represented less than half the number of such tracks it suggests that more than 8,000 people were employed on such tracks. There was an average of about twelve and a half full-​time workers and around forty-​nine part-​time workers per track, which means that only about a fifth of the workers were full time. Women formed about 22 per cent of the full-​time workforce, an average of fewer than three women per track. About 57 per cent of the part-​timers were men but around 94 per cent of them had other employment. In contrast, women represented about 43 per cent of the part-​time work force, and around 40 per cent of them had no other employment. There was also marked difference between the numbers of workers employed between the different grades of track, Grade 1 tracks employing well over twice as many as Grade 4 tracks. Greyhound tracks relied heavily on experienced and full-​time staff who were experts in their work. These workers –​engineers, trainers, time-​keepers, security officers and others  –​were often drawn from the local community. Many of them were specialists and W. Drewit and Hugh Watkins, of the medium-​sized Brighton and Hove track suggested, during the ‘Tote crisis’ of 1932–​34, that the

93

Operating the greyhound tracks, c. 1926–61

93

closure of the tote and the track could close ‘employment to close upon fifty men, all of whom are specialists in their work and quite unemployable in any other industry’.52 The unemployability of these specialists may be debatable, but the comment does indicate the specific employment requirements of the medium-​ and large-​scale tracks.53 One company, reporting upon the two tracks it owned at Stoke and Wolverhampton, pointed to the fact that because of the tote ban in 1933 it had had to dismiss its tote workers at the cost of £200 per week to the local economy.54 These people were fully employed and highly skilled specialists but most tracks clearly depended upon part-​time workers from the local communities to act as cashiers and to operate the tote and catering facilities. There is very little information on these part-​timers, though many of them appear to have been local housewives. What is available is limited, partial and possibly misleading evidence that both temporary and full-​time civil servants wished to supplement their income with part-​time work on the tracks in the early 1930s, at time when civil servant and public workers’ salaries had been cut by 10 per cent and more in the economic crisis of the early 1930s. The civil servants involved seem to have been largely those working in the Labour Exchanges and fully aware of the demand for reliable and skilled people from the tracks, particularly women. Attention was drawn to them by ‘Unemployed’ who raised the question that ‘Being unemployed and unable to get a job, do you think it fair for a civil servant Mr Roberts of the Bournemouth Labour Exchange to be working there [Greyhound Racing Park]?’55 Catford Greyhound Track, London, was supplied with women employees by the Women’s Department of the Lewisham Exchange which was opened on 22 June 1932. By 19 November 1932 the Labour Exchange had received 677 submissions for employment at Catford Stadium.56 This appears to have been mainly in connection with employment at the gate entrance of the stadiums and probably from housewives who were aiming to earn extra money for their families by taking on evening work. Some local civil servants were also supplementing their incomes in the early 1930s by working part-​time at the tracks on an evening. A  Miss Benwell worked at the dogs on a Saturday and a Miss Whitlock also applied to do so. G.  A. A.  Roberts, also an official at Lewisham Employment Exchange, worked at the Catford dog track.57 Mr Owen and Mr Nelson, at the same Labour Exchange, also worked at Catford as clerks connected with the tote, presumably taking bets, and were given notice to terminate their employment at the Exchange the following day after applying for a tote vacancy. Mr C. R. Eardsley, a temporary clerk of Stoke on Trent Employment Exchange, was offered employment at the local Albion Greyhound Stadium. C. M. Brough, a colleague, was offered part-​time supervisory role at the Albion Greyhound Track for five shillings per night and noted in a letter that the Ministry of Labour rule is that he ‘is not allowed to make a bet and the work entailed is solely clerical, systemised and strongly controlled and confined to totalisator betting only’. He added that:

94

94

Going to the dogs If allowed to undertake this work, I  would ensure that nothing harmful in any would reflect or bring discredit on the Exchange or my usual work through my association with the above, and would undertake to inform you immediately if anything should occur in the future which may act to the detriment of the service. C. M. Brough TME11158

From the few cases that emerged, it is quite clear that civil servants were drawn into the army of part-​time staff of the greyhound tracks, particularly to man the tote exchanges by feeding forms into the manual, occasionally automated, system. The official line was that there should be no conflict of interests but even where there was apparently no such conflict the civil servants were threatened with losing their job for working in a sector that was not seen as quite respectable. However, they were only a small minority of all the workers employed, who were largely housewives drawn from the local communities to work two or three hours per night for five shillings. Two main rival business models and the changing income stream, operating costs and profitability of tracks, 1926–​61 There was obviously immense variation in the economics of the tracks that influenced how they operated, and individual track owners not connected with the NGRS or the flapping tracks organisations may have operated their own individual business models. However, two broad-​based business models emerged until at least the 1960s, when betting companies became more involved in the operation of tracks. The generic business model of the large NGRS tracks, which employed well over four times the number of people employed on the flapping tracks, one designed for larger stadiums with large crowds, was highly focused upon the expensive operation of the tote. It sought to restrict the number of bookmakers and to dominate the sport through its own licensing system that only admitted to its ranks those tracks with a wide range of facilities. It offered its crowds high-​quality graded races and the open races, such as the Greyhound Derby. Indeed, the NGRS indicted that in 1932 its tracks had paid £398,462 in prize money, about £9,000 per track, and this trend seems to have continued with its support of the large open classic races, although there is little specific collective information on this.59 The NGRS/​NGRC tracks also prided themselves on providing the bettor with the latest information, and Wimbledon, for instance, introduced weight scales in 1929 so that it could inform the bettor of the weight of the dogs before the races. Here was a professional, slick, high standard, approach to activities, which ensured that only properly licensed and properly graded dogs could run at the meetings (see ­chapter 4). By offering a wide range of facilities for adults and children it sought to create a family atmosphere, and it is clear that the feeling was that the tote, being seen as free from fraud and the

95

Operating the greyhound tracks, c. 1926–61

95

hassle of the bookmakers, attracted women. As the anti-​gambling Mr Buchanan MP observed, in 1933 during the ‘Tote crisis’: ‘Everybody knows women began to attend in large numbers when the totalisator was introduced. Now that the totalisator has gone the attendances of women and children every week is on the decrease … Leave greyhound racing alone, Leave it to the bookmakers and you will see the attendance go down and down … The bookmaker is not attractive to women.’60 In contrast to the NGRS/​NGRC tracks, the flapping tracks were much smaller operations, attracted much smaller crowds, were unable to employ as many members of staff, often found it difficult to operate the financially expensive tote, relied increasingly on bookmakers to attract bettors to their meetings, attracted a poorer standard of greyhound for smaller, graded, races, and were not able to be part of the open, competitive, race circuit. Their small scale ensured that prize money was much less than that offered by NGRS. In 1950 the PGTCO tracks only offered prize money of £2,025 per annum in Group 1 tracks, £1,533 on Group 2, £793 on Group 3, and £391 on Group 4 tracks.61 By that time many of the classic greyhound races operating on the NGRS tracks were worth many thousands in their own right. The financial arrangements of the two systems were clearly different as they earned their incomes in different ways, though both were affected by new taxes on greyhound racing in the late 1940s. In the inter-​war years the NGRS tracks earned their money from three main sources  –​gate money, refreshments and, from 1929, tote betting. This was much the same for the flapping tracks that operated the tote, although half of them never ever operated the tote. Most of the owners of the tracks who operated the tote employed managers, to overcome the fact that those who ran the tracks were not allowed to participate in gambling. The financial rewards of the early NGRS tracks and the tote-​based flapping traps, once they had been successfully established, were enormous and the charge that they were ‘more profitable than King Solomon’s mines’ exaggerated but not entirely unfounded.62 Evidence offered by the NGRS to the Home Office at the end of 1934 in defence of the system operating before the banning of the tote, though not always financially consistent, suggests that the annual tote pool profit of nearly eighty NGRS tracks was about £100,000 per pool per year and that NGRC tracks were thus making £8 million per year from tote betting.63 There is no date on the figures but they were probably for 1932, the last year in which the tote operated fully before being temporarily declared illegal. These figures imply that the owners’ take from the tote pool was about 10–​12 per cent, to cover the cost of its operation and for their own profits. Thus it is not surprising that the NGRS protested strongly against the clause in the 1934 Betting and Lotteries Bill that the owners tote take should be reduced to 6 per cent, which would reduce the owners’ profit, largely the tote take, to as little as £60,000 a year for the average NGRS track. These figures were skewered by being averaged as it

96

96

Going to the dogs

reported that one London track, by no means the largest, had an annual tote pool turnover of £802,512 and another London track a turnover of £470,000. To this challenge was added the further suggestion in the Bill that the tracks be reduced to two meetings per week, instead of three or more, which led to the alarming concern that the tote turnover on these same two tracks quoted as examples would be on average reduced to £535,000 and £315,000, and the 6 per cent tote take would yield only about £32,000 and £19,000, respectively, to which might be added a few thousand extra from gate money and food and drink sales. The NGRS provincial tracks of Britain were much smaller. One (probably Powderhall in Edinburgh) had an annual tote turnover of £244,317 and a Welsh track (probably Cardiff) £83,449. There is little fine detail on these NGRS provincial tracks but it is likely that the Scottish one was making between £25,000 and £29,000 from the tote take and a few thousand from gate money and refreshment sales. Moving from three meetings to two per week and restricting the tote take to 6 per cent would have meant that its profit would be reduced to about £16,000 to £18,000 per year. Flapping tracks and some of the small independent tracks, with fewer facilities, smaller crowds and frequently no tote, drew in much lower income and were in a far more financially precarious position. Those with the tote had the same income streams of the NGRS tracks and those without simply relied upon gate facilities and limited catering and drinking income. They, like the NGRS tracks, were also faced with losing about a third of their take through the 1934 Bill’s threat to restrict the number of meetings to two per week. Despite the protestations of both the NGRS and the flapping tracks the 1934 Lotteries and Betting Act restricted greyhound tracks to two meetings per week and a 6 per cent tote take. The Act also set up the temporary ‘tracks of eight days’, which often attracted attendances of 1,000, and offered basic and cheap greyhound racing that attracted the poorer male gambler and challenged the flapping tracks for custom. Between 1934 and 1948 all the NGRC and flapping tracks operated their own business models on reduced levels of activity. One can surmise from the above that the unrestricted financially ‘golden years’ of greyhound racing were over by the mid-​1930s. Nevertheless for the rest of the 1930s greyhound tracks seemed to have operated efficiently and profitably until the Second World War, and they recovered well after the restrictions of 1939 to 1941 were eased (see ­chapter  2). The post-​war recovery in 1945 and 1946 was impressive but the winter of 1946–​47 and the 10 per cent Tote Pool Tax in January 1948 and the Bookmakers’ Pool Duty imposed undermined the finances of greyhound racing and contributed significantly to the decline in the sport from the late 1940s onwards. From that point onwards the financial position of all greyhound tracks fundamentally worsened because of the introduction of taxation. Table 3.4 indicates the low level of attendances at the PGTCO tracks.64 Whilst Group 1 and Group 2 tracks gained modest attendances they did

97

Operating the greyhound tracks, c. 1926–61

97

Table 3.4  Attendances at the Provincial Greyhound Tracks Control Office track, 1949–​50 Group 1 2 3 4  larger  smaller

Number of tracks

Average attendance

Attendances combined

Total annual attendances

17 31 23

1,362 592 297

23,494 18,352 6,831

2,537,352 1,982,352 737,748

11 37

431 187

4,741 6,919

512,028 747,252

Source: HO 335/​87, PGTCO Memorandum and evidence to the Royal Commission on Betting, Lotteries and Gaming, p. 7, para. 22.

Table 3.5  Profit and dividend returns to capital employed at sixty-​seven NGRS tracks, 31 December 1948 Total capital Net profit after tax in last 10 years Distributed in net dividends Annual retained for the business Percentage of earnings to capital employed Amount distributed in net Retained by the business Return on capital (per annum)

£10,607,649 £1,000,573 £589,701 £411,816 9.4 per cent 5.5 per cent 3.9 per cent 1.0 per cent

Source: HO 335/​87, PGTCO Memorandum and evidence to the Royal Commission on Betting, Lotteries and Gaming, p. 7, para. 22.

at least have a tote take whilst those in Group 3 to Group 4 and must have been struggling to survive given that they did not have a tote, relied upon gate money and some refreshments, and may have had to pay the licence fee for bookmakers to attend. In a survey conducted for the NGRS on sixty-​seven tracks operating in 1948, and indicated in Table 3.5, it is suggested that there was only a 1 per cent return on capital for owners based on a return of net profit of 10 per cent over the previous ten years. Profitability in relation to capital was low, though it is not indicated how much impact there had been as a result of the new taxation of 1948. There was, of course, immense variation between the large and small tracks as indicated in a selection of the distribution of the tote turnover returns for every British track operating in 1949. Eight of these are listed in Table 3.6. Yet another survey, based upon twenty-​three of the 132 PGTCO flapping tracks in 1949 and 1950, suggested that they had a total income of £283,211, total expenses of

98

Going to the dogs

98

Table 3.6  The distribution of the tote turnover for eight NGRS tracks in Britain in 1949 Track

Capacity

Tote stakes £

Belle Vue Blackpool Cardiff Stratford (West Ham) Walthamstow West Ham White City (Glasgow) White City (London)

25,000

Back to bettors £

Pool Betting To Duty operators £ £

1,970,808 761,917 725,709 118,899

1,655,289 639,981 608,562 99,875

197,079 76,191 72,585 11,807

118,440 45,745 44, 562 7,207

40,000 100,000 25,000

3,043,055 1,829,569 797,184

2,556,183 1,539,781 668,372

304,295 180,856 79,578

182,577 108,932 49,234

75,000

6,748,051

5,668,449

674,750

404,852

50,000

Source: HO 45/​24210/​817576/​98 provides the tote turnover and how it was distributed for every greyhound track in Britain in 1949.

£207,934, had then to pay government taxation, and received an aggregate profit of £18,161, just over £800 per track, which represented about a 2 per cent return on profit, implying that the average capital value of the tracks in the returns was just over £16,000.65 The result was that greyhound tracks became burdened with taxation. In 1950 it was calculated that the income of an average NGRS track per meeting was £1,007, made up of £332 gate money, £649 from the 6 per cent take from the tote, £12 from cars and £14 from the bookies.66 This compared badly with the government tax take of £1,592, which was made up of £189 Entertainment Tax (which all entertainment venues paid), £1,092 from Pool Betting Duty, and £311 from the Bookmakers’ Licence Duty. At 104 meetings per year an average track would have taken more than £104,000 per year after having paid taxes of £165,000 per year. Of the £104,000 about £85,000 to £86,000 would be taken by costs, thus leaving profit of about £18,000. Average crowds would appear to have been 2,000 to 2,500 and about twenty to thirty bookmakers would be in the stadium in competition to the tote. The smaller tote flapping tracks operated on much lower profit margins  –​ probably a third to a half of the larger tracks –​and those flapping tracks that relied upon gate money alone from a few hundred customers, with possibly the Bookmakers’ Licence Duty to contribute to, must have been scratching a living. If these various estimates are anything near correct then greyhound racing was struggling financially.

99

Operating the greyhound tracks, c. 1926–61

99

The fact is that the costs of tracks varied over time depending upon government legislation and taxation which could seriously threaten their income. The City Greyhound and Sport Club, Bradford Ltd (1932–​65) is indicative of the type of costs, if not the scale, typically faced by the flapping tracks. It operated 417 meetings between 15 August 1932 and the 27 June 1933 and incurred expenditure of £13,124 costs, about £32 per meeting. The main items were the proprietor’s return (£2,259), wages and salaries (£2,671), kennel maintenance (they had kennels on the Legrams Lane side of the track) (£2,349), track costs (£893), Entertainment Duty (£1,050), promoting and advertising (£1,494), heating and power (£473), registration fees (£310) and police duty (£307).67 In addition to this there was depreciation, sundries and other minor items. Apart from the obvious rake-​off of the owners, this example indicates that a normal flapping track had sizeable wages bills, had to advertise itself, had costs connected with lighting and illumination, and a police bill of about fifteen shillings per meeting  –​which suggests two to three constables being on duty inside the track. Police presence remained the case, and thus a cost, at all tracks outside the Metropolitan area of London, where police attendance ceased in the mid-​1930s. There is no specific indication of prize money for the Bradford track although this may have been hidden within the expenditure for promoting and advertising. By the 1950s this picture had changed considerably at all NGRS tracks (Table 3.7). The major change was one of the cumulative 10 per cent tote tax on each race which meant that Tote Pool Duty was very high and that, as seen in an earlier survey, suggested that the government took 57 per cent, or more in the earlier estimate, of the money spent on the track. The average track might well have seen the owners taking 16 per cent or more of the total track income in the early 1930s. This was reduced substantially by the 1934 Act, and fell even more with the various taxes imposed on greyhound racing late in the 1940s, to around 7 per cent. The wages bill may well have fallen from around 19 per cent Table 3.7  NGRS chart of average expenditure at NGRS tracks, 1950 % Tote Tax Proprietors profit after tax Bookmakers’ Tax Entertainment Duty Prizes Wages General expenditure Tax on proprietor’s profit TOTAL Source: HO 335/​77.

44 3.5 7.0 6.0 11 14 11 3.5 100

100

Going to the dogs

100

to 14 per cent. And the high level of taxation was probably the final straw for many tracks and, as already indicated, caused some to close in the early 1950s and thereafter. The returns on capital for greyhound tracks had clearly declined as a result of the 1934 Act. The old established business models were further challenged by government taxation in the 1940s. Preparing for race day There was a routine in mounting a race meeting, whether at the NGRS or flapping tracks. The greyhounds would have been subject to several trials before race days, where they would be graded upon their performances. At NGRS tracks the greyhounds would be housed in the kennels whereas at flapping tracks they would normally be transported in on the day of the trials. Grading was a crucial event, since a failure to do this accurately could lead to mismatches and raise issues of potential gambling corruption and fraud. The Racing Manager, Assistant Race Manager and others might then arrange races for the graded dogs at the meeting. Open races, such as the qualifiers for the Greyhound Derby, would be advertised through the NGRC Calendar and would be largely confined to NGRS company and private dogs. Race meetings would occur three times a week at NGRS tracks in the 1920s and early 1930s, but more for the flapping tracks that often offered Sunday racing in the early 1930s. After 1934 all tracks normally operated twice per week until the 1970s, except during wartime  –​ the 104 days per year, although there was an allowance of four days for special meetings. On race days, all dogs, if they were not already in kennels, would be expected to be in the track kennels at least an hour before the race. At this stage their identification would be established through their registered identity books, something that occurred with all NGRS/​NGRC dogs from the 1920s and which was later established by the flapping track organisations to prevent greyhounds running under different names at various tracks. At this stage all dogs would be examined by a veterinary surgeon, and housed under strict security. They would then, as a spectacle, be paraded before the race by handlers, sometimes to a fanfare of trumpets or bugles, and then the Steward would ensure that they were properly stalled (it has been known that dogs have been interfered with by dogs being put in the stalls the wrong way round). The hare driver would operate the hare, the stall automatically opened and the race run. Only after the race would the greyhounds be allowed out of the paddock.68 Initially, there was no fixed meeting times but in the 1920s most race meetings occurred in the afternoon except for the larger tracks until most tracks were properly illuminated with electric lights by the mid-​1930s, after which meetings were increasingly switched to evenings, and, most importantly, Saturday night. From 1927 there were six races on the programme, a standard maximum laid down

101

Operating the greyhound tracks, c. 1926–61

101

in 1927 by the NGRS/​NGRC, and six dogs per race. The dogs were jacketed in different colours according to the trap number, in what rapidly became a standard system. The dog in the number one trap would wear a red jacket, whilst in trap two the jacket was blue, white in trap three, black in trap four, orange in trap five, and black and white stripes –​like a sweet humbug –​in trap six.69 Betting took place on the tote or with the bookmakers in the one, two or three betting enclosures. Tote betting was usually based upon selecting the first two past the post but bookmakers offered a variety of betting arrangements. The dogs were usually escorted on to the track –​to music or a bugle fanfare –​and placed in the traps. The hare would be released and dogs would race for between about twenty-​eight and fifty seconds, depending upon the distance of the race, the result declared and the procedure repeated for the next race. The dog race times were vitally examined by bettors as a clue to form and the times of the placed dogs –​the placed dogs being timed at 0.8 seconds per length behind the winner for information purposes.70 The majority of the races at NGRS tracks were graded and Brian Belton’s description of how this operated at the West Ham track is typical of what occurred. Those tens of thousands of greyhounds whining and scrabbling in their tiny traps are waiting for what might be thought of as the basic sustenance of the sport. These races are one-​lap affairs fought out by run-​of-​the-​mill with a winning prize of not much more than £100, are graded races. The common racing greyhound is a grader. Whilst West Ham was in operation the standard of the graded event was judged by the size of the prize money that it offered. In the late 1970s races were graded by number, usually one to nine. Nine was for puppies and scrubbers and the fliers were designated as a one. It was the racing manager’s job to decide what grade of race any particular greyhound would compete in … The grade of the race is indicated in the track programme. Racing forms act as a barometer of each dog’s ability.71

It was the racing manager who assigned the dogs to the traps, deciding upon which tracks they would use, with railers on the inside and wide runners in traps five or six. Few owners liked their dogs placed in the ‘hell’ traps, three and four. Such considerations added interest to the bettors who had to work out how the dogs ran, the times and performances of their previous races, and, if on the tote, which two dogs to place their money on. To the experienced bettor this was invaluable information but for those large numbers drawn for the spectacle only a few times per year it was, as will become evident in ­chapter 5, very much a gamble based upon names, favourite numbers, and the look of the dog. Yet to get to that stage a whole industry had to be constructed and maintained –​an industry which could easily be thrown into disarray by the banning of the tote and the imposition of taxation.

102

Going to the dogs

102 Conclusion

Churchill’s ‘animated roulette boards’, the modern automated greyhound tracks, emerged rapidly during the inter-​war years to meet the needs of the urban working class for new forms of leisure and a bright and glitzy ‘American night out’. Its development was largely financed from the pockets of the lower-​middle class and small-​scale businessmen, keen to benefit from the overnight success of the sport in the late 1920s. It was initially dominated by the NGRS, with its emphasis upon standardising the sport with a code of requirements based upon offering variety of high standard facilities, the tote, the proper grading of dogs, open races, and the conduct of the sport. However, many of the flapping tracks and their organisations did not meet the exacting standards of the NGRS/​NGRC, and worked to a different business model on smaller tracks, many of them without tote betting facilities and dependent upon the bookmakers, gaining their income from entrance money and refreshments. Nonetheless, there were many features operating in the integrated world of greyhound racing which ensured that all greyhound tracks followed a general commonality of provision, even if some of these tracks cost £4,000 to build and others more than £50,000. The ground plans of the tracks, the circular track, the betting facilities, the pageant and the procedures of the sport shaped into familiar forms which all the patrons and bettors of the track would instantly recognise, even if the scale and size of provision varied enormously. All greyhound tracks paid municipal rates, provided income and offered employment for their local communities, and some certainly developed an affection within their local working-​class communities despite the strong opposition religious and organisational resistance they faced throughout their existence. They were intricate and integrated, if varied, business ventures that operated freely in the late 1920s and early 1930s, the years of their most rapid and significant growth, but under restriction from 1934. In the late 1940s, greyhound racing faced discriminatory taxation which made its financial existence increasingly precarious. The immediate impact, after less than a quarter of a century of growth, was a swift decline in the sport in the late 1940s and early 1950s which became slower and steadier thereafter. A  similar pattern of rapid growth and steady decline, caused by discrimination against the sport, can also be seen in other aspects of the infrastructure of greyhound racing, most obviously in dog breeding, dog training and dog racing, and ultimately in the fluctuating working-​class interest in gambling on the sport. Notes 1 Huggins, ‘Everybody’s Going to the Dogs?’, 98–​100. 2 HO/​45/​15853/​663794, the Review of Greyhound Racing in 1927 conducted in 1928. 3 Belton, When West Ham went to the Dogs, p. 32. 4 HO 45/​14222, particularly sub-​file 99167/​75, respectively.

103

Operating the greyhound tracks, c. 1926–61

103

5 Ibid., quoting from the Dog Racing (Local Bill) debates in the House of Commons in March and April 1928. 6 Daily News, 11 January 1929. 7 Ibid. 8 BT 31/​32853, Company No. 223772. 9 BT 31/​29967/​22947. 10 HO 45/​14222, Part 1, 499163/​82. 11 BT 31/​29967/​29939 and BT 31/​29939/​223947. 12 BT 31/​32853/​223815. 13 BT 31/​32853/​223825. 14 The Times, 13 March 1928 on the Greyhound Racing Trust and the Daily Mail, 13 February 1928, although that report added to that list three extra companies who added £47,465 to the total making registered nominal capital £3,821,715. 15 HO 45/​15853/​663794. 16 HO 335/​87, Provincial Greyhound Tracks Central Office, Memorandum on Totalisator Trading to the Royal Commission on Betting Lotteries and Gaming (Chairman H. Willink (1949–51)), Part 2, p. 7. The PGTCO survey was based upon the returns of twelve Group 1, nineteen Group 2, six Group 3 and ten Group 4 tracks. That is forty-​ eight tracks out of a total of about 119 tracks at the time of the submission in 1950. 17 HO 45/​14709/​512758/​28. 18 BT 31/​30184/​229736. 19 BT 31/​32853/​223815. 20 BT 31/​32853/​223825. 21 BT 31/​29960/​224377. 22 BT 31/​30016/​225556. 23 Evening News (London), 30 April 1928. 24 scottisharchitects.org.uk, ‘Dictionary of Scottish Architects’, DSA Architects Report, 28 December 2017. 25 HLG 131/​339, suggests that there are sixteen stadiums but excludes Wembley and lists the acreage of others as follows:  Catford 4.8, Clapham 6.27, Crayford 13.47, Dagenham 4.19, Hackney 15.8, Harringay 24.34, New Cross 8.58, Park Royal 4.13. Romford 5.0, Stamford Bridge 11.21, Walthamstow 7.59, Wandsworth 7.41, West Ham 16, White City 13.48 and Wimbledon 10.06. 26 Belton, When West Ham went to the Dogs, p. 49. 27 Ibid. 28 Much of this information is gathered from The Greyhound Year Book, 1933 and from the numerous websites on the various greyhound tracks. 29 The Greyhound Year Book, 1933, p. 73. 30 CUST 49/​4251. 31 HO 335/​77 NGRS evidence to the Royal Commission on Betting, Gaming and Lotteries, in 1951, Appendix K. 32 HO 335/​87, evidence of PGTCO to the Royal Commission on Betting, Lotteries and Gaming, in 1951, p. 7. 33 Ibid., pp.  16–​17. On page  17 there is a suggestion that there were ten totalisator closures during the inter-​war years, thirteen between 1945 and 1948, and that another nine had never really taken off, a total of thirty-​two closures before the Tote Pool Tax

104

104

Going to the dogs

was introduced. This is almost certainly referring to tracks that had been opened and will not include the many greyhound companies who never opened a track or closed its track shortly after opening. 34 HO 45/​15853/​663794/​31, deputation of the NGRS to Sir John Gilmour, Home Secretary, led by Lord Askwith, 23 November 1933, pp. 14–​15 of a twenty-​three-​ page report. 35 HO 45/​15843/​659060/​201, letter from Major Rt. Hon. Ormsby-​Gore MP to Sir John Gilmour. Home Secretary; HO 45/​15853/​663794/​31, report on a deputation from the NGRS, led by Lord Askwith, to Sir John Gilmour, Home Secretary, 23 November 1933. 36 The Greyhound Year Book 1933, p. 8. 37 HO 45/​15853/​663794/​31. 38 HO 45/​15843/​6509060/​184, a letter sent by H. D. Black, Managing Director of the Bell Punch Company Limited, dated 1 January 1933. 39 HO 45/​15843/​659060/​201. Letter from Major Rt. Hon. Ormsby-​Gore PP to Sir John Gilmour, Home Secretary, 25 November 1933. 40 Fifth Report, Parliamentary Debates, Commons, 292, 27 June 1934, col. 1157, evidence of T. Williams, Labour MP for Don Valley. 41 Fifth Report, Parliamentary Debates, Commons, vol. 94, no. 93, 15 November 1934. 42 Fifth Report, Parliamentary Debates, Commons, 292, 27 June 1934, col. 1160. 43 HO 335/​87, evidence of PGTCO to the Royal Commission on Betting, Gaming and Lotteries, in 1951, p. 7, para. 22. 44 The Greyhound Racing Year Book 1933, p. 73. 45 HLG 52/​1422 contains several rough drawings of track layout. 46 Ibid. 47 Ibid. 48 CUST 49/​339 contains some rough sketches of a number of greyhound tracks, including the new Spennymoor Greyhound Track opened on 17 June 1951. 49 HO 335/​11, evidence of the Wimbledon Greyhound Race Track to the Royal Commission on Betting, Lotteries and Gaming (1949–​51). 50 John Bull, 8 February 1933. 51 HO 335/​87 evidence of PGTCO to the Royal Commission on Betting, Gaming and Lotteries (1949–​51). 52 HO 45/​15853/​663794/​29, in a letter to the Home Secretary dated 24 January 1933 from W. Drewit, Chairman and Hugh Watkins, Vice Chairman, of the Brighton and Hove Stadium. 53 The Race Managers and the Assistant Race Managers were specialists. The first race manager at Belle Vue was Major-​General T. Anderson and the same role was undertaken at Wimbledon by Con Stevens, a farmer who later became the responsible for helping to train Mick the Miller. 54 HO 45/​14709/​659060, memorandum on greyhound racing, p. 3. 55 INF  9/​948. 56 LAB 2/​1994/​Sand/​E1228/​2/​lews3e4937. 57 Ibid., a letter from J. J. Usall complaining to Sir Philip Dawson MP of the evening employment of a civil servant.

105

Operating the greyhound tracks, c. 1926–61

105

5 8 LAB 2/​1994/​Sand/​E1228/​2/​lews3e4937. 59 HO 15853/​663794/​4, in a letter from the NGRS to the Home Secretary, 30 June 1933. 60 Fifth Report, Parliamentary Debates, Commons, vol. 94, no.  97, 13 November 1934, col. 1920. Buchanan was attacking those supporting the legalisation of the greyhound tote. 61 HO 335/​87, memorandum of the PGTCO to the Royal Commission on Betting, Lotteries and Gaming (Willink) 1949–​51, p.  8, paragraph 25. There were eleven Group 1 returns amounting to £22,827, an average of 2,025; twenty-​four Group 2 returns amounting to £30,656, an average of £1,533; twelve Group 3 at £9,513 averaging £793; and nineteen Group 4 amounting to £7,431 and amounting to £391 average. 62 Fifth Report, Parliamentary Debates, Commons, vol. 19, no. 97, col. 120, 15 November 1934. 63 HO 45/​24210/​817576/​98 provides a broad financial breakdown of every greyhound track operating in Britain for 1949. HO 45/​16319/​673073/​190, NGRS evidence presented to the Home Office in November 1934 in relation to the Betting and Lotteries Bill being discussed in Parliament in which the suggestion was to restrict to holding meetings to two per week and the owners’ take from the Tote Pool to 6 per cent. 64 HO 335/​87, PGTCO Memorandum and evidence to the Royal Commission on Betting, Lotteries and Gaming, Final Report (1949–​51), p. 3. 65 Ibid. 66 HO 335/​77, evidence of the NGRS to the Royal Commission on Betting, Lotteries and Gaming (1949–​51). 67 HO 45/​15853/​663794/​14, City Greyhound and Sports Club, Bradford Ltd (Legrams Lane), letter 17 October 1933. 68 BS3/​26, evidence of the BGRC (now a united body of most of the surviving greyhound tracks) to the Royal Commission on Gambling (1976–​8), Cmnd 7200, better known as the Rothschild Commission. 69 Belton, When West Ham went to the Dogs, pp. 11, 14, 35, 46, 60, 74. 70 HO 45/​15853/​663794. 71 Belton, When West Ham went to the Dogs, p. 37.

106

4

Dog breeding, dog owning and dog training: dividing the classes

In twenty-​first century Britain the internet is awash with adverts connected with the breeding and training of greyhounds. There is a Greyhound Breeder Information Centre, a Kennel Club connected with greyhounds, the Greyhound Stud Book and National Coursing Club, the Greyhound Trust, and numerous local organisations to place retired greyhounds. Indeed, the ownership of greyhounds for racing has recently become an immensely controversial issue largely because in many countries greyhounds are often destroyed after their racing careers unless saved by organisations finding them homes.1 In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries there was much less concern about the racing of greyhounds and the cruelty of dog sports, although regulatory structures began to emerge. In 1858 the National Coursing Club was formed to regulate dogs, mainly greyhounds, chasing live lure such as foxes, deer and many other animals until the activity was confined to rabbits and rats in 2004. In 1882 the Greyhound Stud Book was set up to define the breed characteristics of a greyhound and the breed was then fixed and never changed. All greyhounds, it is often claimed, are descended from the coursing greyhounds that raced in the prestigious Waterloo Cup on a course at Altar near Liverpool from 1836. It is thus clearly the case that well before greyhound racing, based upon the chasing of an artificial lure, began in the mid-​1920s the breeding of greyhounds was already well established and clearly defined. Although some of the breeders ran large organisations the majority were raised, and even trained, by small owners at kennels in their back yards or on farms in Britain, and many were also bred in Ireland. The rapid growth of modern mechanical greyhound racing provided extra demand for the breeding of greyhounds on a scale coursing never quite generated, as greyhound racing developed quickly in urban centres and amongst working-​class populations. This pattern lasted well into the 1960s and it was not until then that concerns about the cruelty to greyhounds began to emerge, amplifying the decline of greyhound racing both nationally and internationally.

107

Dog breeding, owning and training

107

Given the longevity of greyhound breeding, coursing and modern greyhound racing it is surprising, as Mark Clapson has concluded, that the least written about area of the greyhound racing –​a much neglected topic in its own right  –​is the integrated and interconnected breeding, owning and training of greyhounds. Indeed, Clapson has hitherto provided just about the only, and then very brief, academic study of this area of the sport, suggesting that there were about 12,000 to 15,000 dogs being raced on seventy-​three NGRS/​NGRC tracks in 1949 and about 18,000 or 19,000 dogs owned by small owners racing largely on the flapping tracks. On his figures, drawn from the evidence to the Willink Commission, there were about 30,000 to 33,000 greyhounds racing on British greyhound tracks in 1949.2 He added that some large breeders provided dogs for the larger NGRS and non-​NGRS tracks, that the dogs were often owned by the tracks and also by wealthy bookmakers and businessmen who registered them with the Greyhound Stud Book from 1927 onwards and normally had to have them trained and kennelled at significant expense. Yet this is rather sparse information which does not provide the full picture. The problem is that none of the three royal commissions on gambling, betting and lotteries received much evidence about greyhound owners and breeders. Such evidence as was given was largely incidental in that the NGRS/​NGRC and the PGTCO, and its forebears, were focused upon the wider context of justifying the sport against the attempt to ban the tote in the 1930s, the campaign to remove the Tote Pool Duty in the 1940s and 1950s, or, in the 1970s, the attempt to increase the number of days on which meetings could be run. Of these submissions, the only modestly detailed study of the integrated nature of breeding, ownership and training appears in the evidence of the post-​1972 NGRC, an organisation that was then founded to represent a united sport, in its submission to the Royal Commission on Gambling (the Rothschild Commission of 1976–​78). Even that only constituted only about three pages of information and a few graphs.3 As a result, we know surprisingly little about the organisation of the breeding, training and racing of greyhounds even though the topic was once ubiquitous and the numerous brief track histories frequently list the names of breeders and trainers, often without significant additional detail. Nevertheless, and though often forgotten to history, the supply and training of greyhounds was central to the sport and closely reflects its rise and fall. In 1932, at the height of the early greyhound boom, the NGRS/​NGRC recorded that there were 20,395 owners of the 39,763 dogs racing on NGRS tracks.4 An estimate in 1933 put this higher at 21,000 owners and 41,000 dogs.5 Yet another, for January 1934, affirmed that figure, though by the end of 1934 or early 1935 numbers had increased to 47,650 dogs and 23,501 owners.6 These figures were drawn from the NGRS/​NGRC lists of registered greyhounds and would be accurate the time of calculation but they do not include greyhounds running at the smaller flapping tracks. There are no accurate figures for these at

108

108

Going to the dogs

that time, and many ran under different names at various tracks, but there must have been least upwards of another 20,000 dogs, even though they ran more regularly than NGRS dogs, in order to ensure that the 130 or so flapping tracks in the mid-​1930s were adequately supplied with dogs. In other words, there had to be 60,000 and 70,000 greyhounds racing on Britain’s greyhound tracks at any time in the mid and late 1930s. By the late 1940s it had fallen, as tracks began to decline, and the figures of 30,000 to 33,000 greyhounds, indicated by Clapson, is probably correct. This evidence presented in 1949 indicates that there were about 11,000 dogs owned by the NGRS tracks and about 1,000 or so owned the non-​NGRC tracks. In addition to which there were about 18,000 or 19,000 dogs owned by individual owners –​3,000 of them racing on the NGRS tracks and 16,000 on the non-​NGRC tracks.7 By 1970 the number of greyhounds had fallen further to 13,000 and, by 1975, when the sport was unified under the new NGRC (formed in 1972), it was down to about 11,500 active dogs, though there were still about 20,000 registered owners and 15,000 registered dogs in 1975 (though interestingly, it is suggested that there had been more than 300,000 owners registered with the NGRC between 1928 and 1976).8 There were 2,106 new owners in 1970 and 4,224 in 1975, and 6,321 new greyhounds registered in 1970 and 7,203 in 1975 –​indicating a mini revival in the sport in the early 1970s.9 However, the situation worsened thereafter with only 10,101 registered greyhounds in 2006 and 7,520 in 2013.10 The overall picture, then, is of about 60,000 to 70,000 greyhounds racing at the height of the greyhound racing boom in the 1930s, 33,000 in 1949, and 7,500 in 2013. Although there was a sharp decline after the 1930s the emerging question from this picture is how were these greyhounds bred, trained and organised in the early years of this new sport? Additionally, how was the sport able to develop so quickly to be able to provide more than 60,000 racing greyhounds within a few years of its formation? And, how has the rapid decline in the industry been reflected in the breeding, training and racing of dogs? Clapson also reflected upon the backcloth of internal division within the sport, between the NGRS tracks and the flapping tracks, which effectively represented two types of dog ownership. One was dominated by the NGRS tracks and wealthy individual owners and the other geared to the needs of the smaller and less lucrative tracks where working-​class breeders, trainers and owners presided. He argued that the NGRS tracks, operating under NGRC rules, wished to legitimise greyhound racing by ensuring the pedigree of the dogs was established by registration with documentation, from 1927, and that their rules were being observed. It was their highly trained track, or privately owned track-​trained, greyhounds who normally won the big races and, indeed, not one privately owned greyhound won the prestigious open race, The Laurels, at Wimbledon, until 1962 and only seven privately owned dogs won the English Greyhound Derby at London’s White City between 1927 and 1960.11 The working-​class breeders and owners had little

109

Dog breeding, owning and training

109

chance of breaking into this self-​licensed and self-​regulated monopoly, their dogs denied access to the larger open races because they were not registered with the NGRS/​NGRC and did not have full documentation. Indeed, the smaller private greyhound owners often complained at the way in which a small number of businessmen and bookmakers at the NGRS/​NGRC tracks kept non-​NGRS dogs out of the main races. These small breeder/​owners voiced their criticism through the papers such as the Greyhound Owner and the Greyhound Breeder and Exporter, both formed in 1946 (before they amalgamated to become The Greyhound Owner and Breeder in 1949). They often objected to the large number of ‘company greyhounds’, the lack of ‘open races’, and the fact that greyhound racing was an ‘insiders’ sport which was not truly open and competitive. Indeed, they felt that the oligarchic structure of control of the large greyhound tracks could itself lead to corruption. The sharp division between the two types of tracks was clearly evident but the breeding and ownership of racing greyhounds was perhaps more complex and fractious than Clapson portrayed it to be. How then was the sport organised from the point of view of the supplying and running of greyhounds? How were the greyhounds bred and trained? Who owned them? Evidence suggests, as Clapson implied, that there were indeed two major conflicting styles of breeding, racing and ownership –​company and middle-​class ownership of dogs and working-​class ownership –​which served the different types of track. These differences were marked until the decline of greyhound racing in Britain in the late twentieth century. Breeding the greyhound Once modern greyhound racing developed in Britain there was clearly a need for an increased supply of greyhounds beyond the normal demands for the breed. If there were between 60,000 and 70,000 greyhounds running at any time at the height of the sport in the 1930s then this presented the need for large numbers of greyhounds, the whole number having to be replaced on a continuous animated conveyor belt over the three-​or four-​year racing cycle of a greyhound’s racing life. This meant that in the 1930s alone there must have numbered up to 180,000 racing greyhounds operating the tracks. This necessitated the enormous and rapid expansion of small-​scale breeding in Britain and a similar expansion of greyhound breeding in Ireland, from where many of the greyhounds originated. The owners of the early NGRS stadiums bought their own dogs to run on their own tracks. Belle Vue purchased its first seventeen greyhounds from Sidney Orton –​then a Norfolk farmer and later a trainer at Burhill kennels for Wimbledon Stadium where he trained the Irish-​born Greyhound Derby winner Mick the Miller –​for £170 in 1927.12 One report, relating to the ‘Tote crisis’ and produced in 1933, observed that: ‘In the immediate vicinity of greyhound tracks provide stimulus to industries and agriculture, where the farmer is benefiting

110

110

Going to the dogs

from the large growth in the breeding of greyhounds.’13 Much later, in 1950, the Wimbledon Greyhound Racing Track similarly observed that: Greyhound racing is dependent upon an adequate supply of effectively bred pedigree greyhounds. There has grown up a greyhound breeding industry, not considerably centralized but extending all over the country, and particularly interesting the owners and occupants of small holdings, partly as a pure business occupation, and partly as a sporting occupation such as all other pedigree animals.14

This necessity was emphasised by the Greyhound Year Book of 1933, which discussed the rising need for stud dogs, the demand for dogs bred by dogs such as Mick the Miller, and the GRA offering semen for breeding purposes.15 This pattern of the widespread breeding of greyhound throughout Britain and around greyhound tracks, with a few larger breeders and the significant importation of greyhounds from Ireland, continued throughout the twentieth and twenty-​first centuries.16 Indeed, on Irish dogs, Brian Belton has indicated that ‘Ireland is where historically, most English owners have looked for potential stars because breeders have always retained their best bitches for breeding and so many Irish stud dogs, such as Tarist, have dominated the breeding lines’.17 Nevertheless, Irish-​bred dogs were prominent, though not dominant, at this stage, before becoming the mainstay of greyhound racing by the late twentieth century. It is obvious that the rising demand for greyhounds led to the rapid expansion in the breeding of greyhounds but there is little more than patchy evidence about the costs involved in raising a greyhound from conception to nine months of age, or to fifteen months when they would be racing if they were good enough. Belle Vue, the first greyhound stadium, owned greyhounds that had cost £10 each in 1927, and this may not have been untypical of the price of greyhounds in the inter-​war years. There were, of course, always exceptions, such as Mick the Miller, who was bred in Ireland in 1926, sent to the United States to race, bought by an Irish priest and sold to Arundel Kempton for £2,000 in December 1929 as a present for his wife. However, neither the £10 Belle Vue dogs nor the £2,000 Mick the Miller shed much light on the cost of breeding greyhounds from birth to their first race. Nevertheless, evidence of the PGTCO, representing the flapping tracks, suggests that in 1950, ‘the breeding, rearing and keeping of a racing dog is not an in expensive hobby’.18 The greyhound owners drawn to the PGTCO tracks were very much drawn from the better off working classes. In the mid-​1970s the new NGRC (formed by the NGRS and the PGTCO) calculated this expense to be £448, as indicated in Table 4.1, over the first fifteen months of a greyhound’s life. Averaging about £350 for a year, this suggests that the cost was almost about a quarter of the annual income of an average worker at that time. If this ratio is applied to the inter-​war years it would suggest a cost of £25 to £30 in the first year of the life of a greyhound, a figure that would have been

111

Dog breeding, owning and training

111

Table 4.1  Breeding a greyhound for racing in 1976: schedule of costs from whelping to fifteen months for greyhounds registered to the NGRC £ Payment for stud fees Veterinary fees NGRC registration for litter NGRC registration fee Rearing for 65 weeks at £5 per week Schooling, transport and trial Total

10 25 3 50 325 35 448

Source: BS 3/​26, NGRC Ltd, Memorandum, 25 June 1976, Appendix E, p. 92.

beyond the means of poorer and medium placed working-​class families unless owning and raising a greyhound for some type of racing was a family or joint-​ families venture. As for Irish dogs, they were probably cheaper to buy because the Irish standard of living was not as high as that in Britain. Indeed, in the 1970s the average price of purchasing an Irish greyhound was only about £160, though it could vary from £25 to hundreds of pounds, according to the pedigree and potential of the greyhound.19 If these indicative figures are correct it was clearly the hope of producing a top-​class racer, and the success in doing so, that drove the breeders on when the chances of a good financial return were poor on the flapping tracks where the prize money was very low. Indeed, given the significant cost of breeding and rearing of greyhounds, despite what the PGTCO suggested, it would appear that the small British breeder gradually fell away and Ireland became the main breeding ground for the greyhounds running in Britain. By 2006 about 76 per cent of all registered dogs were coming from Ireland and this percentage had risen to 83 per cent in 2013.20 Training, owning and racing greyhounds on NGRS/​NGRC tracks Once bred in Britain or Ireland, greyhound pups were either retained by the breeder, who trained them for racing, or were, at the age of nine to fifteen months, sold on to the large tracks or to individual owners. Potential owners did have a wide range of options in buying or obtaining dogs. Apart from the obvious fact that many working-​class owners bred their own dogs, they could go to a breeder, purchase from agents and trainers at tracks, or go to the back pages of the numerous specialist publications to purchase them.21 The owners of the early NGRS tracks, operating under NGRC rules, often bought in dogs to run at their own tracks, although the practice seems to have declined steadily from the 1950s and 1960s when the Tote Pool Duty badly affected the finances

112

112

Going to the dogs

of the larger tracks. Greyhound companies often employed farmers to breed and raise pups for them. In 1927, for instance, the Greyhound Racing Association employed William Skerritt to raise greyhound pups under the age of nine months on a farm near Blythe Bridge, near Stoke-​on-​Trent. Between the age of nine months and fifteen months the Greyhound Racing Association pups, and those of its successor, the NGRS, were moved on for training to kennels and training establishments. The White City, London, Harringay and other London tracks used the Hook estate, near Northaw and Aldershot (to the south-​west of London). It was an estate of about 140 acres and could house and train up to 600 dogs.22 The Brighton and Hove Stadium had its own purpose-​built kennels at Morley Lodge, Albourne, Henfield, West Sussex, where it housed and trained more than 200 greyhounds at any one time, offering a modern-​based facility with each range having its own grass paddock. Catford Stadium, London, had its kennels at Langham Farm, Kenton, near Biggin Hill, and had six trainers all with around forty dogs each.23 As for the individual greyhound owners, they had to make their own training arrangements. Thus owners running their dogs on NGRS/​NGRC tracks normally had them kennelled and trained at the NGRS/​ NGRC tracks whilst those owners operating at the flapping tracks usually trained the dogs themselves and merely turned up to the flapping tracks when required, normally on the day of the races. This suggests a wide social range in ownership and race practice. Most dog owners were attracted by the prospect of owning a ‘wonder dog’, such as Entry Bridge, the first winner of the Greyhound Derby, or Mick the Miller who carried nearly all before him between 1929 and 1931, winning the Greyhound Derby in 1929 and 1930 as well as winning nineteen consecutive races before being injured and then failing to win a third consecutive Greyhound Derby. Other champion greyhounds emerged as races were offered from about 400 yards (one lap of the track) upwards to 1,000 yards on both the flat and over small hurdles. This became even more evident when prize money began to proliferate at the NGRS tracks in the early 1930s and with the creation of more ‘open’ races at the side of the ‘graded’ races. The Custom House Stadium at West Ham, London, held the Cesarewitch, the last classic of the season and named after a famous horse race –​holding heats, semi-​finals and finals. Run from 1928 until the closure of the track, except during the Second World War, in 1971, Mick the Miller won it in 1930. The last race before the closure of the stadium was won by Whisper Billy, whereupon the race was transferred to Belle Vue when, in 1972, it became the first classic to be run in the North.24 These races were open races on NGRS tracks subject to NGRC rules, although effectively open only to the top 10 per cent of graded dogs. In effect, these open races were restricted to listed dogs that had a proper pedigree book issued by the NGRC. Individual NGRS tracks also graded these greyhounds –​many of which they initially owned themselves alongside wealthy individual owners –​for speed at trials.25

113

Dog breeding, owning and training

113

From the 1930s and until the late 1940s the NGRS tracks owned more than a third of the dogs that ran on their tracks. However, the sport also had many powerful and wealthy dog owners. Faced with the possible closure of many greyhound tracks in the ‘Tote crisis’ of 1932–​34, and supporting the NGRS in its opposition to the banning of the dog tote, a group of greyhound owners sent a letter to the Home Office stating that the number of days that tracks operated should not be reduced because that would limit their ability to continue to breed and train greyhounds. The fifty or so people who signed the letter included Lady Cheshire, the Rt Hon Lady Chichester, Sir Gerard du Maurier (actor and manager and father of the novelist Daphne du Maurier), a coal exporter, a stockbroker, a farmer and a couple of workers.26 Another list of names, attached to another letter sent to the Home Office in January 1934, again supporting the NGRC’s demand to control the sport, and which ‘may be regarded as an amplification of their voice’, contained the name of 101 greyhound owners who enjoyed the sport.27 The list included the Duchess of Portland (of Wellbeck Abbey, Worksop), H. Seeley Whitley (Deputy Mayor of Nottingham), Viscount Weymouth MP, Lady Chester, Lady Francis Dent, and a variety of solicitors, army officers, directors of companies, engineers, a salesman, an umbrella manufacturer (L. Schaverein) and a dental surgeon. They were sometimes titled and often middle class, although up to three of them may have been working men. The point here is that they owned and trained dogs with the NGRS/​NGRC tracks, where the management often owned, trained and graded their own dogs at their own trials. In this arrangement, private owners were allowed, and often expected, to place their dogs in the kennels. In 1932–​33 there were about 20,000 private owners (including the tracks) owning 39,000 dogs on NGRS/​NGRC tracks, competing for £388,463 in prize money. On average prize money of less than £10 per dog suggests that whilst there were rewards for some successful owners, the majority saw it as some type of hobby, in which they sought to break even, rather than as a financially lucrative activity.28 There are occasional and vague comments that the owners would pay ten shillings (50p) to about fifteen shillings (75p) to stable the dogs at NGRS kennels in the 1930s. Seventeen years later the South London Racing Company Ltd, which ran the Wimbledon track, indicated that its ‘Greyhounds are trained at the Burhill Kennels in Walton-​on-​Thames, in Surrey and that since the cost of paying the trainers was substantial they charged the owners £1 8s 0d [£1.40] per greyhound per week, a fee which did not cover the cost of training’.29 Each trainer seems to have had ‘his own set of kennels with cookhouse facilities, paddocks and there is a permanent kennel manager. Also a member of the Royal College of Surgeons was present and available’.30 In addition there were also van drivers and many other people employed, which indicates the very large-​scale operation that NGRS tracks were. The costs to owners had, in monetary terms, at least doubled between the 1930s and the 1950s. This was despite the fact that tracks such as

114

114

Going to the dogs

Wimbledon made it clear that they would take some responsibility, through their racing managers, for the trials for graded races, and by making a payment of up to £2 towards the cost of entry for a good dog into open races.31 The result of all this was a remarkably integrated system of company and individuallyowned dogs on NGRS/​NGRC tracks, that were properly registered, annually licensed to run, organised by a racing manager, and fully incorporated into a sound and secure system of racing, as frequently boasted of by the immensely partial Wimbledon Stadium News Bulletin.32 As is evident, most NGRS tracks thus had a number of trainers attached to them organising the training and trialling of the dogs. As Brian Belton reflected, the Custom House Track at West Ham was a NGRS stadium that operated in this manner: In the 1950s West Ham had about six or seven but a stadium might contract as many as a dozen trainers. A greyhound will need a minimum of three trials before it can race. A trial might involve one, two or three other animals. When it shows enough speed your greyhound will be placed on a race card. Generally the better the track the faster the grading time that will be expected of a dog.33

The Willink Commission (1949–​51), drawing from the evidence of the NGRS, noted that ‘All dogs running on NGRS tracks must be kennelled and were told that this was often less than the [cost of the] dogs’ keep’.34 The NGRS evidence further noted that the costs of kennelling to private owners had generally gone up at its tracks between 1949 and 1951 but that private owners were being subsidised by the NGRS tracks. The normal charge for kennelling a greyhound was twenty-​one shillings (£1.05p) per week in 1949 but had been raised to twenty-​eight shillings per week (£1.40p) in 1950, though many tracks tended only to charge between twenty-​one (£1.05p) and twenty-​four shillings and sixpence (£1.22.5p). It estimated that the average cost to the track was thirty shillings (£1.50p) per week, apart from veterinary fees, and therefore that at an average cost to the tracks of thirty-​five shillings per week ‘the NGRS is paying £150,000 per annum –​the difference between what is charged and actual cost’.35 Based on 7,000 privately owned greyhounds (although it had suggested that there were about 3,000 in its evidence quoted earlier to the commission), it suggested that the NGRS tracks forwent another £30,000 by providing free passes for owners and the press. The Greyhound Trainers’ Association suggested that a viable independent training establishment had to have about fifty dogs to be making only an average charge of as little as £7 per week. At £364 per year, which, as indicated in another context earlier, would have been more about a third of the average gross wage in Britain at that time, this suggests that these establishments were catering for the middle class and the wealthier sections of the nation and not for the working-​class

115

Dog breeding, owning and training

115

Table 4.2  Cost of training greyhounds according to the NGRC, 1976 Item

Cost per greyhound £

(a) Labour (b) Food (c) Bedding (etc.) (d) Kennel equipment and veterinary supplies (e) Transport (f ) Overheads Total

3.27 2.65 0.23 0.37 1.60 1.35 9.47

Source: BS 3/​26, NGRC Ltd, Memorandum, 25 June 1976, Appendix E, p. 92.

owner. Indeed, the true cost was probably higher and the NGRC put the weekly costs of kennelling and training a greyhound at £9.47 per week, as indicated in Table 4.2. Given its large-​scale financial commitment it is, perhaps, not surprising that the NGRS, dominated by naked self-​advancement, took the view that it should control the sport to legitimise it, imposing its own Stud Book to register dogs in 1927. Every dog, indeed, had such a book to identify its markings and pedigree. Typical of such books was one for May Mansard, a bitch whelped in September 1949. Its sire was Heartbreak Harry and its dam was Ballyrehan Lass.36 Given that the process was repeated hundreds of thousands of time, it is therefore not surprising Major-​General Edward Douglas Lord Loch, one-​ time Lord in Waiting to King George V and Chairman of the NGRS, stated in November 1933 that whilst the NGRS was deliberately seeking to control greyhound racing in ‘their own interests’ they also did so ‘in the public interest’ of ensuring the pedigree and quality of the dogs and that the dogs were not running under different names at different stadia.37 The NGRS and the NGRC were not able to achieve those goals until 1972 when the NGRC and the PGTCO united as the National Greyhound Racing Club. Up to that point there was a clear alternative to the NGRS system of preparing greyhounds for the track. Dog breeding, training and racing at the flapping tracks Until the early 1970s, and in some cases beyond, the flapping tracks rather operated an entirely different type of system and were much dominated by the small working-​class breeder and trainer. These tracks, which came under the control of the BGTCS/​PGTCO, and other flapping-​track organisations, were

116

116

Going to the dogs

much more focused upon the small private working-​class owner. In the 1930s a number of flapping tracks did own their own greyhounds, which they placed in their own kennels. Hawthorn Grange, Pontypridd, owned thirty dogs; Stadium Greyhound Track, Caerphilly, had twelve; the Aberdere track had sixteen.38 There were a number of other similar PGTCO arrangements throughout Britain –​perhaps a dozen in all. However, by the late 1940s, of the 119 tracks affiliated to the PGTCO, only five had their own kennels and there is doubt about whether they kept their own dogs. Indeed, the PGTCO maintained that: ‘With the exceptions the one uniform factor [of ] any PGTCO racecourse is that, unlike the NGRS tracks, all the PGTCO tracks cater exclusively for dogs which are privately owned and trained and which are brought to the race before the start of each meeting.’39 Based upon returns from sixty-​three PGTCO tracks in the late 1940s, it estimated that about 18,000 or 19,000 greyhounds in training were owned by about 13,000 individual owners. At that time the 119 PGTCO tracks were holding 12,852 meetings, with 102,816 races, per year.40 Given that each race would have six dogs, this suggests that these greyhounds would be racing an average of around thirty-​three races per year on PGTCO tracks, well over one race per fortnight –​a much higher level than that for the 12,000 to 15,000 dogs operating on the NGRS tracks whose dogs were running just under once per fortnight.41 Most of these dogs were trained by individual owner trainers and the PGTCO reflected to the Willink Commission (1949–​51) that ‘The breeding, training and racing of dogs is a hobby with the possibility of making the hobby pay, or even making a profit’. Indeed, this must have been a marginal pursuit for most working-​class owners given the fact that the prize money at the PGTCO tracks was small and that the entrance fees per dog were a significant charge, those at Ashby-​de-​la-​Zouch, in the Midlands, being five shillings per dog.42 These small owners hoped for successes in the larger open races and were viewed by the PGTCO as the real heart of the sport. In reality, they rarely owned the greyhound that could be trained to a sufficient standard and had the opportunity to break into the lucrative open races. A memorandum from the representative of the flapping tracks to the Home Office in the 1940s, and presented as evidence to the Willink Commission, declared that: ‘The breeding, training and racing of dogs is a hobby with the possibility of making the hobby pay, or even making a profit.’ The PGTCO concluded that: Every dog owner hopes to own a champion. Once a dog is locally established as such it will bring in a crowd to see it run and its value becomes greatly enhanced. Sweepstakes and open races are popular as they bring the best dogs from farther afield and create healthy competition. In our opinion the owners of dog racing on PGTCO tracks represent the most truly sporting side of the whole greyhound racing industry. The relationship between the owner and the racecourse management forms the basis of the business

117

Dog breeding, owning and training

117

and is in essence the mass protection of the public. Unlike the management he gives his dog a form run, fit and well and at the correct time … the Management will no longer race the owner’s dog because he [sic] will receive complete form from the owners and from the general public and the bookmakers.43

The smaller, essentially working-​class, greyhound owners, breeders and trainers of the flapping tracks often organised their own associations. One such body was the Allied Greyhound Racecourse and Owners’ Association. Opposed to the NGRS and its support for the Sunday closure of greyhound tracks in 1932 and 1933, and broadly supporting the smaller provincial tracks, which its members could not always race on, it represented a group of about 500 owner-​trainers who, according to one Home Office official ‘train their dogs at home and have few opportunities of entering them at tracks. Their tracks provide opportunities for this class to indulge in their sport & members of the public attend in very limited numbers, as friends and acquaintances of the owners of the dogs competing’.44 Indeed, the Association argued that ‘it provided a large section of the community an opportunity for healthy recreation and diversion from their week-​ day toils, which is either wholly denied to them, or at any rate very considerably restricted on other week-​days’. Its members were largely working-​class trainers and breeders who found it difficult to race their dogs at even the smaller tracks and the Association maintained that: ‘To a large proportion of the latter, Sunday is the only day of the week when they are free to participate of such diversions as some such means of entertainment.’45 The evidence of costs is less robust for the flapping traps than the NGRS tracks but what exists suggests that greyhound racing was much less profitable and that there was an obvious tendency towards an individual owner breeding, training and racing their own dogs at minimum costs for small rewards. Indeed, in 1950 it was suggested that, for such tracks, whilst the breeding, reading and keeping of dogs was cheap, ‘The smaller racecourses cannot afford, and are not indeed, expected to give sufficient prize money to recompense the owner. The attitude of the owner is, therefore, that he is prepared for the dog to cost him something unless he wins by betting’.46 A conflict over legitimacy There was therefore a corrosive conflict of legitimacy and access, as the demands of the large greyhound tracks and the wealthy owners were pitted against the small working-​class owners. Dog ownership became a battleground in its own right between the large NGRS/​NGRC tracks and the large and small independent London and provincial flapper tracks. Whilst the NGRS/​NGRC felt that there were few controls of the dogs until they came to the tracks on trials days and on race day, where they had a registration system and kept strict controls

118

Going to the dogs

118

over the dogs that raced on their tracks. In contrast, the flapping tracks were very different in the organisation of the sport. Whilst some of these tracks occasionally owned and trained dogs the majority of the dogs that ran on their tracks were owned by small, usually working-​class, breeders and trainers who would bring their dogs to the races on the day of the meeting or, occasionally, the day before for an overnight stay. They were generally not met with the need to kennel their dogs, although they would have to attend trials to ensure that the dogs were properly graded for competitive racing. The NGRS condemned such tracks as lacking proper control and argued that they did not afford proper protection to the betting public. Inevitably, as already suggested, the PGCTO rejected such allegations against the flapping tracks and, in so doing, indicated how they operated to establish the integrity of the sport by ensuring that the dogs were properly graded at trials. This concern of the flapper tracks to exert some control over the greyhounds they raced was further demonstrated by the fact that all of their dogs, like those of the NGRS/​NGRC tracks, were required to have an identity card by the late 1940s. The Bradford Greyhound Racing Federation had nine PGTCO tracks under its control in 1950, where ‘All dogs must race in the same name. The Federation retains a copy of all identity cards’.47 The Greyhound Racing Association of Wales and the West of England, and those for Scotland and other parts of the country indicated much the same.48 The 1960s and 1970s Despite the differences in the two forms of greyhound racing there was an increasing convergence during the 1950s and 1960s as betting moved from the track to the off-​course betting office. In spite of sponsorship, prize money for the race tended to come from the totalisator or from track entry income. By the 1970s the owners were often paying from £2 to £100 to enter their dogs into races, dependent upon whether or not they were graded races or open championship races. Indeed, in 1975 there was about £1.4 million prize money and about £141,000 of this came from the owners.49 For the breeders, trainers and owners of greyhounds the sport was changing rapidly in the 1960s and 1970s. Given the low prize money and the poor financial returns there was a marked move by the tracks to dispense with running their own kennels and training facilities and many trainers became full-​time contract trainers or owner/​trainers, in effect, ‘self-​employed contractors at their own kennel establishments providing an agreed number of greyhounds for racing at a particular racecourse’.50 Also, with the amalgamation of the sport in 1972 there was a boost to the number of new NGRC greyhound owners.51 Amalgamation boosted the figures for the NGRC but could not hide the fact that the breeding of greyhounds, the training of them and the ownership of them was rapidly declining.

119

Dog breeding, owning and training

119 Conclusion

From its early beginnings greyhound racing in Britain was dependent upon integrating the breeding, training and racing of greyhounds. For its first forty years, and more, it operated though two systems. One was based upon the control of the large NGRS tracks that often bought their own dogs from favoured breeders, had their own kennels and trained their own dogs, and those of relatively wealthy owners who could afford the high costs involved in preparing a greyhound for the track. The other system was the one based upon a very large number of small, often working-​class, breeders who frequently bred, trained and raced their own dogs for the track and were often debarred from entering their dogs for the more prestigious open races. Theirs was very much a home-​based industry, a hobby run on a shoestring and they operated the flapping tracks rather than the NGRS tracks. The two systems were in conflict from the start and the larger, more powerful, middle-​class-​dominated NGRS sought to control the industry itself and to force out of existence the flapping tracks and the working-​class breeder/​trainer/​owner that operated upon them. It created the NGRC to establish rules and sought to impose an identity system on the dogs that raced, through the formation of a Stud Book system in 1927, so that their dogs and those of the wealthy owners who kennelled and raced their dogs at NGRS tracks were properly assessed, controlled and trialled for graded races, open and sweepstakes races. The NGRS’s attempt to control the sport created immense tensions with the working-​class owners, who had little option other than to send their dogs to the flapping tracks, which led to a discourse about the extent to which adequate controls on the identity of the greyhound, its pedigree, grading and standard, persisted throughout the sport. However, the flapping track organisations struck back and created their own registration system to prevent dogs being run at different tracks under different names, and to remove any doubts in the public mind about the veracity of their tracks. Nevertheless, in the end, the financial problems arising from the discriminatory taxation of the sport from the 1940s onwards forced amalgamation, under the banner of the NGRC in 1972, in order for greyhound racing to survive as the larger tracks began to abandon their elaborate arrangements for kennelling, training and controlling the dogs and opted for a system which increasingly relied upon the contract trainers. The amalgamation still preserved the distinctions and working-​class breeders/​trainers and owners were still less likely to gain access to the open races than the track greyhound, the company greyhound or the greyhound owned by a rich trainer. Times changed, but what is abundantly clear is that this divided system was heavily dependent upon a supply chain to allow greyhound racing to exist and prosper. The 60,000 or more dogs in active training and racing at any time in the early 1930s implied that, given the short racing life of greyhounds, that in the 1930s alone there must have been upwards of 180,000 greyhounds racing

120

Going to the dogs

120

on the tracks. This created a vast integrated system of supply which began to break down with the decline of the industry from the 1950s onwards, when the industry became even more dependent upon the small breeder/​trainer/​ owner. Throughout its history, and despite the late convergence, the differing systems of training dogs from the track conditioned the differing experiences of the ‘American night out’ for that small proportion of the working class who attended the tracks  –​the NGRS tracks offering an exciting spectacle with highly trained and high ability dogs, whose names often became legendary, whilst the flapping tracks tended to offer more the excitement of betting than of racing. Notes 1 See ­chapter 7 for more detail on these developments. 2 Clapson, A Bit of a Flutter, p. 56. 3 BS3/​26, Royal Commission on Gambling, Memorandum and Main Evidence submitted by the National Greyhound Racing Club Limited, 25 June 1976, Appendix E, pp. 89–​91. 4 HO 45/​15843/​663794/​31, minutes of a deputation of the NGRS to the Home Office, 23 November 1933, being a twenty-​three-​page summary, p.  3. Also, HO 45/​15843/​659060/​201, in a letter of Mr Rt. Hon Ormsby-​Gore MP to Sir John Gilmour, Home Secretary, p. 4, referring to the figures for 1932. 5 HO 45/​15843/​663794/​31, minutes of a deputation of the NGRS to the Home Office, 23 November 1933, being a twenty-​three-​page summary, p. 3. 6 Ibid., p. 3; HO 45/​15843/​659060/​201, letter of Major Rt. Hon Ormsby-​Gore MP to Sir John Gilmour, Home Secretary, n.d., p. 4. 7 HO 335/​77, evidence of the National Greyhound Racing Association suggests that the NGRS tracks owned about 11,000 dogs in 1949/​1950, that there were also a few PGCTO tracks that owned a few dogs. It also suggested that about 18,000 or 19,000 dogs were owned by about 13,000 private owners, around 3,000 operating on NGRS tracks and about 16,000 on PGTCO tracks. These are endorsed by the evidence of the PGTCO given in HO 335/​87 which offers the evidence of the PGTCO tracks to the Royal Commission on Betting Lotteries and Gambling, p. 20, para. 60, that there were about 13,000 private owners but that there were 18,000 to 1 9,000 dogs on PGTCO tracks upon the returns of sixty-​three tracks. 8 BS3/​26, NGRC Ltd, Memorandum, 25 June 1976, Appendix E, p. 89. This evidence was presented to the Royal Commission on Gambling, the Rothschild Commission. 9 Ibid. 10 Indecom International Consultants (2014) Review of certain matters relating to Boarding kennels, submitted to the Department for Agriculture, Food and the Marine. http://​tinyunl.com/​kenuk8n. 11 Clapson, A Bit of a Flutter, p. 156. 12 R. Genders, The Encyclopaedia of Greyhound Racing (London:  Pelham Books, 1990), p. 35. Belton, When West Ham went to the Dogs, p. 43.

121

Dog breeding, owning and training

121

1 3 HO 45/​15843, 659060/​211, on the Tote and Greyhound Tracks, 25 November 1933. 14 HO 335/​11, evidence of Wimbledon Greyhound Racing Track. 15 HO 45/​15853/​163794/​13 contains a copy of The Greyhound Year Book 1933. 16 This was confirmed by a greyhound owner, Gillian Tolley, who became a student at the University of Huddersfield, in a general discussion with me on 20 October 2016. Also BS3/​26 contains evidence to the Royal Commission on Gambling in 1976, suggesting that 75 per cent of all greyhounds, 4,336 in total, had come from Ireland at a cost of £746,500, at about £180 per dog. 17 Belton, When West Ham went to the Dogs, p. 43. 18 HO 335/​87, Memorandum of the PGTCO, p. 20, para. 61. 19 Belton, When West Ham went to the Dogs, p. 90. 20 The Associate Parliamentary Group for Animal Welfare, The Welfare of Greyhounds (London:  Associate Parliamentary Group for Animal Welfare, 2007), pp. 17–​20; League against Cruel Sports and Grey2K USA Worldwide, The State of Greyhound Racing in Britain: A Mandate for Change (2014). 21 Belton, When West Ham went to the Dogs, p. 39. 22 HO 45/​15853/​663794. 23 Edward Ash, The Book of Greyhounds (London: Hutchinson, 1933), p. 303. 24 Belton, When West Ham went to the Dogs, pp. 52, 54, 58, 120, Appendix, and scattered remarks throughout the book. 25 HO 335/​11 on Wimbledon Greyhound Stadium owned by the South London Greyhound Racecourses Ltd & Wimbledon Stadium Totalisator of how greyhound racing was run. 26 HO 45/​15853. 27 HO 45/​15853, 663794/​30, letters from some greyhound owners. 28 HO 45/​15843/​663794/​31, minutes of a deputation of the NGRS to the Home Office, 23 November 1933, being a twenty-​three-​page summary, p. 3. 29 HO 335/​11. 30 Ibid. 31 Ibid., a file on Wimbledon Greyhound Racing Stadium, leaflet on the Training and Kennelling Conditions. 32 Ibid., copies of the Wimbledon Stadium News Bulletin. 33 Belton, When West Ham went to the Dogs, p. 40. 34 HO 335/​1, Royal Commission Report on Gambling, Lotteries and Gaming (1949–​ 51), para. 10. 35 HO 335/​77, NGRS evidence and correspondence Royal Commission Report on Gambling, Lotteries and Gaming (1949–​51). 36 HO 335/​76 contains a copy of the Stud book on May Mansard. 37 Ibid. 38 HO 45/​14222/​499167, letter from the Chief Constable of Cardiff to the Home Office, 24 January 1934. 39 HO 335/​ 87, memorandum of the Provincial Greyhound Track Central Office (PGTCO) to the Royal Commission on Betting, Gaming and Lotteries (1949–​51), Part 1, p. 1, para. 3. 40 HO 335/​87, Memorandum on Totalisator Trading, Part IV on Dog Owners.

122

122

Going to the dogs

41 These are very broad estimates for 1949. The PGTCO one is based upon 18,000 to 19,000 greyhounds in racing in almost 103,000 races of six dogs, with the dogs raced figure being about 617,000. The NGRS had between 12,000 and 15,000 dogs racing on their tracks, represented well over a third of the tracks, probably around 6,600 meetings per year and about 55,000 or so races, at six dogs per race. This figure of 12,000 to 15,000 dogs dividing into about 330,000 dog runnings suggests that the average dog at NGRS tracks ran between about 22 and 27.5 times per year. 42 CUST 49/​1332. 43 HO 335/​87. Memorandum on Totalisator Trading, Part IV on Dog Owners. 44 HO 45/​15853/​663794/​15. Civil servant cover note to a two-​page document sent to the Home Secretary on 22 September 1933. 45 Ibid. 46 HO 335/​ 87, memorandum of the Provincial Greyhound Track Central Office (PGTCO) to the Royal Commission on Betting, Gaming and Lotteries (1949–​51), p. 20, para. 61. 47 Ibid., p. 24, para. 76. 48 Ibid. 49 BS3/​26, Royal Commission on Gambling (1976–​78), Memorandum and Main Evidence submitted by the National Greyhound Club Ltd, 25 June 1976, section 8, p. 34, para. 57. 50 Ibid., section 8, p. 34, para. 57. 51 Ibid., Appendix E, p. 89.

123

5

An Ascot for the common man

The position as I see it, and the Government see it, has been materially changed since the development of greyhound racing in 1926. There are only seven horse racecourses within 15 miles of Charing Cross, with 187 days of racing, whereas in the same area there are 23 greyhound tracks with over 4,000 days’ racing within a year. Greyhound racing has brought on-​the course betting facilities, often as an almost nightly event, into most of the large urban centres of the country. (Sir John Gilmour, Home Secretary, Parliamentary Debates, Fifth Series, Commons, 27 June 1934, col.1137)

Many millions of attendances were recorded at greyhound tracks at their height in the 1930s and 1940s. The customers and bettors were variously drawn to an ‘the American night out’, the sheer spectacle of dog racing in the bright lights of the track, and the obvious lure of a relatively safe and honest gambling location. They were attracted for different reasons and experienced treatment which varied enormously according to the type of track that they attended. But who were these bettors? What did they come for and what did they expect? What amenities were provided, and, indeed, how did greyhound tracks fit within with the needs of the local urban communities in which they initially prospered? The evidence suggests that the different tracks were highly geared to the needs of their essentially working-​class customers, that those who attended were relatively small in number but regular attenders, and that the tracks were often seen as part of the community which they operated within, giving, as indicated in ­chapter  3, substantial local employment and adding to the cultural life of the working-​ class bettor. Indeed, within working-​ class communities greyhound tracks were not necessarily the social pariahs that they have often been presented as being by many middle-​class MPs, religious groups and anti-​gambling associations. Indeed, greyhound tracks offered a variety of experiences and were not the glum and guilt-​ridden denizens that many middle-​class critics presented them as being. They assumed an important and dominating position within the lives of

124

124

Going to the dogs

a relatively small proportion of the working class. With some degree of accuracy, greyhound racing was varyingly described, in terms that became almost commonplace, as the ‘Ascot of the common man’, the ‘working man’s turf ’ and ‘poor man’s racing’.1 The representation and image of greyhound racing and gambling Towards the end of 1926 or at the beginning of 1927, John Heath, the Secretary of the National Council of Evangelical Free Churches (Federation), surveyed one of the new greyhound tracks, indicating its social features whilst condemning its iniquities.2 At a track attended by about 10,000 to 15,000 people, probably Belle Vue, he reported that: People come in all sorts of ways, motors 200–​300, trams and taxis. I saw people in invalid chairs, and also a perambulator! Saw that they came by families. I should have thought that 30 per cent were women and girls. The great majority were young men. Betting seems to be the great and real business. There are six races and they only take about 20 minutes in all. The bulk of the time is spent making bets. In every enclosure the bookies are busy, a ring of them on all sides, shouting the odds, booking bets and giving betting cards. There must have been hundreds of them and there is not the least vestige of an apology for their presence. I believe if they were not there the crowd would be absent. I took particular notice as to the kind of folk who did the betting. I  saw wives sending their husbands, mothers sending their daughters and a group of girls sending one of their number to have a ‘flutter’. Young men were the chief supporters of the bookies. The amount paid out on the 1 shilling side were smaller on the average than the 5 shilling. But even there they ranged between 2/​6 to £3. I saw one who looked like a working man pass in three 10 shilling notes. As to the legality of this, I am in doubt. The police were there but they were engaged in regulating the motor traffic or looking on. The Federation last Friday passed a Resolution deprecating the increase in betting through the races as furthering one of the most moral and spiritual perils affecting our generation. The races were started by the blowing of a bugle by a man in Khaki. I took him to be a soldier. Is the Army lending men for this? This is something we ought to fight and that the greater question is how to eradicate the passion for gambling which possesses the people.

This deeply hostile report was echoed by a memorandum from the Manchester Watch Committee to the Home Secretary in October 1927, which stated that: Apart from the demoralisation involved, it is certain that the economic effects of the new pastime have been disastrous, especially in the immediate neighbourhoods of the trade. Betting on horses never had a complete effect, because horses have never been to race three times a week in a working-​class district.3

125

An Ascot for the common man

125

Later reflections, such as those of Charles Dimont in 1946, were to compound the picture and provide vivid propaganda for the NAGL.4 Dimont described the tic-​tac man signalling the odds, six men in bowler hats leading greyhounds to their stalls, the 100 bookmakers shouting the odds but probably not making money, and the atmosphere of the crowd watching the eight races on the night. This description occurred at the height of the post-​war boom (1946) in greyhound racing when the initial post-​war prosperity and release from wartime controls was fuelling a sport which, within two years, would be blighted by taxation. He described how in a ‘tomb-​like vault under the stands, many of the spectators queue morosely before the totalisators … grab their tickets, hastily hide them in their pockets or handbags and slink away’.5 The atmosphere was described as glum, despite the races. A  couple that Dimont interviewed were represented as being typical of the restless and uncommitted youth who attended on a regular basis for entertainment: She went on a weakness, he sells gent’s hosiery. Thursdays and Saturdays they go to the dogs: Mondays and Fridays to the cinema; Wednesdays is at football; Sunday they dance. Every night there must be something to do. Greyhounds are their favourite evening because it gives them a thrill and a chance to make money. Sid, the boy has a system but he is reticent whether he has made money so far. They both live at home with their parents, and between them earn over £8 a week, but one of the attractions is that any wins are tax free. They plan to get married and have a car.

The impression of a wayward youth, careless of thought and thrift, wasting their money gambling on greyhounds, was linked further to the exploitation of the bettors by the tracks by the opponents of greyhound racing. Evidently in 1946, one, unidentified, London track was operating every day except Sundays (a statement which at that time could not have been true for that would have been in breach of the 1934 Act of 104 meetings per year rule and would have been quickly stamped on by the authorities) and six tracks were functioning on Thursdays and eight on a Saturday. The entrance fee was usually two shillings (10p) and the tracks were making huge profits, largely from the totalisators operated by the track and frequented by the bettors. Indeed, Dimont added that: A company running three London stadiums made a profit of £435,000 last year [1945]. It is estimated that £318,000 will be taken in taxation, presumably through Entertainment Tax and corporation tax. Profit before all taxation, for the year ending April 30th 1946, was £72,827. The company says, ‘It is a matter of common knowledge that the sport is growing rapidly’.6

Clearly, the greyhound track owners were seen to be raking the money in at a time of economic austerity in Britain and the implication was that this was earned out of the pockets of the feckless working-​class bettor.

126

Going to the dogs

126

These various condemnatory observations by middle-​ class and religious groups, and the police, are important in identifying the frequenters of the greyhound tracks and in labelling the tracks. The impression that emerges was one of irresponsible working-​class youth squandering their money in dim-​lit corners of greyhound stadiums, that the new sport attracted families, that it was a working-​ class sport for working-​class areas, and added significantly to the burgeoning profits of the track owners in their furtive pursuit of income. There was also an implicit and explicit suggestion that it threatened the economic stability of local urban communities. However, it was often acknowledged that it did also attract some of the middle class who could afford to drive cars and pay for taxis. This is already evident from early accounts and police reports mentioned and endorsed further, as for the White City Stadium, London, that it was ‘patronized by all classes of society’, much as Mike Huggins has claimed.7 These were the indicators and characteristics laid down by the critics of the sport, dumbfounded by its success and horrified by its dubious legality. Whilst some, if not all, of these characteristics may have been true, the defenders of greyhound racing were far more upbeat. To them greyhound racing was essentially an important working-​class pastime which did not engender the type of corruption, immorality, degradation and insouciant behaviour which its critics imagined. They often recognised that greyhound racing was, indeed, a niche sport only attended by a significant minority of working-​class gamblers. Along with the football pools, it was one of the two most important additions to inter-​war gambling that allowed the working class to gamble legally. Indeed, as already established, there is evidence that greyhound racing allowed many of the working class to escape the reality of the day-​to-​day hardships of life, created new jobs and brought new investment that helped in the economic recovery of the late 1930s.8 In the wider scheme of things, greyhound racing was a significant and relatively cheap leisure pursuit which strengthens the view that gambling for the working class was essentially ‘a bit of a flutter’. Nevertheless, as already established, its rise as a predominantly working-​class activity was subject to class prejudice and discrimination which led it to being controlled in a way in which, for instance, the more middle-​class dominated horse racing was not.9 The inter-​war years The inter-​war success of greyhound racing was essentially a product of time, place and moment, and saw the birth of a working-​class sporting and gambling tradition. The rising prosperity of the working class allowed them to take advantage of the new urban sport. Attendances, as noted in ­chapter  2, rose rapidly. Belle Vue attracted 333,375 customers in the last five months of 1926.10 The White City (London) averaged 39,700 per meeting in 1928, although average attendances fell back to 15,300. Harringay also experienced a decline from an

127

An Ascot for the common man

127

average crowd of 18,300 in 1927 to 13,200 in 1928, largely due to the opening of new tracks in London.11 In Hull, with a population of 300,000, there were two tracks that attracted 300 to 500 customers each per week night. Many tracks were in working-​class districts; Stephen G.  Jones noting there were three dog tracks in the Manchester and ‘they are all in working-​class residential areas’.12 Jeff Hill, and many other historians, have argued much the same, although Mike Huggins has established some middle-​class attendance for the 1930s.13 From the start greyhound racing was subject to intense scrutiny by those who felt that it was damaging working-​class life. Within three months of the opening of Belle Vue the Home Office was concerned for those attending the tracks.14 Local authorities were equally concerned and the Manchester Watch Committee called upon the Home Secretary to introduce legislation to abolish greyhound racing, complaining of the ‘carelessness’ and contempt for ‘morality’ amongst the young of Manchester.15 The Manchester Evening News of 29 October 1927 complained of women attending the tracks and ‘trembled at what might happen to these women in the future’. Peter Green, Dean of Manchester, argued the need to give local authorities powers to prevent the proliferation of tracks, complaining that they were full of corrupt practices designed to beat the bettor.16 Indeed, as indicated in ­chapter 1, there were attempts to give extra powers to local authorities to close greyhound tracks and these demands were supported by prominent national politicians, such as Winston Churchill and John Buchan.17 In 1928 the Home Secretary informed the Cabinet that: ‘The principal objection against dog racing is that it is a mushroom growth which threatens to add enormously to facilities for betting amongst the working class and, in particular, for betting by many whose means would not permit of their attending horse races.’18 Despite such comments there is little evidence that the working classes, as opposed to organised religious and local authority groups, wanted the closure of greyhound tracks. Yet, as early as September 1927 the Home Secretary, who felt that the ‘greyhound bubble could not last’, decided that the police should monitor the conduct at tracks.19 Most of the police evidence suggested that there was no problem (see ­chapter 6); Superintendent Edwards of the Manchester City Police indicating that the meetings at Belle Vue were conducted in a ‘perfectly orderly manner’.20 The desire to control greyhound racing revived when the case of Shuttleworth v. Leeds Greyhound Racing (1932) made the totalisator at greyhound tracks illegal and briefly paralysed it by forcing tracks close or develop schemes to raise money through entry fees, or, as Belle Vue (Manchester) developed, a ‘Non-​ Profit Tote’.21 The ‘Tote crisis’ was resolved, with tighter controls, imposed under new legislation in 1934, but provoked further fury from the anti-​gambling lobby. Mr Chamberlain, of the YMCA, stated that: ‘My feeling is that I have no right whatsoever to try to stop two people making a bet but I think we have the right to limit the social inducement to gambling.’22

128

128

Going to the dogs

The Marquis of Londonderry, speaking in the House of Lords whilst presenting a bill on gambling, stated that: Greyhound racing has brought on-​the-​course betting facilities, often on an almost nightly event, into the large urban districts in the country … it was having an undesirable social effect. The Royal Commission called particular attention to the evidence which they received as to the deterioration of character among young persons in poor neighbourhoods, resulting from nightly betting on a succession of greyhound races which drains from their minds every other interest.23

Lord Sanderson felt that there was a dangerous feeling of ennui amongst the working class that drove them to greyhound racing and that it had to be controlled, although he admitted that it was impossible for the government to impose strong restrictions on greyhound racing ‘without placing the strongest restrictions on horse racing and without incurring the charge of class legislation’.24 The Lord Bishop of London noted that the Charity Organisation Society found an increase in applications for help in areas near to greyhound tracks and that a probation officer at the Marylebone Police Court disliked the participation of women of all ages at the racetrack and the presence of children and young persons.25 In contrast, in 1934 Lord Askwith, President of the NGRS, noted that 7,000 employees would be thrown out of work if dog racing were to be stopped and that dog racing ‘had the advantage of giving people an opportunity of meeting their friends’.26 Lord Gainford, the Earl of Kinnoull, added that: ‘The Bill is clear class legislation, you cannot get away from that.’ He added: ‘After all, why should the poor man be forbidden his little bit of sport in the evening while the rich men go racing every day of their lives.’27 At least one civil servant overcame his or her prejudice against the sport sufficient to state, of the working class, that ‘Those whose daily life is dull and monotonous have a need for excitement in their leisure hours to reduce the balance’.28 Sir Sidney Freemantle, who was involved in the running of four tracks in 1933, added that: I think in the Provinces the fascination of greyhound racing is that 95 per cent of the patrons are working class. Greyhound racing gives an alternative to a drab industrial background. It costs no more to go to a greyhound track than to buy a pint of beer, and these people attend on those grounds … It is my experience that the poor working man and those who are not great gamblers by nature prefer the totalisator. That is one class and the other class is women. The women prefer the totalisator because in order to put their small amount of money on they don’t have to join the scramble round the bookmakers, they don’t have to submit to ridicule if they do not propose to put on enough money.29

The parameters of greyhound racing were thus being set out in its early years. To one group of observers, it was essentially a legitimate working-​class sport that

129

An Ascot for the common man

129

attracted women and family groups and offered the bright lights of the ‘American night out’ to contrast with the drab existence of working-​class lives. Indeed, many recognised the excitement it brought to the working class, the Western Mail of 5 April 1928 stating that: ‘it is almost impossible to imagine a more exciting or intoxicating spectacle than five or six of these beautiful creatures straining every nerve in their efforts to overtake the elusive hare’.30 To another group of observers, the anti-​gambling fraternity, it was a waste of money and a cause of poverty. The reality was much more nuanced than these extremes, though it is clear that greyhound racing did offer excitement and spectacle. During the 1930s there was substantial evidence of the view that greyhound racing acted as some type of safety valve and release from tension. Defending greyhound racing against a potential totalisator ban in 1933, the Rt. Hon. Ormsby-​ Gore wrote to the Home Secretary, Sir John Gilmour, to stress the vital need to legalise the greyhound totalisator as the common justice for the two million people who attended regularly and ‘did not consider it morally wrong’, because of the employment it created. Indeed, he argued that this ‘Ascot for the common man’ was the sport of the working man and an ‘antidote to social unrest’.31 The socially calming and anti-​revolutionary appeal of greyhound racing was regarded, by some, as being rather fanciful, and often criticised, but gave way to more social analysis in the late 1930s. Mass Observation (MO), set up in 1937 by the anthropologist Tom Harrisson, the poet Charles Madge and filmmaker Humphrey Jennings, began its sociological and biological studies of British society in 1937. As part of its work Humphrey Spender photographed the lined features of male working-​class gamblers at greyhound tracks for the study of Worktown (1937), ostensibly reflecting on life in Bolton although the photographs were actually of the Pitmen’s parties of the coal town of Ashington. The assumption, apparently confirmed by the pictures and research, was that greyhound racing had become quickly ingrained into working-​class life and that it was often a family occasion or night out. The Second World War saw the temporary closure of greyhound racing until it was allowed for one day per track per week. Nevertheless, its continuance was frowned upon by the wartime government, and Sir Stafford Cripps’ House of Commons outburst against greyhound racing and boxing, reported in the Daily Express in March 1942, associated these activities with black marketeering, spivs and idleness in working-​class communities. This was immediately investigated by MO, whose file report suggested that Cripps had placed ‘exaggerated emphasis’ on the ‘immorality and decadence in Britain’. The problem, it argued, was that the war was going badly for Britain and that politicians were looking for a scapegoat.32 MO also pointed out that in its recent survey 46 per cent of people wanted horse racing banned, with figures of 34 per cent for greyhound racing, 24 per cent for boxing and 4 per cent for football, and that to single out the working-​class pursuit of greyhound racing and boxing was discriminatory.33

130

130

Going to the dogs

Yet police investigations of greyhound tracks invariably found them almost free of any obvious crime and disorder, although the arrest of Ottavio Sabini, leader of the Sabini gang, famed for racketeering at horse racing and greyhound tracks, on charges of being an enemy alien, enforced an impression of seediness (see ­chapter  6).34 Notwithstanding this, chief constables were sometimes critical of the economic impact of greyhound racing and, indeed, the Lord Bishop of Manchester felt that the chief constables of Manchester and Salford, John Maxwell and Major Godfrey, were worried about its spread.35 MO did much to capture the attractiveness and the excitement that greyhound racing provided for the working classes. In its file report on ‘Saturday Night’, produced in 1947, its researcher captured the procedure and atmosphere which working-​class bettors would have regularly encountered: Passed through the five shilling [25p] turnstiles and walked towards the Directors’ Club which is situated in the stand on the right hand side of the track. From here the whole track is visible. The white circular rails, the wire netting keeping the crowds back –​the green grass in the middle –​the black floodlit tote machine showing the units as they clock over –​the two big stands on either side of the track housing masses of people –​the tops of the bookmakers’ boards and off the track to the right-​hand side, the kennels. … Suddenly the lights down and everybody moves into position so that they can see the race. The stadium becomes strangely quiet and the sound of the electric hare as it whirrax around the track is clearly audible. The traps click.36

MO’s research on greyhound racing did much to dispel the myth that it was corrupting the working class. Mass Gambling, a survey conducted by MO for the National League of Education against Gambling and published in January 1948 from existing research, observed and interviewed members of the crowd at greyhound meetings, reporting upon their sex, age and social class on a scale of A to E.37 The majority were classified as C or D, the skilled or semi-​skilled working class, though some were classified as B, denoting that they were middle class or small business men. This was largely judged by the ‘trained eye’ of the investigator, whose additional comments were often subjective. What this brief report revealed, based upon eight anonymised towns –​named for instance, as ‘Steeltown’, ‘Railtown’ and ‘Moorland Town’ (a group of Exmoor villages)  –​was the way in which the working class, in a range of communities, operated to gamble at greyhound tracks.38 As a result of the rise in wartime incomes and the post-​war expansion of betting, the mean stake was about five shillings (25p) per race, although it varied between 4s 6d (22.5p) in ‘Twinetown’, and 10s 6d (52.5p) or 11s 6d (57.5p) at Harringay.39 The report pertinently revealed that in all crowds serious gamblers operated alongside those largely there for the spectacle. An eighteen-​year-​old male, M18C (Male, eighteen years old, ‘C’ class), placed £1 bets and ‘never mentions anything about the race’, and another,

131

An Ascot for the common man

131

M35C, was ‘only concerned with the money’.40 At the other extreme there were many who went for the dogs; M35C felt that ‘they’re lovely creatures’, whilst M50C thought that ‘they are pretty to watch’.41 Most bettors seemed to bet on the tote rather than with bookmakers, various surveys indicating meeting ratios of 3.7 to 1 and 5.0 to 1 at Harringay, 4.0 to 1 at Middlesbrough and between 2.5 to 3.3 to 1 at other surveyed tracks.42 It appears, also, that most bettors would also bet on six out of seven races, or seven out of eight races.43 In addition, it is clear that whilst the professional gambler might have a system, many of the occasional bettors selected their dogs by names associated with themselves. One woman, F60D, lived at Blenheim Place, Chelsea and ‘backed Blenheim one year and I won about 10s I think’, whilst another, M55D, seaman, stated that ‘I go by the names  –​anything attached to the sea like Sea Trout, or Sea Salmon’.44 About 42 per cent claimed to study form, whilst 21 per cent bet on a whim, 27 per cent employed guesswork, 5 per cent had a system and 4 per cent relied upon tips, the other 1 per cent using a variety of techniques.45 The largest proportion claimed that they studied form and that, whatever their successes, it clearly gave the thrill of making a balanced judgement for, as a PGTCO memorandum suggested, ‘There is truly an element of skill in judging the form of a greyhound’, for each greyhound was different, with those who were quick starters, those that were slow starters, those who preferred the inside of the bend and those who preferred the outside.46 ‘A skilled greyhound racegoer often considers that he can forecast the entire race beforehand … Greyhound racing provides those who like it, an element of excitement and skill.’47 They were, of course, able to consult the various guides to form supplied by the large betting companies that emerged in the 1930s and particularly in the 1940s and 1950s. Hills Guide to Greyhound Racing, published 1952/​53, contained advice to bettors ‘Backing Dogs on Looks’ by Len C. Wilson, and ‘Dogs to Watch in 1953’ by Charles Hawkins.48 What emerges from this composite picture is that the majority of the crowd were working class, that both men and women attended the tracks, that bettors preferred to gamble on the tote, where 94 per cent of the money on each race was returned to the bettor, rather than with the on-​course bookies, and that there was a mixture of interest in both gambling and the occasion. The MO report surmised that: The typical bettor is then a solitary better, though of course they link up with friends once they are on the track. Children, though occasionally present at the tracks, are statistically very small except in Steeltown, where on a Saturday every one group in thirty-​five included a child. The family party is quite a common sight here and children more noticeable than stated (B14C, F45C, F19C).49

This MO survey was followed in May 1948 by a short follow-​up report entitled ‘Dog Fever’. This placed greyhound racing into sharp focus by noting

132

132

Going to the dogs

that ‘about five times as many people go in weekly for the football pools as bet on dogs, and about four times as many put money on the horses’.50 The difference, it argued, arose from the fact that: betting dogs almost inevitably means attendance at a dog track. The pool coupon comes through the front door, horses can be played by telephone or through the street bookie in the corner pub, but comparatively few dogs bets are placed away from the track. Among other things widespread rumours and suspicion of underhand dealings at dog meetings have made people chary of outside betting, and as a result in areas where there are no tracks there is virtually no betting either.51

Most betting took place on track and there was immense variation between rural and urban areas and from region to region, although the 10 per cent Pool Betting Duty encouraged a move towards off-​course credit and ready-​money betting from 1948 onwards (see ­chapter 7).52 Further evidence emerged about the greyhound track in Ferdynand Zweig’s book Labour, Life and Poverty in 1949.53 This seminal study contained a chapter on dog racing based upon 200  ‘cases’, which suggested that one in five adult male workers examined went to dog-​racing meetings on a regular basis, though betting on dogs through off-​course bookies’ runners was more common amongst women.54 Zweig argued also that the London working class were more likely to bet on dog racing than on horse racing, and were more likely to attend dog meetings; London having seventeen tracks and thirty-​three meetings per week in the late 1940s and attracting up to 600,000 attendees per week. Nevertheless, the main contribution was his controversial identification of five types of race-​ goers. To him, there was the professional gambler, or ‘fiddler’, to whom gambling was a full-​time, if precarious, occupation. There was the semi-​professional gambler, often men in small businesses such as small shopkeepers and roundsmen, to whom gambling on the races is an additional occupation. His third type was the sporting type who attended about twice per week for the leisure who say: ‘I have nowhere else to go, and this is my recreation; better than the pub, because I am in the fresh air, and I have at least something for my outlay, and make some money from time to time.’55 His fourth type was the ‘unhappy type’, who often attended in ragged clothes and ‘who hold wistful illusions’ and are often of ‘inferior physique and emotionally unbalanced’, and they include ‘the crippled, deformed and otherwise physically handicapped’.56 These included fitters, crane drivers and telephonists. The fifth section of the crowd, considered to be a small section, which attended once per fortnight or per month, were the casual racegoers. Of these, Zweig considered that ‘the unhappy type’ were the financial losers and that five out of six would leave the stadium with losses on the meeting.57 Three years later Zweig’s major work, The British Worker, used the same structure for gambling generally, though he more specifically reflected that whilst many sports cut

133

An Ascot for the common man

133

across class boundaries that ‘sports like dog racing … are reserved mostly for the working class and lower middle classes’.58 This analysis was very subjective and condemnatory in its style but, without doing full justice to the working-​class bettor, recognised the diversity of the bettors. B. S.  Rowntree and G.  R. Lavers, of the NAGL, referred to in ­chapter  2, were even more judgemental of gambling on dogs in their book English Life and Leisure (1951).59 They followed Zweig’s categorisation  –​the professional, and the semi-​professional, gambler, the sporting type who gambled a few times per week, the poor unhappy working class, and the occasional family groups out for a flutter or a night out. Rowntree and Lavers were additionally intent upon revealing the dispiriting nature of greyhound racing through Charles Dimont’s mournful picture of a night out at the bright lights of dog racing that has already been described. Nevertheless, this dour description of a night at the dogs, and the representation of the almost feckless sporting couple, did not do justice to the attractive drawing power of the greyhound track. In contrast, the MO file Mass Gambling (1948) gave a relatively neutral generic description of an official track on a Saturday night, emphasising the experience and atmosphere as well as the gambling, and drawing from its ‘Saturday Night’ report (already referred to) of the ritual of passing through the five shilling turnstiles, walking towards the Directors Club, viewing the black tote machine lit up by bright lights, and experiencing the quiet of the stadium, the sound of the electric hare, and the silence of the stadium before the ‘traps click open and shouts go up’.60 The fact is that ‘going to the dogs’ was exciting and enthralling, an evening’s entertainment in its own right. According to Daryl Leeworthy, it offered ‘speed, excitement, release and above all, freedom from the rhythms of work or unemployment but still essentially fixed by the repetitive nature of manual labour: true commitment to greyhound racing, after all, entailed attendance at the track two or three times every week’.61 At this time the Willink Commission (1949–​51) added to this more favourable impression, using ‘Betting in Britain’, the first UK-​wide Social Survey on gambling produced by W. F. F. Kemsley and David Ginsburg. It revealed that 60 per cent of the adult population (71 per cent of men and 51 per cent of women) gambled on one of three major forms of betting each year (pools, horses and dogs), that contemporary gambling was not a strain on national resources and manpower, did not cause serious crime, and that the great majority of gamblers ‘did not spend money recklessly’ and ‘without regard to the consequences on the standard of living of themselves and their families’. Nevertheless, it felt that gambling should play no larger role in the community than it presently did and that ‘the great majority of patrons at dog tracks are not drawn from the wealthier section of the community and expenditure on this scale is considerably higher than the average weekly expenditure of those in similar economic circumstances who take part in other forms of gambling’.62 The reason for this, it suggested,

134

Going to the dogs

134 Table 5.1  Frequency of attendance at greyhound tracks, 1950 Attendance

Number

Attendances per year

Total attendances

2 per week 1 per week More than 1 per month More than 1 per year 1 per year or fewer

150,000 200,000 220,000 280,000 350,000

110 52 20 4 0.25

16,500,000 10,400,000 4,400,000 1,120,000 90,000

Source: Royal Commission on Betting, Lotteries and Gaming (1949–​51), Final Report, para.152; HO 335/​102.

was the immediate accessibility, and cheapness, of betting on greyhound racing in urban areas although it is clear that the Commission also largely accepted the evidence of Mass Observation and Zweig. The ‘Betting in Britain’ report firmly established for the Royal Commission on Betting, Lotteries and Gaming (1949–​51) that greyhound racing was a minority, indeed niche, working-​class sport with only 7 per cent of men and 1.5 per cent of women, about 4.1 per cent of the total population, betting on the dogs. Ten times that percentage were likely to be betting on the horses and the pools.63 Indeed, despite some fluctuation in estimates, it concluded that about 150,000 professional gamblers and 200,000 semi-​professional gamblers accounted for more than 83 per cent of the official attendances at greyhound tracks, and 850,000 occasional bettors made up the rest. Effectively, if there were only thirty-​two million attendances per year, about 600,000 per week, this meant that the ‘professional’ and ‘semi-​professional’ groups dominated and that the average working-​class bettor was in a minority, as indicated in Table 5.1. In addition, it was influenced by the evidence of the PGTCO to the Willink Commission and endorsed by the Home Office, that greyhound racing was ‘not a sport that attracts young persons’.64 The survey endorsed the view that greyhound racing was a modestly priced night out where betting was on a relatively small scale. In 1938, 1946 and 1950, respectively, the average individual stake on a race was four shillings (20p), 11s 1d (55.5p) and 5s 6d (27.5p) each and on the night it was estimated that in those years the average nightly stakes bet were £1 12s 0d (£1.60), £4 8s 6d (£4.42.5) and £2 4s 0d (£2.20).65 Normally about 75 to 80 per cent of this money went to the tote where 94 per cent of the money staked was paid back to the bettors. Even allowing for a smaller return to the bettor from the on-​track bookmakers this suggests that about 90 per cent of the money bet was returned to the bettors per race. Varied experience The generic experience of attending the races, and of having an ‘American night out’, has already been outlined in ­chapter 3, where the focus was placed upon

135

An Ascot for the common man

135

the built environment of the tracks as they emerged to provide a racing spectacle for the erstwhile bettor. As just seen, the generic experience has also emerged through the published MO file Mass Gambling (1948). Having entered the track and viewed the illuminated scene the greyhound bettor would gravitate towards the gambling rings. There would normally be two rings for gamblers, and also the dominating stands, and the larger tracks might have crèche facilities. There may be up to eight races a night (particularly after the Second World War), and there is the regular ritual of the dogs being brought out to the stalls, the sound of the artificial hare, the cheer of the crowd, and the exuberance of victory and the sadness of defeat. It was an exciting and enthralling experience. However, this is a generic description and, as already frequently established, around 30 per cent of tracks were not large enough to be able to afford a greyhound tote and relied on the bookmakers. The reality is that greyhound racing was a varied experience and the morphology of the track changed from venue to venue, from region to region, and from community to community. At the ‘flashy’ large NGRS tracks the men, women and children would see high standard and champion dogs in a spectacle of sport and gambling. At the much smaller, more basic flapping tracks there would be far fewer betting facilities for the more the ardent, often male, bettor, as lower graded and poorer quality greyhounds performed for a public of avid gamblers. The size of tracks, the facilities and the type of bettor varied, as suggested in ­chapter 3. Crowd size is an important indicator of these differences. This emerges in the Labour government’s Dog Racecourse Betting (Temporary Provisions) Act of 1947. This Act limited betting at greyhound tracks to between 1  p.m. and midnight on a Saturday and the enforcement and exemptions to this Act were dealt with by Regional (Procedures) Industrial Committees. Separate legislation was passed for Scotland in 1947. Both Acts, which ceased in 1949, produced a schedule of the facilities and size of crowds, the Act dealing with greyhound tracks in England and Wales listing 150 tracks, and the one for Scotland indicated twenty tracks for Scotland, and seventeen unlicensed tracks, though the overall number of tracks in Britain was to increase in 1948. The schedule for England and Wales (which cut across the new NGRS and PGTCO track gradings of that time) indicated that there were fifty-​one A tracks, fifty-​one B tracks, thirty-​one C tracks, all licensed, and seventeen unlicensed tracks (see Appendix B on greyhound tracks in England and Wales in 1947).66 The A tracks had crowds of more than 2,500, the B tracks crowds of between 800 and 2,500, the C tracks crowds of between 150 and 800. Of the ‘unlicensed’ and non-​NGRS tracks two were A tracks, nine were B tracks and 6 were C tracks. This schedule combined the NGRS and PGTCO together, the A and B tracks offering betting on the tote and through bookmakers, though some gave up the tote in 1948 and 1949, whilst the C tracks were dependent upon bookmakers.

136

Going to the dogs

136

The variation between tracks and track experience has been established at various points throughout this book, and needs no further elaboration. What is less obvious is that some tracks, and communities, clearly experienced a transition on what was offered, even in the heyday of greyhound racing. In Blackpool, for instance, the Blackpool Greyhound Track was formed on 30 July 1927, with 5,000 spectators, at St. Anne’s Road, and was affiliated to the NGRS until 1929, when it became a high-​quality flapping track with the tote. It entertained Rugby League matches in its early years but it closed on 30 October 1964, as its crowds fell to a few hundred per meeting. Between 1933 and 1937 the Blackpool Squires Gate Greyhound Stadium operated in competition, but its track was an unusually shaped one of 500 yards which meant that there was poor viewing from the grandstand. Later, between 1967 and 1988, a flapping track operated at Borough Road. All three were flapping tracks of a type but varied in the facilities they offered to their working-​class clientele. The greyhound tracks and the community Finally, and tentatively, the operation of a greyhound track impacted upon the local working-​class communities, which were drawn into greyhound racing by the jobs it created, and the rates and income it generated locally. There was intense opposition from local councils and from religious denominations to the very presence of greyhound racing and the gambling it encouraged, driven by the feeling that it was inimical to the needs of the community. The NGRS/​ NGRC constantly denied this charge and emphasised the employment and social benefits of greyhound racing and demonstrated this in the ‘Tote crisis’ of 1932–​ 34, which brought about the loss of full-​time and part-​time jobs for the community. Indeed, on 21 November 1933, Chairman of the Brighton and Hove greyhound track wrote to the Rt. Hon. G.  C. Tryan MP indicating the scale of the economic impact of the Brighton and Hove track were it to be closed. It employed fifty men, specialists in their trade. It had 250 dogs to feed in its kennels and therefore purchased 100 gallons of milk, three-​quarters of a ton of meat, many hundredweights of green vegetables, large quantities of bread, eggs and other foods per week. He added that ‘We, of course, pay large sums in local rates, and in other taxes and contribute considerable sums to local charities’.67 Daryl Leeworthy has also noted the positive economic and social contribution of greyhound racing, particularly in South Wales.68 Supported by many Labour politicians, such as Aneurin Bevan, MP, who rejected the claims of social degradation made by the churches and chapels, ‘Labour councillors were regularly seen in the crowds at speedway and dog racing’.69 Bevan even attended the annual meeting of the NGRS in 1933.70 Local authorities rarely intervened in greyhound racing, the council finding a new source of power for the Hawthorn Greyhound Racecourse in Pontypridd rather than closing it down.71 They were

137

An Ascot for the common man

137

mindful of the rates and rents that might be generated by them. In the early 1930s Cardiff City Council was unable to ignore the £1,000 rent per year paid by Arms Park (Cardiff) Greyhound Racing Company to the Cardiff Athletic Club, from whom it sub-​let the stadium, because of the rates that an active stadium generated.72 Endorsing the evidence presented in Tables 3.2 and 3.3, it is clear that greyhound racing was a very large employer in Britain as a whole. It provided employment, substantially part-​time opportunities, for the local community. Inevitably, money flowed in to those communities through the jobs greyhound tracks created, council rates and the food requirements of the dogs and the customers. The loss of employment in the relatively small flapping and NGRS tracks as a result of the ‘Tote crisis’ cost well over £100 per week to the local communities. The Arms Park Greyhound Track Cardiff spent £2,000 on wages in 1928 and £3,700 in 1930.73 Cardiff was clearly impacted upon by the annual dog food bill of £2,500, £100 of vets’ bills, £600 of track maintenance costs and £270 of policing costs which the greyhound company spent between 1928 and 1929, its first year of trading.74 Without a larger number of detailed examinations of some individual greyhound communities it is difficult to be precise but the recent study of the Albion track at Salford does tend to emphasise the positive attitude of the community to many of the greyhound tracks.75 Brian Belton’s study of dog racing in West Ham also describes how greyhound racing fitted into the broader culture and leisure of the local community to the point of track loyalty. When the Customs House at West Ham closed it was felt that its closure would boost the crowds at the nearby Walthamstow greyhound track and the Hackney speedway meetings. This did not occur and Belton, laconically, suggests that: The expected positive impact in Walthamstow and Hackney [nearby stadiums expected to benefit from the closure of the Customs House] never really happened. It seems that the GRA [Greyhound Racing Association Property Trust Ltd] did not understand the loyalty that existed for the stadium, its dogs, its trainers and speedway team. This kind of support does not transfer easily. The thinking that it should or might is akin to thinking if West Ham Football Club disappeared that its support would just simply shift to Arsenal or Tottenham Hotspur. To anyone who has been a supporter or fan of any sporting club attached to a locality or area this is, of course utter nonsense. This tradition was destroyed by ambition and greed, the type of forces that have no room for the sentiment and care involved in the practice of everyday support.76

The evidence on the relationship between greyhound racing and the urban working-​class communities remains equivocal. Nevertheless, whilst there was much organised hostility towards it, as evidenced throughout this book, there is equally strong evidence that many tracks were regarded more sympathetically. Many tracks did, indeed, attract a loyal local clientele, they employed people and

138

Going to the dogs

138

paid rates. Their activities were recorded in newspapers and there was some local pride in their existence. Conclusion The evidence suggests that whilst greyhound racing saw enormous growth between the 1920s and the 1950s, this was largely restricted to a significant, but relatively small, proportion of the working classes who regularly placed medium-​ sized bets. There may have been up to about 1,200,000 regular bettors, though only around 350,000 and semi-​professional bettors accounted for five-​sixths of attendance. Greyhound racing directly provided employment for up to about 28,000 full-​time and part-​time staff at its peak, created jobs in servicing sectors and exerted significant impact on the local community. Yet greyhound racing’s popularity pales into insignificance when ranged against horse racing and the football pools, and it declined rapidly from the 1940s. Nevertheless, in the quarter of a century between 1926 and 1951 it was a successful and significant addition to working-​class leisure, even if it lacked ubiquity. It allowed a small proportion of the working class to chase a green light, the chimera of self-​employment which they believed would allow them to escape the drudgery and poverty of life. MO, which came closest to examining working-​class opinion on dog racing from a sociological perspective, confirms the driving forces of pleasure and release that accompanied the professional business of gambling on the dogs. Yet it was a much maligned and strictly controlled leisure activity. There was an inordinate amount of opposition from the anti-​gambling forces in Britain, the Establishment and the middle class, whose approach, despite frequent claims of impartiality, was driven by an implicit class bias against greyhound racing, cloaked by economic concern and moral imperative. The authorities, who never came to terms with the shock of the mushrooming growth of greyhound racing after 1926 and the opportunities it gave for legal working-​class gambling, discriminated against it and restricted its growth even if they were unable to ban it. Nevertheless, in its early years greyhound racing was 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, despite a some low level crime, was comparatively honest. Above all, it provided some of the working classes with an opportunity to escape the drab existence that many led and offered a bright and glitzy ‘American night out’. However, its existence was always contested. Greyhound racing always remained a precarious venture which was vilified for not being a rational recreational activity by social commentators as well as anti-​ gamblers, subject to a level of discrimination never experienced by other sports, and it is remarkable that it was able to grow and develop for a quarter of a century. During that time greyhound tracks became ‘Ascots for the common man’, even though they catered to the interests of only a small proportion of the working class.

139

An Ascot for the common man

139 Notes

1 HO 45/​ 15843/​ 659060/​ 201, letter of the Rt. Hon. Ormsby-​ Gore to Sir John Gilmour, 25 November 1933, referred to it as the ‘Ascot for the common man’. The other terms were in common use. 2 HO 45/​14222, Part 1/​499163/​1. 3 HO 45/​14222/​Part 1/​441963/​18. The report appeared in the Manchester Guardian, 28 October 1927 and was repeated in the same paper on 9 December 1927. 4 Charles Dimont, ‘Going to the Dogs’, New Statesman, 30 November 1946, and also quoted in B. Seebohm Rowntree and G. R. Lavers, English Life and Leisure: A Social History (London: Longman, 1951), Appendix I, pp. 465–​9. 5 Dimont, ‘Going to the Dogs’. 6 Rowntree and Lavers, English Life and Leisure, pp. 465–​9. 7 HO 45/​14222/​499163, Part 1, Huggins, ‘ “Everybody’s Going to the Dogs” ’. 8 Leeworthy, ‘A Diversion from the New Leisure’, 53–​73. 9 Baker, ‘Going to the Dogs’. 10 Stephen G. Jones, ‘Working-​Class Sport in Manchester between the Wars’, in R. Holt (ed.), Sport and the Working-​Class in Modern Britain (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990), p. 72. 11 HO 45/​14222; S.  G. Jones, Sport, Politics and the Working Classes (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992), p. 47. 12 HO 45/​14222; Jones, ‘Working-​Class Sport in Manchester’, 71. The three tracks were Belle Vue, White City and Albion. 13 Look at the historiography section of the introduction in this book. 14 HO 45/​14222, file with last date of 7 October 1926. 15 Daily Mail, 28 October 1927. 16 Manchester City News, 14 January 1928. 17 HO 45/​142222, Cabinet Papers, CP 143, April 1928. 18 Ibid. 19 Quoted in the Daily News, 22 September 1927. 20 HO 45/​14222. 21 Manchester Guardian, 23 December 1932. The totalisator was a machine, though there were many different types, that calculated the payments from all bets placed in a pool. Before 1933 about 88 per cent of the pool was paid back to the bettors in winnings but after 1934 this was raised to 94 per cent. 22 Manchester Guardian, 11 January 1933. 23 Royal Commission on Lotteries, Betting and Gaming (1932–​ 33); Fifth Series, Parliamentary Debates, Lords, 26 April 1934, vol. 99. cc. 768–​ 70, Marquis of Londonderry, Secretary of State for Air. 24 Ibid., cc. 789, 792. 25 Ibid., cc. 799–​800. 26 Ibid., cc. 810–​11. 27 Ibid., cc. 956, 962. 28 HLG ​52/1422, a two-​page report probably produced in 1947. 29 HO 45/​15853/​663794/​31, the report of the deputation of the NGRS to the Home Secretary.

140

140

Going to the dogs

3 0 Quoted in Leeworthy, ‘A Diversion from New Leisure’, 64. 31 HO 45/​ 15843/​ 659060/​ 201, letter of the Rt. Hon. Ormsby-​ Gore to Sir John Gilmour, 25 November 1933. 32 Mass Observation [hereafter MO] File Report 1149, ‘Some thoughts on greyhound racing and national unity’, March 1942. 33 Ibid., 12; Matthew Taylor, ‘Mass-​Observation, Sport and the Second World War’, recording of paper at the Leisure Studies Association Conference, University of Bolton, 7 April 2009. 34 MO, ‘Some thoughts on greyhound racing and national unity’; HO 45/​14222; HO 45/​23691, Sabini was arrested under the Defence Regulation 18B. 35 Fifth Series, Parliamentary Debates, Lords, 26 April 1934, cc. 810–​22. 36 MO, ‘Saturday Night’, File Report 2467, April 1947, pp. 16–​17 (Mass Observation Archives, University of Sussex). 37 MO, ‘Mass Gambling’, file report 2560, January 1948 although often indicated as having appeared in 1947. Greyhound racing appears on pp. 111–​38. 38 Ibid., p. 113. 39 Ibid., pp. 117, 119. 40 Ibid., p. 119. 41 Ibid., pp. 131–​4. 42 Ibid., p. 121. 43 Ibid., p. 123. 44 Ibid., p. 131. 45 Ibid., p. 135. 46 HO 335/​87, memorandum of the PGTCO, para. 6. 47 Ibid. 48 CUST 49/​4251 contains a copy of Hills Guide to Greyhound Racing, published in London almost certainly in 1952 for 1953. Other sections included ‘How to read races’ by Neil Martin and articles on ‘Top number favourites, systematic betting’, etc. 49 MO, ‘Mass gambling’, p. 127. 50 MO, ‘Dog Fever’, May 1948, p. 1. 51 Ibid., p. 1. 52 HO 335/​52, Greyhound Racing Association, 7 (ii). 53 Ferdynand Zweig, Labour, Life and Poverty (London: Gollancz, 1948). 54 Ibid., p. 31. 55 Ibid., p. 35. 56 Ibid., pp. 35–​6. 57 Ibid., p. 37. 58 F. Zweig, The British Worker (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1952), p. 125. 59 Rowntree and Lavers, English Life and Leisure, p. 114. 60 MO, ‘Saturday Night’, pp. 16–​17. 61 Leeworthy, ‘A Diversion from the New Leisure’, 66. 62 HO 335/​1, Royal Commission on Betting, Lotteries and Gaming (1949–​51), Final Report, Cmnd 8190, March 1951, p. 3, para. 30. 63 Ibid., paras 169, 177, 180, 188; HO 335/​102. 64 HO 335/​87, Provincial Greyhound Track Control Office evidence to the Royal Commission on Betting, Lotteries and Gaming, pp. 8–​9.

141

An Ascot for the common man

141

65 Royal Commission on Betting, Lotteries and Gaming (1949–​51), Final Report, p. 154. 66 RB 1/​10, 804. TUC files, Modern Record Centre, University of Warwick. 67 HO 45/​15853/​663704/​29, letter from the Chairman of the NGRS to the Rt. Hon. G. E. Tryan MP, 21 November 1933. 68 Leeworthy, ‘A Diversion from New Leisure’. 69 Ibid., 63. 70 Ibid., particularly 62 referring to an article in The Times, 14 February 1933. 71 Ibid. 72 Ibid., 61. 73 Ibid., 63, referring to Arms Park (Cardiff) Greyhound Racing Company Limited, Ledger Book, 1927–39, p. 54. 74 Leeworthy, ‘A Diversion from New Leisure’, 60–​1. 75 Chloe Trippier study of Albion Stadium Salford for an MA at the University of Salford in 2013. 76 Belton, When West Ham went to the Dogs, p. 121.

142

6

Policing the tracks, detecting malpractice and dealing with the racketeers and ‘shady’ individuals, 1926 to c. 1961

The fact is that frequent allegations of crookedness in the sport on different tracks, suggestions of doping dogs, devices to hamper their running, and many other charges, whether true or untrue, must have had their effect on the average Englishman with dogmatic views as to the maintenance of fair play and discipline and control in all its branches. (The Morning Post, 10 January 1929, in an article entitled ‘Going to the Dogs, Greyhound Racing’s Decline: What is Wrong’)

In the early years of greyhound racing there was always a concern 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. These concerns ran in tandem with the fear that greyhound racing promoted unrestricted and unaffordable working-​class gambling, and was not a rational activity. From its early years, governments and local authorities felt impelled, driven on by the forces of anti-​gambling, to have chief constables conduct regular checks on greyhound tracks. Disappointingly for those interests, most of the police surveys of the 1920s and 1930s revealed that the greyhound tracks were being run properly, even if there was always an undercurrent of criminality, more to do with petty dishonesty rather than organised malpractice. Indeed, it was disconcerting for the anti-​gamblers and the local authorities to find John Maxwell, Chief Constable of Manchester, observing that there was nothing to worry about in Manchester, reporting in November 1926 that the coming of the mechanical hare freed the sport from the charge of cruelty and that a recent report that he had received from one of his constables ‘does not bear out the allegations that the young in particular fall prey to the bookie’.1 He made similar comments just over seven years later, after a major spurt in greyhound racing at the Belle Vue and White City stadiums in Manchester.2 Three questions arise from this conflicting situation. First, why was there considerable concern about criminality at greyhound tracks? Second, why did the police take a very relaxed attitude towards greyhound racing? Third, why did the police allow the greyhound organisations and tracks

143

Policing the tracks

143

to run their own affairs and to operate through a form of consensual policing? The evidence suggests that the pressure for control came from the anti-​gambling organisations, that the police found little in the way of serious criminal activity, and that they were happy with the security measures of the greyhound tracks to allow consensual, rather than overt and intrusive, policing. ‘Renaming the Casino at Monte Carlo in England, except the dogs are substituted for the roulette board’: opposition to greyhound racing, police observations and policing the tracks, 1926 to the early 1930s The police forces in Britain gained an increasing range of new responsibilities in the early twentieth century at a time when the pluralism of their nineteenth-​ century work was being reduced. During the inter-​war years the new professional police forces of Britain were faced with a widening range of tasks although their force was barely different in numbers than before the Great War, rising from about 52,000 to 62,000 officers between 1918 and 1939.3 In 1926 the police had come to accept the responsibility of managing the roads as police constables spent one-​sixth of their time managing traffic even as the new traffic police began to emerge. At the same time they were suddenly faced with the rapid growth of greyhound racing in a climate of intense religious hostility towards gambling and to the new sport itself. Many local authorities wished to ban the sport by denying planning permission for the tracks to be built and there was intense parliamentary opposition from prominent MPs such as John Buchan and Winston Churchill, as already indicated in ­chapter 2. Inevitably, this meant that the police were called upon to survey the tracks for any hint of impropriety –​such as the fixing of races, extortion and intimidation –​and to check on the tracks for evidence of traffic problems, which might cast greyhound tracks as urban impediments operating against the interests of the community. Their observations of the tracks were provoked by the intense pressure of the anti-​gambling groups upon the Home Secretary. The Evangelical Free Church Council had one of its representatives attend a meeting at the Belle Vue track, Manchester, in October 1926, noting the abhorrent spectacle of gambling and that:  ‘The police were there but were engaged in regulating the motor traffic or looking on.’4 This seems to have provoked little response from the Home Office but a letter to Joynson-Hicks (the Home Secretary), from Lt. Col. Sir Walter Gibbons, dated 25 July 1927, produced a much more rapid response.5 Gibbons, a major figure in charitable organisations and the Automobile Association, presented greyhound racing as a dangerous activity since the ‘betting is indulged by people who cannot afford to gamble, the perniciousness of the system is emphasised as to many it spells ruin’.6 He added that: ‘I know nothing of the law that governs gambling in England but, to my mind, in effect it is neither more nor less than renaming the Casino at Monte

144

144

Going to the dogs

Carlo in England, except that the dogs are removed for the roulette wheel.’ His letter was answered by J. A. Cross, on 25 July, thanking him for his recent letter in The Times and asserting that ‘I know of no more loathsome spectacle in England … than that observed at Greyhound Racing. The racing greyhounds are exhibitions of … anxiety and greed’.7 As a result the Home Office asked the Metropolitan Police to conduct an immediate investigation of greyhound racing in the Metropolitan Police area of London. J. Eger, S.D. Inspector, tended his Metropolitan Police Report to his Superintendent, who passed it on to the Home Office. Written on 6 August 1927, it challenged the claims of Gibbons: I beg to report the Greyhound meeting at the White City Stadium is patronised by all classes of society. I have not noticed the people in poor circumstances attend in numbers, neither have I observed undue wagering by them. Many of the people who go to the meetings do not bet on the results. They are simply there to watch the dogs competing one against the other. The meetings last for nearly two hours. The charges for admission to the Stadium and the stands range from the very modest charge of one shilling and two pence to ten shillings. More than half the Stadium is set apart for the accommodation of those paying one shilling and two pence. The Stadium Authorities do all they can to exclude the undesirable class of bookmaker. No case has come to the Police where a person has been ruined by gambling at the Stadium. It is difficult to understand Sir Walter’s point. In all probability he is opposed to gambling in any shape or form. No illegal betting takes place at the White City. So far as my knowledge goes, bookmakers do not accept bets away from the White City on the results of greyhound races. No case of street betting on the races has come to notice in this sub-​division.8

Following on from this, on 9 January 1928 the Home Office sent circulars out to twenty-​four chief constables, including those for county forces of Devon, Hampshire, Kent, Lancashire and the borough forces of Birmingham, Blackpool, Bolton, Bradford, Bristol, Burnley, Colchester, Hull, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, Southend on Sea, Wolverhampton and the Metropolitan Police. It received seventeen replies, most of them brief and all of them echoing the earlier observations of Eger of the Met.9 The Home Secretary and the Home Office had to accept, from the seventeen reports on twenty-​two tracks (four in the Met. District), that there was no evidence of street betting (illegal since 1906), less betting on greyhound racing in London, Birmingham, Sheffield and other centres of greyhound racing than one might suppose, and that few children were allowed on course without parents. Indeed, it reflected that: ‘There is very little betting at dog races by young persons and none by children, nor do the young children bet away from the track. There is little evidence of drunkenness having increased. There has been no disorder.’10 Despite this the Home Secretary argued in the House of Commons, on 30 April 1928, that greyhound racing represented the dangerous growth of working-​class

145

Policing the tracks

145

gambling though he realised that any action against it would appear to be some form of class legislation.11 Nonetheless, he declared his intention to support the ‘Buchan’ Local Option Bill of 1928, to restrict greyhound racing, and was soon afterwards offering his optimistic view that greyhound racing was declining. In the end, as previously noted, the ‘Buchan’ Bill was abandoned and local authorities were denied direct control over the planning permission of tracks. Initial police investigations of tracks appear to have been passive, superficial, confined largely to observing the crowd, the operation of the tote and the activities of bookmakers. By and large, it would appear that the police did not wish to interfere with the tracks as they were feeling their way about their own precise role. On 29 April 1930 Lt. Col. F. A. D. Stevens, the Chief Constable of Bedford, enquired of A. L. Dixon, of the Home Office, what action he should take against tracks operating on a Sunday, stating of his evidence that: ‘As far as I can see it is quiet … There is no question of disorderly behaviour, and as far as I can see no question of people getting drunk.’ Dixon’s reply of 6 June 1930 was ‘that in the Metropolitan Police District the Commissioner of Police does not interfere with such meetings unless disorder occurs, and they consider this is the right course to adopt and doubt the advisability of taking proceedings under the Lord’s Day Observance Acts’.12 The official view of the Home Office emerged in November 1930 when Sir William Jowitt, by that time a Labour MP and Attorney General, passed on to J. R. Clynes, the Labour Home Secretary, the views of two MPs who wanted dog racing prohibited on a Sunday. Clynes’s response was to suggest that dog racing on a Sunday was already illegal under the Lord’s Day Observance acts and that if he took up the need for action the whole position of the actions would have to be examined. He had already been informed that the Met did not interfere: This policy is based upon the consideration that Sunday Observance Acts no longer accord with a large body of public sentiment, that they are frequently disregarded in many places and it is practically difficult to discriminate between one form of entertainment and another. Furthermore, as it is open to a common informer to take action there is no special reason for Police to intervene and shoulder the odium of starting proceedings.13

There was also the practicality that the hundreds and thousands of people at the tracks might all have to be interviewed if the Acts were fully applied, consuming valuable and limited police resources. The police were also pragmatic, almost sclerotic, in their approach as they wished to develop a working relationship with the public who informed them of crime and who they did not wish to offend. Given the enormous extra burden being imposed by the police at this time, caused largely by the rise of the car and the need for traffic policing and management, it is not surprising that the Home Office and the police were reluctant

146

146

Going to the dogs

to act.14 Indeed, in the early 1920s the Home Secretary, in response to demands from forces to increase their numbers, stated that ‘I reject any addition to the number of their police, which comes at a time when every effort is being made to economise’.15 Thus the advice was to do nothing unless there was disorder, which might pose a threat to life and property. As a result, the police did little other than attend tracks to maintain order and direct, and control the traffic near to tracks, confirmed in their actions by a number of other police surveys in 1932 that threw doubt upon the problem of disorder. In 1932, when the attendance at NGRS tracks had risen to more than 17.9  million, it was reported by the NGRS that the reports of chief constables suggested that there was no evidence of drunkenness and that ‘cases of disorder and noise were practically unknown, and the exceptional conduct of the crowd is ample testimony to the conditions on which these racecourses are conducted’.16 It was further claimed that ‘Dog racing in the open has drawn people form the public house, cinema and theatre, but not from football matches and horse races’, suggesting that it had a generally positive influence upon public behaviour. The exception, as far as the NGRS was concerned, in a view supported by Hackney Town Council, was that: ‘It is a well-​known fact that on unlicensed tracks the public are being gulled by the fictitious names of both owners and dogs, as unlicensed tracks are only responsible to the promoter. There is no remedy against this.’17 To this might be added the concern of the NGRS about the possible banning of the use of the totalisator for gambling. W. Ormsby-​Gore MP sent a letter to the Home Secretary (Sir John Gilmour) in November 1933 suggesting that his constituents who frequented the Wolverhampton tracks had noted that since the abolition of the totalisator ‘there had been a great deal of doubtful practice by the bookies who have a ring and a monopoly’ on gambling.18 In the inter-​war years, then, police supervision, both on and off the tracks, was fitful and low key. The approval of parking arrangements and facilities became a responsibility for both the police and local authority, with the police normally being responsible for traffic duties. Yet, like all stadium events, policing inside the stadium was done in return for a gratuity. Most forces provided on-​track policing. However, the Metropolitan Police finally decided to withdraw these duties in the mid-​1930s, as will emerge, and did not return to paid employment in the tracks until after the Harringay greyhound track riot of 1957. Apart from such events, the emerging picture is of a reluctant police being driven on to check greyhound tracks and tote betting as part of a parliamentary, religious and Establishment hostility to working-​class gambling. In return, the police seemed to increasingly annoy anti-​gambling interests by emphasising the low level and petty nature of what was occurring at the greyhound tracks. In the end, the police were reluctantly drawn into the process of controlling the tracks and criminalising some gambling activities, although they minimised the role as much as they could. However, the ‘Tote crisis’ of 1932–​34 did bring them more directly into policing the track.

147

Policing the tracks

147 The police and ‘Tote crisis’ of 1932–​34

The confusion arising from the fact that the Shuttleworth v. Leeds Greyhound Racing Company Co. court case decision made the greyhound tote illegal in December 1932 created immense problems for policing until the introduction of the 1934 Betting and Lotteries Act made the greyhound tote legal. In January 1933 the Home Office discussed various draft plans on how to control tote betting and then sent a circular out to all police forces on 11 February 1933 to both establish how and where the dog tote clubs were operating and the extent of illegal tote betting on the greyhound tracks. In the event more than two-​thirds of the returns from the police were ‘nil’ returns and eighteen chief constables sent in no returns at all.19 No replies were received from the Chief Constables of the counties of Carmarthen, Caernarvon, Flint, Merioneth and Monmouth in Wales, and the city and county boroughs of Bacup, Barnsley, Derby, Grantham, Huddersfield, Kendal, Lincoln, Newcastle upon Tyne, Reigate, South Shields, Sunderland, Walsall and York. The incomplete returns of this circular, presented in Table 6.1, reveal the rapid extent to which totes had closed in a little over two months. The returns resulting from this circular were confirmed by another similar police survey conducted on 27 February 1933.20 The fact is that after the legal court decision of December 1932 and police intervention very few totes were operating. In the wake of this evidence the Home Office and police narrowed down their actions to prosecuting those who had been arrested for continuing to operate totes. There were seven prosecutions in Manchester where the Manchester Police reported that ‘all tote clubs had been closed’. In Nottingham there had been three clubs in existence on 16 December 1932 but they were also closed by the police.21 The few tote clubs and tote arrangements still working were quickly prosecuted by the police and closed. The problem with this action is that the totalisator system was relatively safe from fraud, unlike the operation of the track bookmakers. The Automatic Electric Company, a company which produced tote machines and was thus naturally sponsoring its own products, stressed that: ‘The fact totalisators are called upon to deal with large sums of money in comparatively small units, and the unsavoury reputation earned from the bookmakers is gained by a few black sheep, led the designer of the All-​Electric Totalisator … to pay attention to the process of safeguards against fraud.’22 Indeed, the new all-​electric Premier Totalisator was designed to thwart the opportunity for fraud by reducing the human input to a minimum with the possibility of automatic betting, though most machines continued to operate through a human contact point in later years.23 Therefore, the absence of the totalisator machines for almost two years meant that the burden on police supervisions increased as the illegal ‘human tote’ replaced it. The ‘human tote’, in which individuals often masqueraded as bookmakers to hide the fact that they were operating the type of tote arrangements based

148

148

Going to the dogs

Table 6.1  Totalisators in tote clubs and on greyhound tracks, February 1932 Tote clubs Number of tote clubs in existence on 16 December 1932 Number of tote clubs opened since 16 December 1932 Number of tote clubs open at the date of this report Number of tote clubs closed because of proceedings against them Number of tote clubs against which proceedings are pending Number of totalisators on greyhound tracks Number of tracks with totalisators on 16 December 1932 Number of totalisators open on the date of this report Number of tracks discontinued tote as a result of proceedings against them Number of tracks faced with totalisator proceedings pending

248 15 13 26 17 105 4 7 5

Source: HO 45/​6279/​650020/​5.

upon the pool of income received, sprang up to replace the track totes, were much more open to fraud and were illegal. This system, which emerged at the beginning of 1933 and lasted throughout most of 1934, was widespread but particularly evident in Liverpool, Gosforth (Newcastle upon Tyne) and in parts of London, such as Ealing and West Ham.24 The Chief Constable of Liverpool sent Sgt G. Ellam, of the Old Swan Police Station, Liverpool to visit the White City Greyhound Track, Lower Brick Road, on two occasions –​on 15 February and 16 March (reporting on 16 February and on the 19 February), to see for himself the operation of the ‘human tote’. He also attended the Breck Park Greyhound Track, Liverpool, and also the Stanley greyhound track, Liverpool, which had not adopted the system. Ellam’s detailed accounts varied a little from track to track but indicated how the system operated using the ex-​employees of the totes, ostensibly as free agents or bookmakers, though working as a group, one stand for each dog where bets could be placed. In his 15 February 1933 report, Ellam indicated that he had suggested to Mr Shand, the manager of the White City track, that what he saw was a miniature totalisator, to which Shand responded that the men involved had been dismissed and were now bookmakers, deducted 5 per cent, and ‘had nothing whatsoever to do with him’, for his greyhound company simply sold to them the tickets they used. Nevertheless, Ellam felt that these ‘bookies’ operated as a group and in a pool and was therefore conducting a form of tote arrangement. This seemed to be confirmed when Shand said that he had two chartered accountants in attendance to protect the patrons. ‘I told him that they were in my opinion each and every one was a miniature hand totalisator’, to which Shand said:  ‘It’s debateable.’25 Ellam’s visit to the Breck Park track offers perhaps his clearest and most detailed account of what was happening and is worth offering at some length:

149

Policing the tracks

149

Report on seeing 6 men with boards, each accompanied by a clerk, acting as bookmakers in the 1/​-​enclosure. The boards were all moveable stands each one having a name over the top, such as Freeman, Hardy and Willis, etc., this being a guidance to the patrons as to whom they had made their bet. The boards were each marked with the number of dogs running in the race, viz. 1.2.3.4 and has the words ‘Win only’ at the top of the board. The bets are 1/​-​and multiples of 1/​-​and as the bets are made by patrons the man in charge of the board gives the patron a ticket, and the other man, the clerk, records the number of the ticket and the bet in his book. The number of the bets made on each dog are also shown on the board, opposite their respective number. At the bottom of the board is shown, ‘3/​ -​will be deducted from each race, and Pay Out to the nearest threepence.’ At the conclusion of the race the number of bets shown against each dog are totalled up and divided between the number shown on the winning dog, less the 3/​-​deducted. There were also six men, accompanied by a clerk, acting in a similar manner in the 6d enclosure. Each of these men appeared to be acting individually, as they were showing different pay out amounts. These men have been operating in this manner at this track the whole of last week. I have made enquiries and ascertained that Harold Heyes, late totalisator manager at the track, was in charge of the men operating in the 6d enclosure, and James Eckersley, a member of the betting fraternity also a member of the Club at the track, was in charge of the men in the 1/​-​operating enclosure I have seen both Heyes and Eckersley and they informed me that the men operating the boards are men who have been dismissed from the company’s employ, each having to pay their admittance to the track as ordinary patrons, the company having no interest whatever in their takings, neither do they pay a fee for standing on the track. They also informed me that they charge 30/​-​ [£1.50] each pair, or board, per meeting, the men operating obtaining their money from the 3/​-​[15p] deductions and the breakages. The method operated at this track is very similar to the one in operation at the White City Track excepting that these men guarantee to pay odds of 2 to 1, no matter what the figures on the board may be, they each issue Bookmakers tickets, bearing the same name as is shown over the top of the board, specimen attached. There are two meetings per day, afternoon meetings consisting of eight races, and evening meeting of 10 races. I have also spoken to Mr Walter Cordley Gibbins, manager, and he states that the men operating do not pay a fee to the company for standing at the track. There is no lottery at this track but on Monday last, the 13/​3/​33, when the management refused Bookmakers admission, a £20 Free Competition, known as the Trebles Competition was held, the procedure being, inside the programme for the meeting was a leaflet where the patrons marked on the numbers of the dog which they selected would win the races Nos 5, 6 and 7 and placed them in a box in the enclosure. A similar £20 competition was held on Wednesday, the 15/​3/​33, but none has been held since. G. Ellam Sgt 26 ‘G’

The ‘human tote’, in its various forms, was also prevalent in London. On 22 March 1933, the Daily Mail reported on the fact that Percy Cant and Alfred

150

150

Going to the dogs

Holder, two directors of Mobile Tote Ltd, were fined £4 by the Ealing magistrates for operating a totalisator at Southall Dog Racing Track, and the owners of the stadium were fined £2 for permitting the offence. Apparently, ‘the men stood in a line on the bottom of the steps of a structure which was formerly used as a mechanical tote. Each man had a blackboard and easel and represented a particular dog’. In addition, each man had a roll of shilling tickets and they marked on their blackboards the number of tickets sold, and one man (Scudds) collected all the money from the men. Apparently, 90 per cent of the money gathered went to the bettors and 10 per cent to Mobile Tote Ltd, more or less the tote drawback that the owners of the tracks had taken in the early years of greyhound racing. In March 1933 the Liverpool Chief Constable noted that there were eighteen ‘human totes’ operating on one track and it was calculated that they were making £2 11s (£2.55) each race at the meetings, meaning that they were making £45 18s (£45.90) at afternoon meetings and £61 14s (£61.70) at night meetings, though it is unclear how he came to these calculations. He added that ‘The profit they make depend on their individual slickness on the track while the races are in progress, and a former track official told me “There is no check on them and fraud is almost impossible to detect” ’.26 Initially, police action seems to have been effective in closing down the tote on greyhound tracks and the tote clubs and the ‘human tote’ but by the end of 1933 there was a resurgence of activities and about thirty tote clubs re-​ emerged in London. The police prosecuted the culprits but the judge in a case between Strathan Council and the Scottish and London credit bookmakers John McLauchlan Ltd, on 5 June 1933, ‘held that the business might have been carried on legally’.27 By September 1933 the ‘human tote’ had been resurrected at West Ham stadium by Captain Bartlett. The Home Office report stated that: From the police reports it appears that Captain Bartlett has runners on the terraces at the West Ham track practically in the same place on each occasion, with blackboards and easels behind them, wearing Captain Bartlett’s badge, and the blackboards bearing his name; these runners, having prior to the start of the race meeting obtained a supply of money from a motor van which is situated to the rear of one of the stands, take up their position on the terraces and sell tickets to persons wishing to bet by the pari-​mutuel system. After each race the individual runners take particulars of the tickets sold to the van where the starting price is them calculated after deducting 10% of the total value of the bets. On being informed of the dividend payable, the runners go back to their stands and pay out to the winning backers. After the racing is over the runners take their money to the van where it is checked.28

Despite this situation, Lord Hugh Trenchard, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police from 1931 to 1935, wanted to close the police presence down since he considered it difficult to distinguish between the activities of Captain Bartlett’s runners and the activities of ordinary bookmakers. The issue

151

Policing the tracks

151

was whether or not a pool was being operated, which would mean that it was an illegal activity, or was it the normal activity of bookmakers where profits and losses were taken regardless of any pooling of the bets? However, since the Home Office felt that this method of pari-​mutuel betting could spread throughout the whole of track and racecourse betting it was felt that the Metropolitan Commissioner should not ignore the case of Captain Bartlett.29 Indeed they eventually successfully prosecuted Bartlett. The report of James Taylor, of the Newcastle upon Tyne police, on the Gosforth track was even more emphatic in its evidence of the revivified ‘human pool’ arrangements in the North East: On both sides of the track, and in addition to the ordinary bookmaker, there are a number of men each having a lady clerk some of whom sit in the dark. These men do not shout the odds the same as ordinary bookmakers but ask the public to have a shilling on the Win Pools, Place Pools, Forecast Pool (1st and 2nd dog), Doubles Pool (winning dog in two stated races), and Trebles Pool (winning dog in three stated races). The units are added together and the remainder is divided amongst those who had their money on the winning dog or dogs. I have watched these people enter the stadium and they are charged on admission. They then proceeded to The Office where they receive a number of boards, with tickets attached, one boards being used for each race. After the races are finished they return the boards still containing figures on each race. They also draw a mark down each set of tickets so that no more can be sold after being checked … The person who checks the figures in the 1/​6 entrance is Mr Fraser, Secretary to the Gosforth Stadium Greyhound Racing Company. I have made enquiries and learned that the ‘Tote’ operation receive their tickets and boards from the management but have to pay from 7/​-​up to a £1 and £2, according to the amount of their takings, for a night’s betting. The operator of each board pays his lady clerk 4s or 5s per night. This comes out of the amount deducted each race, the balance going to the man operating. These persons are termed bookmakers by the management. The ordinary bookmaker who stands in the enclosure, his odds pays 17s 6d for his stand and list. There are no bets over a shilling at the ‘Human Tote’ and each person operating the tote is entirely on his own. The ordinary bookmakers appear to be much more popular than the ‘Human Tote’, and appears to do the bulk of the betting. The ‘Tote’ is poorly patronised in comparison to the ordinary bookmaker. There appear to be about 40 to 50 bookmakers. James Taylor  Inspector To Supt Taught DCC, Police Office, Gosforth30

Other similar cases occurred at Legrams Lane Track in Bradford, in the summer and autumn of 1933 where the Lightowler brothers operated a pool, and at Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire, where the Chief Constable of Buckinghamshire took action against the operation of the pool.31 The Glasgow

152

152

Going to the dogs

police successfully prosecuted the Albion Stadium (Glasgow) in the case of Strathan v. Albion Greyhound (Glasgow) Ltd, over the use of the ‘human tote’.32 A visit by the Metropolitan Police to Brixton Stadium on 2 September 1933 led to police prosecution, since there were four ‘Forecasts’ operating to provide the 600 people present the chance of the tote/​pool arrangements. There was a clerk at each Forecast stand and they were gathered together by a collector, the police report noting that: The collector hurried to where a man 6ft, complexion fresh, clean shaven, medium build, dress, dark blue suite with pin stripes, striped shirt, soft collar and tie, grey trilby hat, wearing horn rimmed spectacles with yellow metal frames, was standing at the side of the Gents’ toilet adjoining the Brixton Stadium Club and handed him four sheets of paper, clipped to a writing pad which was lying on two wooden mineral water crates and used as a temporary desk.33

The ‘human tote’ was clearly both illegal and profitable but to dispel any doubt on the situation the 1934 Betting and Lotteries Act eventually closed this rather dubious loophole by making it illegal for bookmakers to run a pool and, despite the findings of the Rowlatt Commission (1932–​33), legalised tote betting on greyhound tracks. By that time, and through their increasing knowledge of the greyhound tracks, the police were becoming more attuned to the illegal activities and malpractices of those associated with greyhound tracks, although their attitudes did vary. On 5 January 1934 the Home Office sent out yet another circular (601,704/​ 23) to all police forces in Britain to establish the extent to which there were still irregular activities on tracks.34 The results reveal a remarkable variation in attitudes to, and evidence of, malpractice and criminality in dog racing. There were three main questions. The first (a), enquired as to whether or not the owners of the tracks owned greyhounds and whether they were ‘supplying private information to any persons’, implying insider dealing and possible fraud. The second asked whether or not the grading of the dogs was done correctly, implying that that higher grade dogs could be placed in lower grade races which would benefit those bettors with insider knowledge. The third enquired about the extent of the practice of dogs running under different names at different tracks. This was clearly a much better informed circular and questionnaire than those previously circulated to the police. The Manchester police and the Salford police, in one of the urban centres of greyhound racing, had little to report. John Maxwell, the Chief Constable of Manchester, stated that ‘I have no knowledge of any irregular practices referred to by you taking place’.35 Major Godfrey, Chief Constable of Salford, was as unaware of any criminal activities. He reported that there was ‘No unlicensed track in Salford. No complaints have been made, neither have I any knowledge that irregular practices of the mature indicated in your [circular]’. There were

153

Policing the tracks

153

similar replies by the Lancashire County police, the West Riding of Yorkshire police, reporting on a stadium at Wombwell near Barnsley, the Essex County police and the Hampshire constabulary.36 Many of the other 183 chief constables of England and Wales did not reply to the circular, or sent in nil returns. The few who did make comments suggest a wide range of evidence of low level criminal or irregular activity by the track owners and bookmakers at the expense of the bettors, although their returns often lacked specific evidence. The Buckinghamshire police could find no information on the track ownership of the dogs, that the knowledge on grading dogs was still limited, but that the dogs did run under different names at different tracks.37 The Chief Constable of Cambridgeshire suggested that there were only two non-​NGRC tracks in his area, that they attracted ‘a low class of person’, and that ‘irregular practices took place but that they are difficult to detect’.38 Raymond Baylen, Chief Constable of the Carmarthenshire County force, could find no evidence of ‘shady dealings’ in the two greyhound tracks in Llanelly but was very suspicious of one, stating that: With regard to the track at Llyyadrych, Llanelly, the proprietor is a very shady individual and I am told that no shady trick is too low for him to stoop to. He does not have greyhound dogs himself. I am told that he does not hesitate to give any information which he may obtain to friends. I am also informed he is guilty of other practices referred to in (b) and (c).39

The Chief Constable of Derbyshire wrote that ‘it is strongly suggested that irregularities occur at the Greyhound Racing Track, Shirebrook with connection to the racing of privately owned dogs under different names at different tracks, but at present no definite information is available’. The Assistant Chief Constable of Devon noted that: ‘At Bideford Sports Ground, where greyhound racing is held on Monday and Thursday [it is claimed], that races have been “fixed” by unfair grading but we have no direct evidence of it.’ Indeed, he added that: Doping, tight muzzling, and ‘staffing’ are undoubtedly practised by the owners of the dogs at the meeting. The groundsmen showed the local Police three bottles, one contained turpentine, the other brandy, and one contained a blood mixture. He had also known owners to bring cooked rabbit with them. If the owner wanted the dog to win, the rabbit was not fed to it. If it was not wanted to win it was given the whole rabbit just before the race. It is also alleged that dogs toes have been tied together to hinder their running. The police have no direct evidence of the above. It is rumoured that dog racing at Bideford have lost a lot of support owing to the unfair methods adopted as above.40

The Chief Constables of Cardiff and Oxford both reported ‘dogs being graded in a manner to let them win’, as well as a variety of practices such as putting dogs

154

Going to the dogs

154

in the traps backwards and cutting the claws of the dogs.41 The Metropolitan Police held suspicions about grading at some of the ‘Flapping Meetings’. The Chief Constable of Halifax claimed that there were many irregularities on his local tracks, with private information being circulated and grading to favour a dog.42 Private information was offered, and accusations of irregularities were levelled, at Walthamstow and other tracks.43 There were suspicions of insider information being used in racing, dogs being inaccurately graded, and dogs being run under different names to dupe the public in these police reports, though little hard evidence of it offered. Such duplicity became the basis of regular police investigations of British greyhound tracks over the next few decades. However, they were occasionally taken beyond the realm of petty crime and fraud to a higher level by the evidence that gangs operated on tracks and were involved in protection rackets and other criminal activities. This probably happened on greyhound tracks less often than on horse racing tracks but became entrenched in the public mind and was emphasised, as already indicated, by Sir Stafford Cripps during the Second World War. The most obvious names associated with such activities were the Sabini brothers. The Sabini brothers and ‘Big Alf ’ The Sabinis were one of the most famous of the gangs operating on the horse racing and greyhound tracks in the gangland culture of the inter-​war Britain. In the 1920s this Clerkenwell-​based gang operated in London and had an estimated 300 members, including imported Sicilian gunmen, and were involved in extortion, theft, illegal gambling (specifically in horse racing) as well as operating several nightclubs. On the horse-​race courses, and in its other activities, the Sabini gang came into conflict with the Cortesi brothers and, though less markedly, with the Birmingham Boys, the Yiddishers, the White family and other gangs –​ and became famous for their razor attacks.44 Ottavio Sabini was immortalised as the gangster Colleoni in Graham Greene’s novel Brighton Rock. More recently he has appeared as a character in the British television series Peaky Blinders, which dramatised the activities of the Birmingham Boys.45 There appear to have been as many as four brothers  –​Ottavio (Ottavius), Frederick, Joseph and Harry, although all their names seemed to be mutable, as indicated by the fact that in 1940 Joseph Sabini (who may have been Frederick) sent a letter in support of the release from detention as enemy aliens of two brothers –​Harry Sabini and F. Darby Sabini (arrested as Frederick Handley but also known as Ottavio, Darby and Charles).46 Ottavio, the leader of the gang, was born 9 July 1888 in Saffron Hill, London, allegedly as Ottavio Handley Sabini (the son of Charles Sabini and Eliza Handley), though he sometimes claimed that he was born as Ottavio Handley. In one letter of appeal to the Alien Advisory Committee in 1941, he indicated that he was born Frederick Sabini, though he

155

Policing the tracks

155

rejected it in another letter of appeal when he asked, indignantly, ‘why he would I adopt my brother’s name?’ The confusion about his real name was complicated by the fact that he used to box as Frederick Handley, and often used the name Charles, was nicknamed ‘Derby’, or ‘Darby’ in police reports, and seems to have used various aliases throughout his life.47 As indicated above, Joseph Sabini referred to him as F. Darby Sabini and from 1919 he was generally known as Fred Handley. The truth is that he was constantly changing his name and everyone seemed to be aware that he was really Ottavio Sabini although he used the name Frederick Handley for much of his life in Brighton and Hove.48 In the early 1920s the core of his gang’s income came from racecourse protection rackets operated against bookmakers on horse racecourses. A CID (Criminal Investigation Department) Report of 1940 stated that:  ‘It is known that after the last war Sabini exercised some control over the bookmakers on the various racecourses and there is little doubt that he combined to himself as an official in charge of pitches and by that means received substantial remuneration [from the bookmakers] but they appeared to be quite content for Sabini to act in the manner stated.’49 On 17 May 1920, as Frederick Handley, he was arrested by the Metropolitan Police for gang harassment but was only fined £20 for his ‘gangster activities’.50 As Frederick Handley he was discharged on a charge of shooting on 2 April 1921, his defence being self-​defence, but was fined £10 by the Ealing Petty sessions for holding a gun without a licence. This may have been an event in connection with a conflict with the Cortesi gang, variously indicated as occurring between 1921 and 1923.51 However, this gang warfare more or less came to an end in 1926 when Ottavio was declared bankrupt after an unsuccessful libel action against D.  C. Thompson & Co. As a result he moved to Brighton in 1926, possibly leaving Harry Sabini to run the London gang to control the rackets by their ‘blackmailing methods’ and to coerce ‘bookmakers on racecourses and greyhound stadiums and clubs’.52 He established a protection racket on the Brighton and Hove greyhound course when it was opened in 1928. Although regularly charged with assault, his gang’s reputation made witnesses naturally reluctant to come forward and this probably accounts for the limited evidence of his gang’s activities at the Brighton and Hove track until his arrest in 1940 as a ‘dangerous alien’ under Defence Regulation 18B.53 Whilst at Brighton he operated under the names of Charles ‘Darby’ Sabini, Ottavio Sabini, Fred Sabini and Frederick Handley, though more commonly he was known by the last of these. By and large the legal actions taken against him whilst operating in Brighton and Hove were few and were concentrated in a brief period in 1931. He was arrested for being drunk by the Brighton police and was given a month’s hard labour on 2 April 1931, though he successfully appealed against his sentence. On 21 July 1931 was fined forty shillings by the Brighton Borough Bench for drunkenness and abusive language.54 He claimed that throughout his years in London

156

156

Going to the dogs

and in Brighton and Hove he worked as a ‘tic tac’ man for a bookmaker, became a bookmaker, and finally worked for the Bookmakers’ Protection Association.55 He also claimed that from 1937 he was a commission agent under the name of ‘Dan Cope’, and was assisted by, and associated with, ‘Maurice Burman and other well-​known race course fellows’.56 He further claimed to be a printer’s representative and working for Portsea Printing Works, near Hastings, which is likely given that he was offering protection to bookmakers under the guise of supplying them with race cards.57 He was clearly a serious multi-​tasker in crime activities related to the greyhound track. Of course, in the absence of clear evidence and the confusion of names, his precise activities cannot be fully verified. Octavio Sabini was the subject of a CID enquiry on 3 June 1940. An order for his arrest was made on 14 June and he was arrested on 16 July 1940, as an enemy alien, at Brighton and Hove greyhound stadium, and detained in Brixton Prison. He made an appeal against his arrest on 8 August 1940 and he was informed on 17 September 1940 that his case would be presented to an Appeal Committee. This Committee seems to have met on 3 December 1940, gathered information from a variety of sources, and eventually concluded that there was no case to answer and advised for his immediate release on 19 April 1941.58 Though cleared of being an alien his file is revealing about both his activities and his connections. W. C.  Hiller, the Chief Constable of Brighton and Hove, indicated his dubious past but suggested that he had not presented much of a problem whilst at Brighton. He wrote that: I have known Sabini for about 12 to 15  years and during that period he has obtained his living on Race Tracks, where he is a known character. His income has been derived from collecting money from Bookmakers, in return he supplies them with name cards, and gives them protection. He has also been involved in a Bookmakers’ stand at the Greyhound Stadium, Hove. He associated with persons of the racing type, many of who are of very doubtful character. Sabini and his brothers are persons who were at once time feared among the lower type of Bookmakers on the Hove and Dog racing tracks. Although he has been connected with the Greyhound Stadium here since 1928, the Police have had very little trouble with him.59

The gist of this is that he operated a protection racket against some of the small and less respectable bookmakers at Hove stadium but that there was comparatively little evidence of his nefarious activities. For most of the 1930s he seems to have operated from a penthouse suite in the Grand Hotel, Brighton, although he also resided at 16 Old Shoreham Road, Hove.60 At the peak of his power, Ottavio Sabini had extensive political connections, including judges, politicians and police officials, and it may be as a result of this that he escaped imprisonment for his gangland activities, although such suggestions are hard to prove. A  letter to the Home Office dated 14 October

157

Policing the tracks

157

1940 referred to ‘an MP enquiry about the man’s detention. He [Sabini] lodged objections two months ago and wanted a statement of reason’.61 That MP may have been Sir Alfred Cooper Rawson, MP for Brighton from 1922 to 1944, who certainly sent letters to the Appeal Committee on 28 November 1940 and 2 January 1941 on Sabini’s behalf, though possibly as the MP for one of his constituents rather than as a friend. Also, Sabini, in his appeal, asked about whether or not there had been a character reference lodged for him from Ex-​ Detective Superintendent M. Taylor, of ‘Burnham’, 50 Vale Avenue, Brighton, who duly obliged with a letter to the Appeal Committee stating that he and Sabini had known each other for twenty years and that ‘he [Sabini] would go a long way to avoid trouble’, emphasising that ‘he is loyal to his country’.62 Sabini’s wife also provided a character reference to his loyalty to the nation as did his brother Joseph Sabini.63 It is ironic that his arrest came not because of his obvious illegal protection activities but because of his parentage. It was the Second World War and the rise of Fascism in Italy threatened his impunity when arrested under Defence Regulation 18B. His file reveals that MI5 were intent upon arresting him, but in a letter in his file dated 1 February 1941, TreNsal Fox wrote that: Being somewhat doubtful of the case I rang up Mr. Emmet of MI5 who referred me to the letter which Sir Norman Kendall wrote to Mr. Hutchinson (copy within), in which he said the police pertained a view it would be convenient if Sabini and certain other ‘British subjects of Italian origin’ were detained for the duration of the war, MI5 have no further observations to make on the matter.64

That letter from Sir Norman Kendall had described Ottavio Sabini, or Frederick Handley, as: a drunkard and a man of most violent temper and, with a heavy following and strong command of brothers of Italian origin and other undesirable. He can be described as a dangerous gangster and a racketeer of the worst type and one whom it is, most likely [an] enemy agent would choose as a person to create and lead violent internal action against the country. On the other hand the part he played in the race gang feuds is not recent. His wife says that he has a good reputation with the local police. Just consult the Brighton police. F/​ON/​  12/​365

Though the papers included in the Home Office file are essentially about Sabini’s arrest and imprisonment as a dangerous alien, they offer important, if vague, glimpses of his character and his activities on the horse and greyhound tracks. They reveal his race gang activities, his drunkenness and the protection racket that he ran at the Brighton and Hove track, as noted in the letter of W. C.

158

158

Going to the dogs

Hiller, the Chief Constable of Brighton and Hove. They also reveal his activities at the Brighton and Hove track were relatively modest compared with gangland activities in London in the early 1920s. Indeed, the criticism of him is relatively mild and Hiller, in response to Home Office questions, was quite positive about him, in a slightly different manner to his earlier comments, when he wrote that ‘I know very little about Sabini other than his connections with racing and therefore I cannot say whether or not he is a man of honour, integrity and trustworthiness, or whether he is completely opposed to the British crown, but I have [not] received any complaint concerning him, regarding any matters relevant to the war’.66 Not surprisingly, there was an attempt to present Sabini as a loyal British subject. Whilst leading ‘a nefarious existence in the underworld of boxing and gambling’, one police report suggested that he did not seem to belong to any political organisation and ‘in fact for the purposes of Regulation 18B there does not seem to have ever been a very strong case against Sabini other than he was a low type person of Italian origins and was an unscrupulous “tough” who might do anything for money’.67 The Chief Constable of Brighton suggested that ‘he can now be managed with tact on the rare occasions when he is drunk, he is non-​political and not disloyal. The Latino is now non-​existent’.68 Ottavio, in his appeals for his release from Brixton prison, wrote two letters to the Alien Advisory Committee. The first suggested that his real name was Frederick Sabini whilst the second confirmed that he was born Ottavio Sabini. Combining his comments with those in the police and Home Office reports, he presented himself as a loyal patriotic subject. He had registered for military service in 1914, presumably under the Derby scheme where individuals attested their willingness to fight for King and Country, joined the East Sussex Regiment in 1918, enjoyed a pension of ten shillings per week from war injuries, and was associated with the regiment for five years and claimed that he later supplied darts boards and boxing gloves for them. Although he had an Italian father he could not speak Italian and had never been connected with Italy. At the beginning of the Second World War he tried to join the East Sussex battalion for Home Defence but was rejected on medical grounds. He had a son in the RAF and whilst in gaol had helped to raise £1,000 for the Spitfire Fund.69 According to his own letters and those of his friends, he had contributed £220–​0–​9 over six years to the Royal Sussex Hospital by organising boxing tournaments, and had given money to about a dozen hospitals, such as the Royal Free and St. Peter’s Royal National Orthopaedic West End.70 He admitted that he had some trouble with gangs on racecourses after the war, when he felt that whilst he and others were fighting the Germans the Jewish gangs had come in and taken the best pitches on horse racecourses but that was behind him and by 1937 he was often to be found operating as a tic-​tac man for Leslie Isaac on the Brighton and Hove greyhound track.71 The Home Office, despite the advice of MI5, concluded that there was no case and advised the need for his ‘immediate release’ in April 1941, and he returned

159

Policing the tracks

159

to his home in Brighton.72 However, in 1943, he was found guilty of receiving stolen goods and sentenced to three years in prison. Meanwhile, his only son was killed on active service for the RAF in Egypt. After the war his empire was taken over by the White family led by Alf White and subsequently by the organisations of Jack Spot (an early member of the Yiddishers) and Billy Hill, and he worked as a bookmaker. The other gang leader closely associated with the greyhound tracks was Alf White, known as ‘Big Alf ’. He was one of the chief figures in the London gangland scene and often worked in alliance with the Sabinis against the other London gangs. He continued to work with the Sabinis after Ottavio left for Brighton in 1926, although the relationship soon broke down. Like Ottavio, and unlike most of the other gangs, he worked not only the greyhound tracks but also became a shareholder in the Hackney Wick track in 1935. As indicated in ­chapter 1, the opening of Hackney Wick, in London in 1932, was a contentious affair. It would have been even more contentious had ‘Big Alf ’ been associated with it from the start. Like Ottavio, it is clear that there is comparatively police evidence of his activities but, given that Hackney Wick was a big track, capable of holding up to 50,000 people at various points in its existence, it is likely that his main interest would have been to control or prevent bookmakers operating on the track since his profit was now to be gained through the tote. The sum of this all is that there is little to suggest that greyhound racing was any more corrupt than horse racing or any other gambling sport. Indeed, horse racecourses seem to have had more gangs operating them than did greyhound tracks.73 However, it is clear that the shadowy and exotic Ottavio Sabini, and his gangland reputation, brought criticism on greyhound racing in the 1930s and early 1940s from political figures such as Cripps who saw boxing and greyhound racing, the two stock in trade activities of Sabini, as gambling activities which were undermining the war effort. Yet it is clear that the Sabini gang and Alf White were rarities and there appears to have been little of their modest scale operating the greyhound tracks throughout the rest of Britain. However, their presence endorsed the hostility of those who opposed greyhound racing. The reality is, as suggested by the Chief Constables (of Scotland) Association to the Willink Commission (1949–​51), that ‘dog racing caused no difficulty to the police, apart from the occasional unruly bookmaker’.74 It was not quite as simple as that but police activities were often mundane, focusing upon the granting of licences, the patrolling of the tracks and checking parking, and investigating minor malpractices, activities which were spiced up by the occasional riot. Policing the tracks From the beginning of greyhound racing, the police were present both outside the tracks, usually dealing with traffic issues, and inside the tracks, maintaining

160

160

Going to the dogs

the peace and discouraging criminality. This remained the situation throughout the history of greyhound racing up to the 1960s and beyond. When the police were employed inside the tracks they were paid ‘On Gratuity’, which means that the owners of the tracks paid for a police presence. There is ample evidence that the police were on the tracks from the evidence of their intervention in the ‘Tote crisis’ and the constant reporting back to the Home Office, though little direct evidence in terms of payments from surviving records. Nevertheless, in the provincial and outer London tracks the police were omnipresent. In contrast, there is considerable evidence of their withdrawal by the Metropolitan Police in the 1930s, and alarm at their absence with the occurrence of disturbances in the 1950s and the Harringay Riot of 24 June 1957. Between 1927 and 1931 the Met did supply police officers to greyhound tracks, ‘On Gratuity’, maintaining order at six of the major stadiums in their district: White City, Clapton, Harringay, Wimbledon, Wembley and Edmonton. However, when Wandsworth Stadium applied for similar cover in 1931 the Commissioner of the Met would not add it to the number of stadiums which his officers would attend. One Assistant Chief Commissioner (ACC) stated that ‘we have already as much of the duty as CID officers can cope with and this case can join the other tracks (Park Royal and Charlton)’, which had also been refused.75 Later on in the year the ACC added: ‘I think it is certain that we have already more than enough of the Special Duty. I cannot see why the work inside these tracks cannot be done by ex-​CID officers.’76 In 1932 the Commissioner gave a ruling that no more police were to be supplied for duty inside greyhound racing tracks.77 Therefore, applications from Stamford Bridge, New Cross, Catford, Crayford and Hackney Wick were accordingly refused, and they were advised to make their own arrangements. One can see why this was the case, in a situation where the 19,000 police of the Met, about a third of the police force of England and Wales, were faced with an enormous increase in their workload arising from the need for traffic policing and increasing detective duties during the inter-​war years. Table 6.2 indicates the enormous cost in manpower and man hours that the Met had to supply on the tracks, and which the greyhound stadiums had to pay for. In total 503 men were employed at the six London tracks, forty-​two being inspectors, 102 police sergeants and 359 police constables, although this was a listing of those attached to such duties for short periods of time and not a listing of those employed on a particular night. This was clearly a major burden on police resources but obviously was also a substantial cost for the large greyhound tracks. Faced with this enormous burden the Met discussed its continued policing of the greyhound tracks but it was decided that from 1 June 1934 that it would not police the tracks. The problem was the shortage of manpower but on appeal the White City and Harringay, two of the largest tracks, were allowed to continue the ‘On Gratuity’ arrangement.78 However, the demands on policing continued

161

Policing the tracks

161

Table 6.2  Commitment of Metropolitan police officers to London greyhound tracks Division

Greyhound track

Date of approval Authority

Total no. of men employed, 1 May 1932 Insp.

F

White City

J N

Clapton Harringay

W X

Wimbledon Wembley

Y

Edmonton

20 June 1927

CC of Dis** CID February 1928 CID September 1927 CID CID 19 May 1928 5 December 1928 CID 18 January 1931

14 14 14

PSer

PCs*

13 11

91 2 (CID) 18 (CID) 98 42

42 18 18

54 36 18

* Inspector, Police Sergeant and Police Constables ** Chief Constable of District *** CID Criminal Investigation Department Source: MEPOL 2/​3282, details amongst sheets of listings, bills and payments.

from other sports as well as dog meetings. Indeed, in May 1935 alone dog tracks (probably two meetings per week for four weeks after the restrictions imposed by the 1934 Betting Act –​for White City, Harringay and, exceptionally, Wembley), were attended by fourteen inspectors who worked forty-​two hours at a cost of £9 1s 0d, about four shillings per hour; 124 police sergeants who worked 382 hours at a cost of £72 6s 6d, about 3s 10d per hour; and that 337 police constables who worked 1,023 hours at a cost of £150 18s 0d, at just slightly over three shillings per hour. With other expenses of £3 19s 3d the total bill for policing the dogs came to £242 13s 3d in May 1935, suggesting a cost of about £2,800 or £2,900 per annum. Of this monthly cost the White City paid £56 16s 8d; Harringay £69 6s 0d, and Wembley £66 0s 5d.79 Interestingly, and based upon twenty-​four meetings in the month, this suggests that on average there were about sixteen police officers present at each of the two-​hour to two-​and-​a half-​hour greyhound meetings. In the same month, the Met bill was £491 5s 5d for horse racing, £80 0s 10d for the Rugby Cup Final, £34 0s 0d for an Arsenal football match, and £27 17s 10d for policing a Surrey County Cricket Club match. Greyhound racing clearly presented a substantial manpower burden upon the Met and in October 1935 Lord Trenchard, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, informed both the White City and Harringay that the arrangement would come to an end on 1 January 1936. Although the issue was really about manpower, the Commissioner justified his actions as being to avoid a conflict of interests:

162

162

Going to the dogs

The Betting and Lotteries Act 1934, provides for the control and regulation of Dog Tracks by the proprietors, and the police re under a statutory obligation to enforce the provision of the Act at such tracks. Instances, therefore, may arise where police may have to take action against those Dog Racing Authorities by whom they are employed, and it is now seems a favourable opportunity to inform the 6 tracks that in view of the duties devolving upon police under the new Act, the Commission will be unable to supply Police after, say, 1st January 1936.80

From that moment onwards the London tracks had to steward their own events, although there seems to have been occasional moments of police presence for major sporting events, such as the Greyhound Derby in line with the Met policy of continuing to police major sporting events. In general this worked well in London alongside the continuing police presence at the tracks in the provinces. There were occasional disturbances, and even riots, but they were very few and far between, although there were three documented incidents of crowd disorder at Harringay between 1938 and 1957. In 1938 speedway, at a greyhound track, was stopped due to an accident and a crowd of 2,000 people demanded their money back. When denied the crowd broke onto the track smashing and damaging parts of the stadium.81 In 1946, at a greyhound meeting, the crowds ran riot when a second-​placed dog was disqualified. The Manchester Guardian reported that the crowds ‘invaded the track and for over half an hour indulged in senseless destruction. They started bonfires which they fed with pieces of the hare tracks –​smashed electric lamps and arc lights, tore down telephone wires, and broke windows, wrecked the inside of the judge’s box, overturned the starting trap … They also attacked the tote office’.82 Finally, on 24 June 1957 another dog disqualification led to a further riot at a greyhound meeting. Similar disorder occurred and firemen turned up and turned their hoses on the crowd. The angry crowd dispersed but left a trail of destruction costing an estimated £4,725, around £150,000 at 2017 prices.83 The 1957 riot led the Home Office to question Trenchard’s decision to withdraw police presence in the 1930s, the feeling being that the provisions in the Lotteries and Betting Act of 1934 did not create a conflict of interests or affect the fact that officers could be posted there under the Special Service Agreement. It was felt that the Met should look at the situation again with a view to placing a common establishment of fifty-​eight Met police officers inside the seventeen London tracks which had two meetings each per week.84 By that time there were already sixty-​six officers engaged each week outside the seventeen London tracks controlling the traffic for the thirty-​four meetings held each week. In other words, in the wake of the Harringay riot there was going to be 124 officers assigned to working both inside and outside the tracks. Yet it is clear that this was more about precaution because serious disturbances were rare. Indeed, between 24 June 1957 and 12 August 1957 there had only been eight incidents calling for attention on

163

Policing the tracks

163

the seventeen London tracks and ‘none of these incidents were of a particularly serious nature’.85 By the 1950s, after a quarter of a century of greyhound racing, it was evident that that the police were barely interested in greyhound tracks as venues of serious crime. The Chief Constables’ Association of England and Wales felt that betting on all racecourses presented ‘no special trouble to the police’.86 Indeed, it suggested in its evidence to the Willink Commission (1949–​51) that: (Para 12) There are over 190 greyhound tracks in England and Wales outside the Metropolitan Police district, including 50 unlicensed tracks [though it is not clear what was meant by unlicensed in this instance]. In general, unlike the Metropolitan Police, the Provincial Forces do police these tracks when racing takes place, a service for which they are paid by the management. (Para 13)  Again, in general, the Police experience little trouble with regard to betting on licensed tracks, though, from time to time we are concerned with attempts at fraud by means of forged totalisator tickets while there is no doubt that many of these tracks are the resorts of thieves and undesirable characters.87

For its part the PGTCO evidence to the Willink Commission suggested that: ‘We know of no case where there has been friction between the police and the licenced greyhound racecourses’, which, by that time, meant all the NGRS and PGTCO tracks.88 The Chief Constables’ Association (Scotland) was similarly unconcerned: ‘Betting whether by bookmaking or totalisator, at organised racecourses or at licensed dog tracks causes no difficulty apart from the welching bookmaker. Management, as a rule, consult the police about the lay-​out of their facilities.’89 They felt, instead, that all operators of the tracks should not be involved in betting and were more concerned that all tracks should provide adequate parking accommodation. It was only the unlicensed temporary ‘tracks of eight days’ that seemed to pose a problem, and much of their focus seemed to be in the Lancashire Police District where ‘between 1 July 1947 and 30 June 1949, 365 greyhound race meetings of this type were held by thirty-​four promoters on fifty unlicensed tracks’.90 This good working relationship between the police and the tracks was confirmed by Percy Worth MBE, one-​time Detective Chief Inspector at New Scotland Yard and Senior Security Officer with the NGRS in 1949 when he wrote The Security Side of Greyhound Racing. Although recent comments on his book suggest that it was a whitewash of the situation underplaying the problems of drugs, kennel security and malpractice, the evidence of policing presented here tends to endorse his views.91 Worth emphasised that part of the reason for this good relationship between the police and the tracks and the improved security of the tracks was the fact that in 1939 all seventy-​seven NGRS tracks had an ex-​CID officer as their Security Officer. The police clearly trusted the tracks to

164

164

Going to the dogs

run their own affairs as far as possible and the tracks, in their turn, employed ex-​ detective police officers to head up their security. Malpractices and social evil: the distinction ‘between petty dishonesty and organised malpractice’ The Willink Commission (1949–​ 51) sought evidence of the extent of ‘malpractices and social evil’ on greyhound tracks and revealed, as the police felt, that whilst there was considerable dishonesty there was very little organised malpractice in greyhound racing. For its evidence it relied upon the sport itself to provide the information. The PGTCO, representing the flapping tracks which were considered as more likely to be prone to corrupting practices, offered convincing and full evidence that it had tightened up its rules and that little of an illegal nature was occurring. One of its surveys, responded to by sixty-​eight of its 119 tracks, indicated that whilst they had collectively held 7,452 meetings and 372,000 dog entries in one year there were only thirty-​eight recorded instances of malpractices. Broken down into categories, there were only twelve cases of unsatisfactory running, ten cases of substitution (seven before the race), two of attempted doping, and fourteen other cases of malpractice. Of the sixty-​eight tracks responding to the survey, twenty-​four had experienced instances of malpractice and forty-​four reported no malpractice.92 The PGTCO basked in the fact that there were only thirty-​eight cases on twenty-​four tracks, which translated into one case for every 3,000 dog entries.93 It also reported that in Scotland there had been 137,000 greyhound entries at its meetings and that there were only three or four cases of doping per year.94 The PGTCO was anxious to demonstrate that the flapping tracks had improved their security from the inter-​war years when they were considered to be improperly run and liable to malpractice and fraud. All of its Group 1 tracks, the largest ones, and all but 14 per cent of its Group 2, 3, and 4 tracks expected that the dogs would be at the track at a specified time, usually an hour before the first race, and they would normally be locked in race kennels, where kennels existed. Nearly all the PGCTO tracks also required a dog to run one or more trials before being accepted for a race, as occurred on NGRC tracks.95 Indeed, all its various affiliated organisations and federations required such rules. They may not have been as tight as the NGRS/​NGRC demanded but by the 1950s it is clear that the PGTCO had registration in place to stop greyhounds running at different tracks under different names, and better surveillance systems and checks to ensure that the dogs were properly graded. There was thus less chance of illegal interference to affect the performance of the dogs. Affiliated organisations such as the British Greyhound Federation, with nine tracks in Durham, and the Greyhound Association of Wales and the West of England sought uniformity in dogs running in their licensed names. However, the Licensed Greyhound

165

Policing the tracks

165

Racecourse Association, with nineteen tracks in Scotland, and the West Riding Federation, with eleven tracks, was not able to guarantee that all its tracks were uniform in this policy.96 The PGTCO often, as it did on this occasion, objected to the large number of ‘company greyhounds’, the lack of ‘open races’, and the fact that greyhound racing was an ‘insiders’ sport’ which was not truly open and competitive on the NGRS/​NGRC tracks, despite their claim to be more secure from the illegal tampering with the performance of racing greyhounds. It felt that the oligarchic control of the large greyhound tracks could itself lead to corruption and its views were strengthened by the fact that in 1946 a number of dogs at one of the London NGRS tracks were fed with fish chlorestine, an alcohol-​based sedative, to slow them down without showing physical symptoms. However, such PGTCO criticism was undermined by the fact that in 1950 the ‘Waggles’ substitution scandal, involving three brothers being put on trial at the Old Bailey for running greyhounds whelped in Ireland under false names in England, occurred at a flapping track.97 Despite improvements in dog registration the impression of shady dealing that surrounded greyhound racing continued. This concern applied to both the NGRS and the flapping tracks, although the latter were more open to such abuse because whilst all NGRS greyhounds were registered in 1951 only 91 per cent of greyhounds running on PGTCO tracks were registered.98 Yet such scandal became increasingly rare and police evidence tended to concur that malpractices on the tracks were, indeed, few and far between, a view expressed by the Chief Constables’ Association (Scotland) as early in 1950.99 In the final analysis, the PGTCO seems to have been driven by its stated view that: ‘The racing public are extremely shrewd and are not prepared to attend a racecourse where they are not getting a fair run for their money. The racecourse proprietors may, like the bookmakers, be said to be honest by profession.’100 From 1972, when the NGRS tracks and the PGTCO flapping tracks had joined together under the new NGRC in an attempt to unify the sport, there was increased placed upon emphasising that the tracks had dealt with the many malpractices that could not easily be detected by conventional policing and basic on-​track security measures. In 1976, the NGRC evidence to the Rothschild Commission revealed that between 1 July 1965 and 31 December 1975, there had been 923,281 test samples taken on greyhounds to test that they had not been administered drugs to affect their racing performance. Of these, only 1,034 were found to be positive, many as a result of veterinary treatment. To the newly reformed and extended NGRC, this was proof positive that its measures were effective and of the great importance of the role of the NGRC track Security Officer in co-​ordinating the activities on the tracks to prevent the dogs being drugged before a race, all of whom were all ex-​CID officers on NGRS tracks.101 Low level attempts to influence the outcome of dog races could not, and cannot, ever be entirely ruled out and rumours of petty malpractice still

166

Going to the dogs

166

abounded in the late twentieth century and at the beginning of the twenty-​ first century. Recently, one person, whose family owned greyhounds which they trained and took to flapping tracks, suggested that dogs could be tampered with by the use of various sedatives, often legally used to sedate dogs, to quieten dogs in their kennels, and to act as a painkiller. They might have a meal before a race or be slipped some liver to eat. Kennel maids might tamper with the dogs and masturbate them before a race. However, the formal evidence of such activities is limited, although it has clearly occurred.102 Brian Belton, writing about the Customs House stadium at West Ham, has also noted that doping and ringing of dogs did go on at West Ham and other London tracks but was becoming increasingly rare as chromatography on the racecourses to test dog urine for dope was introduced, the weighing of dogs before a race was begun, and as identity books more or less eliminated ‘ringing’, the running of an almost identical dog in the place of another.103 Conclusion Most aspects of human life, and in particular sport, have faced the problem of criminal activity and shady malpractice and greyhound racing came in for more than its fair proportion of criticism in this direction from the moment it emerged. The demand that action should be taken to deal with the criminality in greyhound racing was very much driven by the moral imperative of the anti-​gambling groups, religious organisations, the NAGL and MPs such as John Buchan and Winston Churchill. It was they who rejected greyhound racing as a rational recreation. It was they who pressured the Home Office to get police chief constables to conduct surveys of greyhound tracks in order to measure the level of criminality that was occurring. The first police surveys, in the late 1920s and early 1930s, may not have been as searching as they became later but police report after police report suggested that there was a relatively low level of criminality on greyhound tracks and certainly nothing out of the ordinary. As the 1930s progressed the police became increasingly aware of the hidden malpractices of the greyhound track. They soon realised that the medium-​sized and smaller-​sized tracks, that kept their own dogs or allowed other dogs to come in for the day, might not properly grade their dogs in trials before races or might have the names of their dogs changed as they moved between tracks to help dupe the punter. Police activities increased further as they began to enforce the restrictions on tote gambling between December 1932 and early 1934 and the development of the ‘human tote’. Equally, they could not easily ignore the presence of criminal gangs. The notorious Sabini brothers added a certain, unwelcome and unusual, piquancy to the criminality of the dog tracks. However, the Sabinis and Alf White and their gang activites were rarities on the greyhound tracks. There were occasional riots, but they were few

167

Policing the tracks

167

and far between, and police presence at greyhound race meetings was often minimal, confined largely to watching the track and controlling traffic. This minimalist approach of the police was partly facilitated by the responsiveness of the track authorities themselves. The NGRS/​NGRC tracks developed a strict process of registering greyhounds almost from the start of greyhound racing and the smaller provincial and London ‘flapping tracks’ had developed their own system of registering greyhounds through the PGTCO in the late 1940s. Self-​ regulation of this type kept the substitution of greyhounds to a minimum and helped to ensure a confidence in greyhound racing which the NGRS/​NGRC had denied existed in the 1930s when they were attempting to drive them out of existence. The tightening up on trialling the dogs and kennelling them before races all brought about a greater confidence in the legitimacy of the racing. The abiding impression one gains is of an exaggerated amount of criticism being levelled at greyhound tracks as dens of iniquity. On the whole greyhound racing experienced a relatively low level of petty dishonesty and crime, which was probably little different to that experienced on the horse tracks, and that may be partly why the Metropolitan Police were quick to abandon the policing of the tracks in the mid-​1930s to meet the more pressing demands on their time and resources. Indeed, on the whole, the police were more concerned about doing their duty by maintaining order and protecting property than in persecuting greyhound racing. They did this relatively impartially rather than in response to the opponents of greyhound racing and gambling, in what has been referred to as the ‘policeman-​state’ by V. A. C. Gatrell, in which order is maintained by the police acting as the ‘impersonal agents of central authority’ developing their own bureaucratic structure distinct from the influence of pressure groups and doing what was deemed necessary.104 In the case of greyhound racing the police did what was necessary with a light touch, almost oblivious of the anti-​gambling pressure groups that castigated the sport who were frustrated by relaxed attitude of the police who attempted to operate by consent. The relationship between the public, the anti-​gambling organisations, the bettor and the tracks was nuanced and often contradictory. The evidence suggests that the relations between the police and the betting public on the tracks could be strained but was shaped as much by the pragmatism of both the police and the policed. Both needed to find a modus vivendi, a common ground of contested activities on contested sites. Greyhound racing was both popular and unpopular amongst the working classes just as anti-​gambling laws were not universally supported by ordinary policemen. The relationship between the police and the policed in regard to the greyhound tracks was refracted through class and religion, and the operational approach was often minimalist.105 The Chief Constables’ Association of England and Wales was apposite in 1950 when it concluded that the police ‘experiences little trouble with regard to betting on licenced tracks, whilst there is no doubt that many tracks are the resort of thieves and undesirable characters’.106

168

Going to the dogs

168

This did not stop critics such as Sir Stafford Cripps identifying greyhound racing and boxing as responsible for undermining wartime production in 1941 and 1942. Such views had driven the scrutiny of the tracks during the inter-​ war years. However, in reality, the police quickly realised that there was comparatively little to worry about and generally preferred to allow the tracks to run their own affairs and were happy to police by consent, meaning that the tracks and the customers knew the parameters they were operating within and the security measures they needed to apply. In the end, greyhound tracks did not pose a particular problem for the police, who developed a dynamic which worked to meet both the needs of the tracks and the operational demands of policing. Greyhound racing may not have been seen as a rational recreation for some but it was certainly not the hotbed of vice that it was often portrayed as being. Notes 1 HO 45/​14222, Part  1, 499163/​7, Chief Constable to the Home Secretary, 24 November 1926. 2 HO 45/​15850, in response to the Home Office circular 662,704/​23, of 5 January 1934, seeking information on dubious and illegal practices on greyhound tracks. 3 Keith Laybourn and David Taylor, Policing in England and Wales, 1918–​1939: The Fed, Flying Squads and Forensics (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. 4–​6, 8, 16, 21, 23. 4 HO 45/​14222, Part 1, 449163, a letter from the Evangelical Free Church National Council to Mr Nightingale, dated 7 October 1926. 5 HO 45/​14222, Part 1, 499163, 11, 13. There are two letters, one dated 25 July 1927 and the other 26 July 1927. 6 HO 45/​14222, Part 1, 499163/​11. Lt. Col. Sir Walter Gibbons (14 May 1871 to 22 October 1933) was a wealthy man who became a founder member of the Automobile Association in 1905, latterly becoming its Vice-​Chairman, was involved in the Home Department during the Great War and attached to the Scots Guards, responsible for transport during the war and involved in working with other allied nations to ensure that about 300 ambulances were sent to the Front. He was deeply involved in charitable activities which might explain why he was concerned about gambling. 7 HO 45/​14222, Part 1, 499163/​2. 8 Ibid., 499163/​11. 9 Ibid., 499167/​7, a file named ‘Greyhound racing: information to be gained from the Police and its effects’. 10 HO 45/​14333, 499167/​174, a Draft Memorandum on Mr Buchan’s Local Option Dog Racing Bill. 11 Ibid. 12 HO 45/​14709/​512758/​3. 13 Ibid., 21.

169

Policing the tracks

169

14 Laybourn and Taylor, Policing in England and Wales, 1918–​1939; Keith Laybourn with David Taylor, The Battle of the Roads of Britain: Police, Motorists and the Law c. 1890s to 1970s (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). 15 HO 45/​14709/​512788. 16 HO 45/​15266 contains an eight-​page statement from the NGRS to the Home Secretary reflecting upon the reports of Chief Constables reporting widely upon the lack of disorder and drunkenness at NGRS, and indeed all, greyhound tracks. 17 HO 45/​14709/​512758/​28, letter from Hackney Town Council and the Metropolitan County Council, 12 January 1932. 18 HO 45/​14709/​659060, letter from W.  Ormsby-​Gore to the Home Secretary, 25 November 1933. 19 HO 45/​6279/​650920/​1, and sub-​file 69020/​5, discussion on the A, B and C plans, the first two of which led to the circular informing the illegality of the dog tote and the tote clubs, and the need to report upon those operating illegally. 20 HO 45/​6279/​ 650920/​1. 21 Ibid., written on the outer cardboard cover of the file. John Maxwell, Chief Constable of Manchester, provided two sheets of information on the prosecutions of the Manchester Sporting and Social Club and The Paramount Club. 22 HO 45/​14709/​659060, evidence of the Automatic Electric Company Ltd ‘Safeguard Against Fraud in an All-​Electric Totalisator’. 23 Ibid., letter on the Premier Jubilee totalisator. 24 HO 45/​14709/​659620/​4 contains material on the situation in Preston, where the attendances fell off as a result of the loss of the tote, HO 45/​14709/​659620/​28, contains details on the events in Streatham and also on the situation in Scotland. HO 45/​16279 provides evidence from J. Taylor, Inspector, of his visit to Gosforth Stadium where he saw Mr Freer operate the ‘human tote’ in Gosforth Stadium alongside 40–​50 bookies. It also provides files on the continuance of the ‘human tote’ in Scotland. 25 HO 45/​16279/​659020/​16, for the report and letters about the report. 26 Ibid., a memorandum from the Chief Constable of Liverpool, 16 March 1933. 27 HO 45/​16279/​659020. 28 Ibid. 29 Ibid. 30 Ibid., letter from Alfred Armstrong Leng, 15 February 1934. 31 HO 45/​15850/​662704/​29 for Buckinghamshire and 662794/​30 and 34 for Bradford. 32 The Truth (Glasgow), 19 July1933. 33 HO 45/​16279/​659020/​36. 34 HO 45/​15850, Home Office circular 662,704/​23, of 5 January 1934, seeking information on dubious and illegal practices on greyhound tracks. 35 Ibid., in response to the Home Office circular 662,704/​23. 36 Ibid.; also HO 45/​14222, Part 1, 499163/​80 which has returns from the Lancashire Police indicating few problems or lack of information, and from the Chief Constable of Cardiff referring to the Barry and Llanelly tracks, and to Cardiff where a Jewish syndicate operated.

170

170

Going to the dogs

3 7 HO 45/​15850, letter of the Chief Constable of Buckinghamshire, 15 January 1934. 38 Ibid., letter of the Chief Constable of Cambridgeshire, 27 January 1934. 39 Ibid., letter of the Chief Constable of Carmarthenshire, 24 January 1934. 40 Ibid., letter of the Chief Constable of Derby, not dated but in response to the 5 January 1934 circular. 41 HO 45/​15850. 42 HO 45/​15850, and HO 45/​15850/​662704/​23 for Halifax. 43 HO 45/​15850, files 662704/​9, 662704/​18, 662704/​21. 44 James Morton and Gerry Parker, Gangland Bosses (London:  Time Warner, 2005); and The Times, 16 January 1923, ‘Clerkenwell Shooting Charge: Italians on Trial’, The Times, 11 June 1926, ‘D. Sabini’s Bankruptcy: A Dismissed Libel Action’, Fergus Linnane, London Underworld (London: Robson Books, 2004), p. 1240; Guardian, 20 July 2002, ‘In Praise of Brighton Rock’. 45 Brian MacDonald, Gangs of London (London:  Milo, 2010), contains a chapter devoted to the Sabini family. 46 HO 45/​ 23691/​ 840792/​ 3, letter to the Home Office from Joseph Sabini, 27 February 1941. 47 Most of this material can be found in HO 45/​23691/​640792/​3 which contains a memorandum signed TreNsal Fox 1/​2/​41, a letter from the Brighton Police dated 28 March 1941, and one from Ted Broadribb dated 19 February 1941. This file also includes the file of Sabini to the Alien Advisory Committee. 48 HO 45/​23691, a letter to the Home Office from Ted Broadribb, in an MI5 Report. 49 Ibid., CID report. 50 Ibid., a communication from the Metropolitan Police, 26 June 1941. Also, a letter from W. C. Hiller, Chief Constable of Brighton and Hove, 20 April 1940. 51 Carl Chinn, The Real Peaky Blinders, Billy Kimber, the Birmingham Gang and the Racecourse Wars of the 1920s (Birmingham: Brewin Books, 2014). 52 CRO 16516/​24. 53 HO 45/​23691, file on the Ottavio Sabini. 54 Ibid. 55 Ibid., a twelve-​page Home Office Report on Ottavio Sabini, containing a photo of him. 56 Ibid., a police report, probably from Brighton, dated 8 April 1941. 57 Ibid., letter of Frederick Sabini, the first letter before he claimed that his real name was Ottavio, to the Alien Advisory Committee. 58 HO 45/​23691/​840792/​2. 59 HO 45/​23691, letter of W.  C. Hiller, Chief Constable of Brighton and Hove, 20 April 1941. 60 Ibid., letter of Joseph Sabini, 22 February 1941, and in other papers in this file. 61 HO 45/​23691/​840792, letter of 14 October 1940. 62 HO 45/​23691, file on Sabini. 63 Ibid., file on Sabini, and letter of Joseph Sabini, 22 February 1941. 64 Ibid., statement of TreNsal Fox, 1 February 1941. 65 Ibid., letter of Sir Norman Kendal to Mt. Hutchinson, dated 9 July 1940. 66 Ibid., letter of the Chief Constable of Brighton and Hove, 20 April 1940.

171

Policing the tracks

171

6 7 Ibid., statement at the beginning of the file. 68 Ibid., comments contained in a report from the Brighton police dated 28 March 1941. 69 Ibid., Memorandum and letters of Ottavio Sabini to the Alien Advisory Board and the Police Report, probably from Brighton, dated 8 April 1941. 70 Ibid., letter of Ted Broadribb, who had known him since 1910 and trained him as a boxer, dated 10 February 1941. 71 Ibid., note 840792, letter 17 September 1940. 72 Ibid., note 840792, dated 19 April 1941. 73 Vamplew, The Turf. 74 HO 335/​30. 75 MEPOL 2/​3282, draft letter from J. Downie, New Scotland Yard, to the six stadiums of White City, Clapton, Harringay, Wimbledon, Wembley, Edmonton. No date is given for what would have be a letter written in 1931. 76 Ibid. 77 Ibid., in document 26/​RAIDOR/​964. 78 Ibid., scattered amongst a number of short reports and statements. 79 Ibid., drawn from twenty-​three costing sheets for May 1935. 80 Ibid., the precise wording is in a copy of a statement by J. Downie, but the gist of the statement is also presented in a letter from C. R. D. Pulling of the Met to Lt. Col. Horace Webber, of the Greyhound Racing Association, 3 October 1935. 81 Manchester Guardian, 15 May 1938. 82 Manchester Guardian, 23 July 1946. 83 Manchester Guardian, 25 June 1957. 84 HO 287/​138/​Pol 485/​1/​8 Employment of Police memorandum 15 August 1957; letter from the Commissioner, 12 August 1957; letter from T. Fitzgerald to the Home Secretary, 28 August 1957. 85 HO 287/​138, letter from Commissioner, 12 August 1957. 86 HO 335/​29 Chief Constables Association of England and Wales, memorandum submitted to the Royal Commission on Betting, Lotteries and Gaming (1949–​51), p. 2. 87 Ibid. 88 HO 335/​87. 89 HO 335/​30, Chief Constables’ Association (Scotland), Memorandum and evidence to the Royal Commission on Betting, Lotteries and Gaming. 90 HO 335/​29, paras 14 and 16, pp. 2–​3. 91 Greyhound Star, 5 November 2016 (online). 92 HO 45/​14222, Part 1, Submission of the Provincial Greyhound Tracks Central Office (PGTCO) to the Royal Commission on Betting, Lotteries and Gaming (1949–​51), p. 22, para. 70. 93 Ibid., p. 22, para.70. 94 Ibid. 95 Ibid., p. 23, paras 74 and 75. 96 Ibid., contains a variety of letters and memorandum from the listed organisations. 97 Greyhound Owner and Breeder, 3 May 1950; Clapson, A Bit of a Flutter, p. 157. 98 HO 45/​14222, Part 1, Submission of the Provincial Greyhound Tracks Central Office to the Royal Commission on Betting, Lotteries and Gaming (1949–​51), p. 23, para. 76.

172

172

Going to the dogs

99 HO 335/​ 30, Memorandum submitted by the Chief Constables’ (Scotland) Association, to the Royal Commission on Betting, Lotteries and Gaming (1949–​51). 100 HO 335/​87, Submission of the Provincial Greyhound Tracks Central Office to the Royal Commission on Betting, Lotteries and Gaming (1949–​51), p. 22, para. 68. 101 BS3/​26, Memorandum and Evidence to the Royal Commission on Gambling (Rothschild, 1976–​78), p. 97. 102 Gillian Tolley, a mature student at the University of Huddersfield in a casual conversation in 2016. 103 Belton, When West Ham went to the Dogs, pp. 45–​6. 104 V. A. C. Gatrell, ‘Crime, Prevention and the Policeman-​State’, in F. M. L. Thompson (ed.), The Cambridge Social History of Britain 1750–​1990 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 243–​310, particularly p. 260. 105 R. Reiner, The Politics of the Police, 4th edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). Reiner identifies policies crucial for creating policing by consent including organisational issues (bureaucratisation, accountability), operation tactics (preventive policing, minimal force), image (impartiality, rule of law) and impact (crime fighting, service role); R. Reiner, ‘The Organisation and Accountability of the Police’, in M. McConville and C. Wilson (eds), Handbook of Criminal Justice Process (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). 106 HO 335/​229, Chief Constables’ Association of England and Wales memorandum to the Royal Commission on Betting, Lotteries and Gaming (1949–​51).

173

7

The decline of greyhound racing in Britain, 1961–​2017

A new greyhound stadium was opened at Towcester on 6 December 2014 at a cost of £1.8  million, the first new track in Britain since 1995.1 In 2016 it was announced that Abbey Meads Stadium (Blunden), Swindon, was to be built and opened in 2017. It cost about £5 million and replaced the existing stadium which opened in 1949.2 Such good news for greyhound racing belies the fact that the sport has declined sharply and changed considerably in Britain since the late 1940s. As already indicted, since 1926 there have been 399 different companies operating greyhound racing tracks in Britain, 143 licensed tracks under the NGRS and its subsequent organisations (126 in England, twelve in Scotland and five in Wales), and 256 independent tracks. However, there have rarely been more than about 220 licensed companies and about 210 tracks operating at any one moment. This number had fallen to twenty-​five Greyhound Board of Great Britain (GBGB) tracks in 2010 (the GBGB having taken over from the National Greyhound Racing Club and the British Greyhound Racing Board in 2009). The number of GBGB tracks fell further to twenty in 2016, although the number of tracks has fluctuated as a few tracks have been opened or closed from year to year. When Wimbledon closed in March 2017 there were only twenty-​four GBGB tracks remaining in Britain, some of them now run directly, or indirectly, by the large betting organisations, built into serving the growth of off-​course gambling.3 There are also seven tracks run by independent owners and still known as ‘flapping’ tracks.4 The annual attendances of thirty-​two to forty million of the 1930s and 1940s had fallen to 3.2 million in 2007 (5,570 meetings at twenty-​six GBGB registered tracks with a turnover of £75,100,000), to about three million in 2013, and is now hovering around two million. The last figure will be slightly higher if the small attendances at the small ‘flapping tracks’ are added. What had happened? Why has greyhound racing declined so rapidly from its halcyon days of the inter-​war years?5 It is clear that taxation, the development of off-​course betting, the rising importance of the large bookmakers, the rising concerns about the cruelty of greyhound racing, and growing competition from other forms of gambling all played a part.

174

Going to the dogs

174

The closure of the tracks: global cruelty and off-​course betting From the late 1940s track closures have been numerous and constant, as indicted in Table 7.1, and the names of them include many that were well frequented, seemed robust and were almost iconic. Brian Belton has suggested that from the early 1950s there were fears for the future of the famous Custom House track in West Ham but it lingered on until ‘in December 1971 the owners of Custom House stadium, the GRA (who had taken the stadium over in 1967) made it known that the stadium had been sold to a property developer for £475,000’.6 The Stratford Express, in early May 1972, reported that ‘West Ham Stadium, the Mecca of greyhound and speedway racing in the East End for almost fifty years is to close this month’. It added that ‘the site, which has the largest racing circuit in Britain, is to be used in a redevelopment scheme for 395 houses’.7 Many tracks closed or were closing in the 1970s, even as legislation in 1971 allowed them more meetings. The alarm for the supporters of greyhounds racing has increased markedly since then and particularly in the early twenty-​ first century when other tracks were closed. Walthamstow Stadium, ‘The Stow’, opened by William Chandler in 1933 and run by the Chandler family, finally closed on 16 August 2008.8 An iconic stadium, famed for its Art Deco frontage with the pink-​red glow of the words WALTHAMSTOW STADIUM, and its earthy urban glamour, its demise was seen as a bitter blow to greyhound racing. Portsmouth Stadium, at Target Road, opened in 1930, held its last meeting on 23 March 2010, after having been sold to the Tipner Regeneration Company and South East of England Development Agency.9 Oxford Stadium, ‘Sandy Lane’, which opened on 31 March 1939, ceased trading for greyhound racing on 29 December 2012; speedway had already ended there in 2008. The Greyhound Racing Association had been refused the right to build 220 homes on the stadium and the Council intervened to list the stadium as a conservation area. The stadium is now a go-​kart track. The Brandon Stadium, Coventry, the home of Table 7.1  Greyhound meetings, attendances and tracks, 1948–​75 Year 1948 1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975

Meetings 6,930 7,327 7,292 6,789 6,003 5,585 5,874

Average attendance per meeting

Greyhound tracks

3,651 3,071 2,455 2,254 1,866 1,325 1,055

209 200 192 188 164 140 107

Source: BS 2/​36, Memorandum of the British Greyhound Racing Federation and the NGRC, Appendix B, evidence presented to the Royal Commission on Gambling (1976).

175

The decline of greyhound racing, 1961–2017

175

greyhound racing and the Coventry Bees motorcycle speedway team and Stock Car racing, closed on 16 January 2014.10 This led to fifty redundancies on the track, the rehousing of 200 greyhounds, and a loss of racing opportunities for thirty local greyhound trainers. Wimbledon, the only remaining track within London and for many years the home to the Greyhound Derby, the biggest race in the British greyhound calendar, closed on 25 March 2017.11 Finally, the Hall Green Stadium, in Birmingham, closed on Saturday 29 July 2017, after operating for ninety years. The fate of greyhound racing in Britain is particularly mirrored in the closure of Wimbledon Stadium. Opened in 1928 by the ‘Cockney millionaire’ William Cearns it once attracted crowds of well over 10,000. It was a vibrant part of the community of Tooting. However, in 2017 it was owned by Risk Capital Partners, a private equity firm run by the former TV Channel 4 chairman Luke Johnson, which bought the then Greyhound Racing Association and its six dogs tracks in 2005. Now, with Wimbledon, once also the home speedway and stock-​car racing, three of these tracks have now been closed. Risk Capital offered Merton Council, the planning authority, the pledge to build a 10,000-​capacity football stadium alongside housing and a retail park and closed the track. Wimbledon track closed with about 2,000 people in attendance eating their three-​course meals in the Grandstand restaurant or drinking pints under the terraces in a stadium three-​ quarters shuttered in darkness, watching a dozen races which included eight ‘open’ races attracting dogs of the highest quality. The sense of community which once attracted bettors was gone and ‘there was little more than a flicker of regret amongst its regulars, diners, families and stag party revellers who attended its dying rites’.12 Like other stadiums, owned increasingly by the large bookmakers who put up the prize money and stream the action live into their betting shops, where the real money is, Wimbledon has served the immediate needs of gambling but in the end lost out to the more lucrative activity of property development, a consequence of the declining returns from greyhound racing. In seeking explanations for the decline of British greyhound racing it is impossible not to link it with the recent global decline in the sport resulting from the perceived cruelties of greyhound racing. Dog racing has dwindled in the United States and Australia. In the United States, as a result of the concern about cruelty to greyhounds, forty states have banned greyhound racing and five do not operate it though it is not illegal to do so. Only Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Iowa and West Virginia operate tracks, although Texas is moving towards legalising greyhound tracks again. Until recently there were twenty-​six tracks in the United States, twenty of them in Florida, but by 2016 this figure had fallen to eighteen tracks, twelve of them in Florida. In 2016 there were seventy-​nine tracks in Australia but in New South Wales thirty-​two were to be closed on 1 January 2017 as a result of an investigation into animal cruelty, live baiting and the fact that many, perhaps thousands of, retired and injured dogs have been put down. This decision was

176

176

Going to the dogs

reversed on 11 October 2016 with the proviso that conditions be improved and the issue of cruelty tackled. The picture is not entirely bleak and, although similar problems have arisen in other countries, greyhound racing seems to be surviving reasonably well in Ireland, New Zealand and South Africa.13 As abroad, recent greyhound racing scandals in Britain have also damaged the sport. On 16 July 2006 D. Foggo wrote an article in The Times on the ‘Killing field of the dog racing industry’, which reported upon the legal killing of greyhounds, referring to a case in Seaham, in the North East. On 4 August 2006, following up this story, the Sunderland Echo reported on a Sunderland man, Dave Smith, who was killing thousands of dogs, ten at a time, according to a dog warden, which had been dumped after their racing careers had finished. He was apparently not doing anything illegal but it was claimed that the corpses of 10,000 dogs had been buried at his Northdene Avenue home, in Seaham, County Durham. In May 2008 the Sunday Times revealed that the largest greyhound breeder in Britain, Charles Pickering, was selling puppies which had not raced or proved to be too slow to Liverpool University for research and dissection.14 The university apparently used sixty-​two dogs –​six provided by their owners and forty-​four destroyed by Belle Vue Track (essentially for their cadavers) –​thirty-​nine of the dogs having sustained minor racing injuries and being regarded as uneconomic. In 2015 about 500 dogs were abandoned across East Durham and council chiefs have put together a scheme to ensure good ownership. Apparently, a further four greyhounds –​Happy Hawk, Liam Maldini, Blue Fern and Balreask Touch –​had been ‘raced to death’ at Belle Vue Track, in Manchester, all within the space of two weeks. It is also estimated that 1,500 greyhounds get injured on British tracks, leading to them being destroyed. Betty Blackmore, of the RSPCA, stated:  ‘This sorry state of affairs cannot continue. Dogs are being chewed up and spat out of an industry which ultimately treats greyhounds as disposable commodities, rather than sentimental animals for which it is responsible.’15 The Associate Parliamentary Group for Animal Welfare, funded by the RSPCA and the British Racing Greyhound Fund, produced a report on The Welfare of Greyhounds in May 2007, suggesting that around 13,500 dogs from regulated tracks and about 1,500 from independent tracks were surplus to requirements each year and were being put down.16 Much of this damning evidence is distilled in a document produced by The League Against Cruel Sports entitled The State of Greyhound Racing in Great Britain: A Mandate for Change. Published in 2014, it indicated further the vast scale of the destruction of greyhounds and their widespread use in scientific experiments in universities.17 It called for the control of breeding of Irish and British greyhounds, accurate checks on the number of dogs being bred, registered and run, and proper health controls and kennelling. Above all, it argued that the self-​regulation of greyhound racing was not working. The GBGB has responded to this with the GBGB Greyhound Commitment, an operational charter for running the sport, which offers an eight-​point statement

177

The decline of greyhound racing, 1961–2017

177

for ensuring the welfare and safety of greyhounds, ensuring that greyhound injuries are reduced further from their low level and ensuring that greyhounds have a happy retirement. In other words it has accepted a ‘duty of care’, with the Chief Executive of the GBGB, Mark Bird, stating in 2018 that ‘animal welfare is at the heart of greyhound racing’ and that ‘the Greyhound Commitment sets out its intent that every greyhound that can be homed when it retires is successfully homed’.18 It also suggests the introduction of accredited professional training for the 7,000 people working in the sport. The full GBGB Greyhound Commitment runs as follows: 1 . Greyhound welfare and safety is at the heart of everything we do. 2. Every racing greyhound is treated with care and respect throughout its career. 3. Our independently verified injury rates remain the lowest in the world and will improve further still. 4. Wherever possible every dog leaving racing enjoys a long and happy retirement. 5. Every race is run fairly, safely and that attending a race meeting is an enjoyable and fun experience for all involved. 6. Those working in the sport have access to training at the beginning of their careers, ongoing accredited professional development. 7. Funding received from the betting industry significantly contributes to greyhound racing. 8. Together, we continue to promote our sport and nurture the public’s love of greyhounds. In 2017 the official injury rate for 400,000 runners in greyhound races was 1.15 per cent and although 86 per cent of retired greyhounds were successfully homed 348 could not be homed and were put down. There is clearly some way to go to tackle the issue of greyhound welfare. Yet whilst cruelty towards greyhounds has been uppermost in recent debates about the future of greyhound racing in Britain the fact is that its decline began in the late 1940s, not the late twentieth and early twenty-​first centuries, and certainly not just because of the recent scandalous revelations. Indeed, in Britain, the politics of the decline of greyhound racing has proved no less controversial than the politics of its growth and there seem to have been three major factors leading to decline. One has been the discriminatory tax regime that operated against greyhound tracks from the 1940s until the 1970s which put them at a financial disadvantage compared with horse racing and other gambling pursuits. By the time this issue was resolved in the 1970s greyhound racing was already in steep decline. The second major factor has been the increasing development of off-​track betting facilities which had made betting at greyhound tracks unnecessary for the majority of bettors and put the surviving tracks in the hands of the national bookmakers and the television companies. Third, and more generally,

178

Going to the dogs

178

there has been the rising competition from other gambling sports and leisure activities that has occurred since the 1950s, including the National Lottery and scratchcards. The first of these challenges, the continued policy of discriminating against the dubious, non-​rational, sport of greyhound racing in the 1920s and 1930s was demonstrated most forcefully by the discriminatory taxations imposed upon it by a Labour government in the late 1940s. As outlined in ­chapter 2, and despite academic articles which have denied discrimination, there was a furious reaction from the greyhound racing fraternity to what was seen as the discriminatory attack upon working-​class gambling resulting from the imposition of a 10 per cent Tote Pool Duty in 1948, alongside a tax on the bookmakers through a licensing system (see Appendix 7 and Appendix 8).19 To some it was seen as an attack upon working-​class leisure activities. Despite the regular annual round of pressure from greyhound organisations being applied at Budget time for the Chancellor of the Exchequer to reduce the Tote Pool Duty, it was actually raised to 11 per cent in 1962–​63 before being restored to 10 per cent. The Labour government of Harold Wilson reduced it to 5 per cent in 1964 and to 2.6 per cent between 1966 and 1968, before raising it back to 5 per cent (see Table 7.2). It was not until 1972, under the Edward Heath Conservative government, that it was reduced to 4 per cent at a time when the NGRS and the new NGRC was pressuring for the tax to be imposed on off-​track bookies as well. The industry declined rapidly, and the NGRS and NGRC looked to finding new ways of gaining income for greyhound racing to offset the income loss resulting from taxation. However, frustrated in these overtures, the NGRS sponsored a successful private members Tote Bill in 1969 to allow the track tote draw-​back to rise from the 6 per cent, set in 1934, to 12.5 per cent, though it was observed that after it was introduced ‘many tracks only make a 10 per cent Table 7.2  Greyhound Pool Betting Duty on the Tote, 1948–​76 Years

Level of Taxation %

1948–​62 1962–​63 1963–​64 1964–​66 1966–​68 1968–​72 1972–​76

10 11 10 5 2.5 per cent General Betting Duty 5 per cent General Betting Duty 4 per cent General Betting Duty

Source: BS 3/​26 Royal Commission on Gambling (Rothschild Commission), appointed February 1976 and reporting in 1978, evidence by the National Greyhound Racing Club, p. 49 of a 100-​page document submitted as evidence on 25 June 1976.

179

The decline of greyhound racing, 1961–2017

179

reduction’.20 In 1971, Edward Heath’s Conservative government decided to further amend the Betting and Lotteries Act of 1934 with the Dog Betting Act of 1971 (incorporating another act in 1963)  and to allow tracks to hold 130 meetings per year, rather than the two per week previously permitted, and also allowed tracks to fix their own days for racing, with the exception of Good Friday and Sundays.21 This offered a lifeline to greyhound racing but was too little too late for many tracks. Following the government’s relaxation of the rules, a Home Office official wrote on 9 February 1972 that: ‘This has given the tracks a further source of income. They cannot complain that they have not received favourable conditions and it should be borne in mind that the overheads for dog racing are fractional compared with those of horse racing.’22 This was disingenuous given that horse racing was never saddled with the type of taxation that greyhound racing faced from the 1940s, nor subject to the same controls on the owners’ tote take. The greater number of days and the flexibility of the new arrangements clearly benefited all tracks but the new tote draw-​back arrangements offered nothing to the rapidly declining number of smaller tracks operating without the tote and depended upon the course bookmakers who were taxed and for whom the tracks often paid the tax to ensure the presence of bookmakers to attract crowds. As a result, many of the smaller flapping tracks, and some of the smaller NGRS tracks, closed down, to be replaced by housing estates and other commercial developments, leaving a rump of large tote-​driven tracks frequented by a small number of bookmakers operating in front of illuminated grandstands dominated by restaurant facilities.23 The communal character of the meetings, evident in the early days of the sport, changed substantially to the point where greyhound tracks were, and are now, often seen as even more of an urban impediment to the interests of the areas in which they operate, even more than they were once felt to be. It is also clear that the British Greyhound Racing Federation, which emerged briefly in 1976–​77, did not feel that there were sufficient days available for its affiliated members and was requesting 156 days when it could organise gambling on its tracks.24 Taxation was one problem leading to the decline of greyhound racing but it has to be combined with the second, even greater, challenge –​the move from on-​ course betting to off-​course betting. Off-​course betting became a major problem for the greyhound tracks by the 1950s, as suggested in ­chapter  2. Extensive evidence of the proliferation of off-​course credit bookmaking was made to the Home Office and to the Royal Commission on Gambling, Lotteries and Gaming (1949–​51). Yet off-​course betting became an even more serious issue in the 1960s. Prior to 1961 greyhound racing tracks were still the major legalised cash-​betting outlets in the urban centres for the working classes. That situation changed dramatically with the Betting and Gaming Act of 1960, which led to the opening of LBOs in April 1961. This Act amplified the existing move to off-​course betting and produced a further slump in attendances at greyhound

180

180

Going to the dogs

tracks. Indeed, two major tracks in London –​Park Royal and Stamford Bridge, which had regular attendances of 3,200 and 3,700, respectively, up to 1961, found that their attendances had fallen to 800 and 900, respectively, within seven years of the Betting and Gaming Act being implemented. The matinee meetings, as opposed to evening ones, became so uneconomic that they ceased to be offered at the two tracks.25 This is further emphasised by the fact that on NGRS/​NGRC tracks 80 per cent of the betting had been with the tote in 1951 whilst in 1975 the bookmakers were likely to exceed the take of the totalisators by 30 per cent.26 This move had also been determined by other legislation which encouraged off-​course betting or restricted the tote, notably the Betting and Gaming Lotteries Acts of 1963 and 1971, the 1967 Dog Racecourse Totalisator Regulations, and similar regulations in 1975 which meant that ‘greyhound racing [was] a tightly controlled sport in Britain’.27 To compensate for their loss of income to LBOs, attempts were made by the greyhound authorities to widen the scope of the totalisator in the 1960s. The Royal Commission on Lotteries and Betting (1932–​33) had suggested that the owners of courses should not control betting facilities, though that was rejected by government. Nevertheless, the track owners often employed managers rather than operated the track and the tote themselves. The tote, of course, only operated on the track. However, in October 1961 the NGRS issued a memorandum that credit betting should be allowed on the tote, raising the prospect of off-​course betting on the tote, and it revived the issue again in August 1962. It sought legal opinion in July 1963 which advised that credit betting on the tote was not illegal but the Home Office quashed the idea of off-​course greyhound tote betting, suggesting that it would increase the scale of gambling and be subject to fraud.28 Failing to secure this initiative in 1972, the NGRS/​NGRC suggested some changes to the totalisator, the charge of a levy on all off-​course betting on greyhound racing and more days for racing. All these ideas were rejected and a Home Office memorandum of 1972 suggested that: Since 1968, the greyhound interest have been engaged in other matters, connected with the deduction from the totalisator and the removal of restrictions on the days on which greyhound racing might take place. They have never put forward a comprehensive proposal explaining how they would introduce safeguards into any arrangements for betting on the totalisator by persons not resident in the trade.29

This Home Office memorandum felt that the imposition of a levy would affect greyhound racing in two ways. First, it would ‘add to the quantity of off-​ course betting, with which the track totalisator would have to compete’ and, second, greyhound racing ‘would benefit from a levy as assists horse racing’.30 However, it felt that, despite pressure from Mr Underhill, the representative of the NGRS who bombarded the Home Office with letters and statements, little

181

The decline of greyhound racing, 1961–2017

181

progress had been made since the early 1960s and that there were practical difficulties in raising a levy. It suggested that Underhill and the NGRS should, if they pushed ahead with the levy idea, submit practical proposals, the Home Office feeling that ‘we have seen little progress since.’31 No plan ever emerged though the 2nd Lord Mancroft (Stormont Samuel Mancroft), as President of the British Greyhound Racing Federation (formed in the mid-​1970s to bring all the greyhound interests together) stated, in his evidence to the Rothschild Commission on 7 July 1976, that: Our reason for asking for a levy is on a different basis. It is because the sport as a whole is slipping away in popularity for obvious reasons the two most notable of which are television at night –​of course we primarily are night sport and secondly, because of the street betting shop. This is taking money away from us at a rate which is making the sport barely viable. Our report is for a levy … We are not asking for public money; we are asking for punters money to come back into the sport. That is what we need in order to keep the sport viable when so many of our tracks are teetering on the edge of financial disaster not through their own inefficiency I like to think, but merely because the sport is not being supported financially or physically in the way it was in the old days when it first gained popularity.32

By the mid-​1970s the impact of both taxation and off-​course gambling on dog racing was palpable and, as Table 7.1 and Table 7.4 indicate, between 1948 and 1975 the number of greyhound tracks had halved, the number of NGRC tracks had declined by more than 40 per cent, and attendances had fallen by more than 75 per cent. The old non-​NGRC tracks (now part of the new NGRC) are estimated to have held 6,200 meetings in 1975, two meetings per track per week, with an attendance of about one and a half million, which means that there were only approximately 250 attenders per meeting.33 In total, then, there were about 7.7 million attendances at all greyhound tracks in 1975. The national statistics for Britain in 1975–​76 bear out this dramatic move from on-​track betting to off-​ course betting as a whole, of which greyhound racing was a part, with the fact that £1,805 million of the £2,079 million spent on gambling was being spent off course.34 Indeed, there must have been alarm at the steady decline of greyhound racing speeding up in the early 1970s when the general betting duty was quite low in historical terms, as evident from Table 7.2. Indeed, the tote retention for the owners was only just over half of the income received by the tracks between 1973 and 1975 (Table  7.3). The declining returns of the tote led to the Greyhound Racing Association, and other organisations, to ‘sell uneconomic tracks for property development’.35 In the face of decline greyhound organisations were forced to operate more closely together. On 1 March 1972 the NGRS and NGRC merged to form the National Greyhound Racing Club (NGRC), which maintained a body of ten

182

Going to the dogs

182 Table 7.3  Income of the NGRC greyhound tracks, 1973–​75 (%)

From retention (tote) Catering and refreshments Advertising and racecards Kennel charges Others

1973

1974

1975

51.2 22.0 18.1 4.5 4.2

52.0 22.5 17.4 4.1 4.0

51.5 24.5 17.2 3.8 3.0

Source: BS 3/​36, evidence presented to the Royal Commission on Gambling, 1976–​78 (Rothschild).

‘Independent Stewards’ (the Hon. R. Stanley, the Earl of Westmoreland and the Viscount Ward of Whitley amongst them) to maintain the distance between a body of men upholding the rules of the tracks and one which represented the interests of the old NGRS tracks which were now NGRC tracks. The Provincial Greyhound Tracks Central Office became the Provincial Greyhound Tracks Federation in 1973, representing fifty-​nine non-​NGRC tracks, but operated in close relation to the NGRC through its Permit Racecourse Scheme, whereby non-​NGRC tracks would come under the aegis of the NGRC, seek general advice from it, but operate outside the normal NGRC standard track requirements, for a nominal fee of £10.36 There was even a move towards linking all greyhound organisations throughout the world into the World Greyhound Racing Association formed in 1971, although it does not seem to have exerted much impact upon greyhound racing in Britain.37 When the new NGRC presented a memorandum and evidence to the Rothschild Commission in 1976 it represented all sections of the sport  –​the Stewards, commercial companies, the NGRC, the non-​ NGRC racecourses (the flapping tracks), the owners, trainers and the breeders.38 Indeed, it was ‘the single effective voice for the whole industry’.39 As a unified body the new NGRC argued that ‘Public interest in the sport is as strong as ever but it is now differently expressed’.40 But there was no getting away from the fact that the industry had declined as a result of the 1960 Betting and Gaming Act and the growth of off-​course gambling. As a result, the NGRC requested its proposals to the Commission. It wanted the number of days in which tracks could operate the sport and gambling increased from 130 per year to 156, the number of Special Betting days to be increased from four to six, the number of races at a meeting increased from eight to ten and that a levy be raised on off-​course gambling on greyhounds or alternatively that the racecourses be given property rights to negotiate the use of their races for gambling with the betting shops or other commercial gambling groups.41 It also campaigned to get the entry fee of bookmakers attending the tracks raised to five times the standard entry fee, in a

183

The decline of greyhound racing, 1961–2017

183

Table 7.4  The decline of greyhound racing, 1948–​75, on NGRC tracks Year

NGRC tracks

Meetings

1948 1950 1953 1955 1958 1960 1963 1965 1968 1970 1973 1975

77 70 68 66 65 64 59 58 57 52 46 48

6,930 7,550 7,118 7,992 6,833 6,787 6,307 6,003 6,057 5,585 5,488 5,874

Average number Attendance of meetings (millions) 90 105 105 110 106 106 107 103 106 107 119 122

25.3 22.5 19.9 17.9 15.4 15.3 12.0 11.2 9.1 7.2 6.1 6.2

Average attendance 3,651 3,071 2,976 2,455 2,254 2,254 1,903 1,866 1,502 1,325 1,118 1,055

Source: BS 3/​26, Memorandum and Main Evidence of the NGRC Ltd to the Royal Commission on Gambling (Rothschild, 1976–​78), 25 June 1976, p. 48.

move reminiscent of the bitter conflicts of the inter-​war years between the tracks and the bookmakers.42 The Rothschild Commission (1976–​78) gathered evidence from the NGRC and other dog-​racing and bookmaking organisations, as it did from other areas of the gambling industry, and this indicated the plight of greyhound racing, as indicted in Tables  7.4, 7.5 and 7.6, which record declining number of tracks, declining attendances and declining returns on investment. Yet its 303 recommendations had little to say about greyhound racing. Its main thrust was to try to maintain and widen the right to gamble and seemed to adopt a view that excessive gambling was a psychological problem and, therefore, was something which should not impinge upon the broad social policies of government. All it did for greyhound racing was to encourage the widening the competition of gambling and thus usher forward its gradual decline, even though the number of days of racing was increased and tracks were able to assert their property rights in negotiating the streaming of races to LBOs. BAGS and the streaming of greyhound racing The process of moving betting off the track was furthered by the action of the large bookmakers in streaming live commentaries and then live action greyhound racing to LBOs, opened in 1961. In 1967 BAGS, the Bookmakers’ Affiliated Greyhound Scheme, was formed with the aim of offering gambling in betting

184

Going to the dogs

184

Table 7.5  The declining number of NGRC and non-​NGRC tracks, 1948–​75 Year

NGRC

Non-​NGRC

Total

1948 1950 1953 1955 1958 1960 1963 1965 1968 1970 1973 1975

77 70 68 66 65 64 59 58 57 52 46 48

132 130 129 126 124 124 110 106 95 88 70 59

209 200 197 192 189 188 169 166 152 150 116 107

Source: BS 3/​26, The Memorandum and Main Evidence of the NGRC Ltd to the Royal Commission on Gambling (Rothschild, 1976–​78), 25 June 1976, p. 48.

Table 7.6  Profits and return on capital for NGRC tracks, 1973–​75 Year

Profits (£ millions)

1973 1974 1975

66.7 68.4 74.2

Returns on stadium (% capital) 8.2 6.7 5.77

Source: BS 3/​26, The Memorandum and Main Evidence of the NGRC Ltd to the Royal Commission on Gambling (Rothschild, 1976–​78), 25 June 1976, pp. 48–​9.

shops on ‘wet winter days’ when there was no horse racing. It began to organise contracts with the greyhound tracks and in 2014 there were seventeen (of the then remaining twenty-​five GBGB) tracks with contracts for this service to the betting office of bookmakers, where 25,000 BAGs races were being shown per year.43 In order to survive, many of the tracks (eighteen by 2017) sought BAGS racing as another source of income flow, thus succumbing further to the control of the bookmakers. Since the formation of BAGS other streaming organisations and schemes have developed. In 1987 Satellite Information Services (SIS) was formed as a news-​gathering service and provided coverage of races to the bookmaker offices. Initially in competition with BAGS, and picking up some of its contracts when they became available, it worked in agreement with BAGS, which often negotiated contracts with the individual tracks whilst SIS provided the service. Now based at Media City Salford, Greater Manchester, in 2016 SIS had 850 employees and a net income of £159 million, supplying 5,800 LBOs. Like

185

The decline of greyhound racing, 1961–2017

185

BAGS it was essentially owned by some of the large bookmakers and investment companies and in 2016 William Hill held a 19.5 per cent stake, Ladbrokes 23 per cent, Fred Done (co-​owner of Betfred) 7.5 per cent, and the Tote held 6 per cent. Of the rest, Caledonian Investments held 22.5 per cent, Alternaterport twenty point held 5 per cent, and the other 1 per cent was owned by a variety of small owners including companies owning Leicester, Catterick, Thirsk and Stratford-​ upon-​Avon racecourses. BAGS and SIS operating together have ensured that gambling on the dogs is almost entirely an off-​course activity which the surviving tracks service. The bookmakers have taken over greyhound racing and shaped its development as it has declined. There are variations in this service arrangement for in 2007 SIS provided different channel arrangements for live television channel coverage for each of the different bookmaking organisations –​Ladbrokes, Coral (now Ladbrokes Coral), Betfred and William Hill. Other firms, such as Turf TV, formed in 2007, have also emerged to provide streaming activities, though Turf TV tends to focus upon horse racing.44 BAGS and SIS further strengthened their hold over greyhound racing in 2011 when they organised the BAGS/​SIS Track Championship, the final of which was held at Monmore, and ran the championship until 2016 after which, in mid-​ 2017, it was abandoned as BAGS and SIS went their own separate ways and came, once again, into competition for contracts and meetings to stream. The Greyhound Star (an online rather than hard-​copy newspaper from the beginning of 2015) reported on 5 November 2016 that BAGS has produced a schedule of meetings but that the Coral and Ladbrokes amalgamation had thrown the whole industry into turmoil, and that the entry of the Greyhound Media Group into the potential streaming of the sport had raised difficulties of SIS being able to survive effectively on streaming 900 meetings per year when it probably needed about 1,500 to provide a viable service. Nevertheless, the BAGS/​SIS Championship lasted for six years between 2011 and 2016 as an autumn competition in which four areas –​North, South, East and West  –​competed in a track-​team based regional competition, with greyhound racing at different distances, different standards, different ages, on the flat and over hurdles, different standards to get to a final held at a neutral venue announced a few weeks before the final. Each track arranged a meeting of six races with a dog from each track. The winning tracks and the best two runner-​ up tracks sent one dog for each race to the final meeting of ten races in 2016. There were substantial rewards at all levels for the trainers, owners and the tracks, although the fine detail of this changed every year. The advertised 2017 competition was to introduce a new Elite race for dogs with five wins in top grade races and offered about £350,000 in prize money and costs, a major boost to the sport, and the finals were to be covered by Sky Sports over Christmas (there were 120,000 viewers in 2014, which was more than the number who watched

186

Going to the dogs

186 Table 7.7  The annual BAGS/​SIS Championship winners Year

Venue

Winner

2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016

Belle Vue

Monmore Newcastle Sheffield Peterborough Peterborough Perry Barr

Nottingham Perry Bar Towcester

Source: various sources, including Greyhound Star, 25 July 2015 (online).

the Greyhound Derby of that year).45 However, as indicated, the autumn 2017 championship never occurred because of the changing economic position of the companies running the streaming of the sport. The winners of this competition for 2011 to 2016 are listed in Table 7.7 (the track name for two years are not reported possibly because they were neutral tracks agreed upon when the finalists were established and do not get recorded in the sports reports) and the tracks designated for 2017 are indicated in Table 7.8, although they were never used. What is important here is that the sport is very much in the hands of the bookmakers, streaming companies and television, with most of the tracks –​ though some have been excluded because they are not of sufficient standard –​ involved in these types of competition. Hall Green and Wimbledon were not included, and Mildenhall (in Suffolk), Pelaw Grange (Chester-​le-​Street near Newcastle), Harlow (Essex) and Shawfield (Glasgow) have never been involved in the BAGS-​SIS championship, although they are GBGB tracks, probably because they have no contracts with BAGS or SIS. The domination of the large bookmakers is even more evident in the number of tracks they own and the races they have and continue to sponsor. Ladbrokes owned the Monmore and Crayford stadiums whilst Coral owned the Brighton and Hove stadium and Romford. Ladbrokes took over Coral in November 2016, becoming Ladbrokes Coral. This means that at least a sixth of the GBGB stadiums in Britain are directly in the hands of the large bookmaking organisations. In addition, most large bookmakers have sponsored the major greyhound classic and open races for many years. The William Hill organisation sponsored the Greyhound St. Leger held at Wimbledon until 2016, and the greyhound Cesarewitch in its latter years until its demise when Oxford Stadium closed at the end of 2012.46 Ladbrokes sponsor the Ladbrokes’ Golden Jacket at Crayford and many other races. Betfair sponsors the Gymcrack, though it is much more involved in sponsoring Irish greyhound racing, and Coral sponsored the Gymcrack and the Regency. However, the premier event, the English Greyhound

187

The decline of greyhound racing, 1961–2017

187

Table 7.8  The four areas and the tracks involved in the BAGS and SIS Track Championship 2017 Area

Tracks

The North The South The East The West

Sunderland, Belle Vue, Newcastle, Kinsley, Sheffield Crayford, Romford, Hove, Poole, Sittingbourne Nottingham, Peterborough, Doncaster, Yarmouth, Henlow Towcester, Swindon, Perry Barr, Monmore

Source: Various sources including Greyhound Star, 25 July 2015.

Derby –​worth about £350,000 when all the prizes for regional qualifying rounds are included –​was, in 2017, sponsored by Star Sports, a group of Indian sports channels owned by Star India  –​a subsidiary of 21st Century Fox.47 It is now clear that the betting organisations and the television networks run greyhound racing in Britain and that its future depends upon their decisions, which means that its continued existence is precarious. Indeed, the future of greyhound racing in Britain is not at all certain, especially since gambling on greyhounds and the returns to bookmakers are constantly diminishing. In 2017 SBC News reported upon the decline of the takings from greyhound racing. It noted that in the 2008–​9 season the bookmakers (including totes) took £1,580 million in money wagered on greyhounds, a gross gambling take of £308 million, a yield of just 20 per cent. In 2014–​15 betting on greyhound racing had fallen to £1,190 million in wagers and the gross gambling take was £216 million, a yield of just under 19 per cent.48 The economic prospects for greyhound racing look bleak. The fact is, in the second half of the twentieth century onwards, and particularly from the 1990s onwards, greyhound racing has faced a third challenge in the wide range of alternative and competing gambling activities. Like the football pools it has lost out to the National Lottery, which began in 1994. It is also competing with online betting, scratchcards, slot machines, betting exchanges and another ten or so major gambling alternatives. One recent survey, which looked at how many times men and women gambled on about fifteen different gambling activities in 1999, 2007 and 2010, revealed the insignificance of betting on greyhounds. The average man gambled on the National Lottery sixty-​eight times and the average woman sixty-​two times in 1999. By 2010 those figures, for men and women, had fallen to sixty-​one and fifty-​six, respectively. The equivalent figures for scratchcards in 1999 were twenty-​two and twenty-​two, and had increased to twenty-​three and twenty-​five in 2010. For horse racing the respective figures were eighteen and nine in 1999, and nineteen and eleven in 2010. In comparison, the figures for dog racing were six for men and two for women in both 1999 and 2010.49 One suspects that the decline in greyhound racing since 2010 has meant that the average man and woman barely bet on the dogs.

188

Going to the dogs

188 Self-​regulation of the sport

As if this were not enough, the major scandal surrounding the cruelty and slaughter of the greyhounds, which began this chapter, brought the situation of greyhound racing to a crisis point in 2006 and 2007. As a result, Tony Blair’s Labour government and the National Greyhound Racing Board felt that there was either the need to be improving the self-​regulation of the sport or for government intervention to occur. Therefore, the Labour government asked Lord Donoughue, a Labour Peer, to report on the industry, assisted by Patrick Nixon, Secretary of the Bookmakers’ Committee at the Horse Race Levy Board, Clarissa Baldwin (Chief Executive of the Dogs Trust), Jim Crenin (former Greyhound Editor of the Racing Post) and Jim Donnelly (Head of Sport at PA Sport). The 2007 report (available online) suggested that greyhound racing should remain self-​regulating but should create a single entity to conduct the governance, administration, finance and regulation of the sport. Lord Donoughue made thirty-​six other recommendations to improve the efficiency, effectiveness and regulations and to raise welfare standards, and suggested that the two governing bodies –​the British Greyhound Racing Board and the National Greyhound Racing Club, united as the National Greyhound Racing Board, be replaced by the Greyhound Board of Great Britain in 2009. Self-​regulation was to continue but the report called for root and branch change under the new organisation. Such self-​regulation has been subject to further critical scrutiny, particularly over the continued cruelty of the sport. In 2014, the League Against Cruel Sports believed that the slaughter and maltreatment of dogs was continuing unabated. Indeed, it was extremely concerned about the fact that, as Table  7.9 indicates, well over three-​quarters of greyhound registered in Britain were bred in Ireland, in circumstances and conditions of which little was known. Whilst this situation persists there will be a continuing campaign to end greyhound racing even though it is evident that it is moving towards oblivion. The Irish are often trainers of the dogs, and sometimes owners. But even they may be giving up on the sport as Table 7.9  The number of registered greyhounds in Britain and the proportion of Irish-​bred greyhounds 2006 2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012 2013

Greyhounds registered 10,101 9,781 9,012 8,672 8,552 7,972 7,914 7,520 in Britain Irish-​bred dogs on the 7,640 7,639 6,943 6,602 6,536 6,228 6,264 6,203 GBGB register % of greyhound racing 76 77 77 77 77 78 79 83 dogs bred in Ireland Source: League Against Cruel Sports, The State of Greyhound Racing in Britain, p. 14.

189

The decline of greyhound racing, 1961–2017

189

the financial rewards of the sport diminish. Attending the Wimbledon track just before its closure Ray Butler, who breeds dogs at his Ireland-​based stud, Hollyoak, reflected that: ‘There are very few dogs left now, to be fair.’ Bemoaning the loss of prize money, and reflecting that many races no longer make financial sense for trainers, he added that: ‘Some of the prizes on grade race [normally denoting a lower calibre of dog] are just not there. You might get £30 to enter and it will cost you £10 a day to train a dog. That dog can race only once a week. It just doesn’t add up. You used to get a lot of trainers coming over from Ireland but not anymore.’50 Faced with this decline one might ask  –​what happened to the tracks that closed? The simple answer is that they have merged back into the housing of the community. The survey of the London tracks in 1963, referred to for the acreage of the greyhound tracks in ­chapter 4, indicated that the sixteen surviving tracks covered about 158 acres and that about seventy acres could be cleared and made suitable for residential accommodation –​listing the stadiums at Catford, Harringay, Clapton, Hackney, West Ham and Wimbledon among the most suitable sites. Others were less suitable, and apart from the fact that Stamford Bridge (the home of Chelsea football club) was highly unlikely to be developed it is clear that the stadiums at Crayford, Dagenham and Romford, and particularly Park Royal, which was surrounded by industry, were deemed unsuitable.51 The first category was a wish list of closures by the Ministry of Housing and Local Government. But much of it came true. West Ham closed after the last meeting on 26 May 1972, having been sold to a property developer in December 1971 for £475,000. The largest greyhound circuit in Britain was to be used in a redevelopment of 395 houses.52 Walthamstow closed on 16 August 2008. After several years of appeals Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, approved the plans to demolish the stadium, apart from the front façade with its neon lights, which was restored, and 292 new homes were built. Wimbledon closed in March 2017 to be developed for housing and a small football stadium. On 29 July 2017 BBC News announced that Hall Green Stadium, Birmingham had held its last meeting and was closing to be replaced by a forty-​eight-​room hotel and 210 new houses. A similar picture of track closure and housing development occurred across Britain. Blackpool Greyhound Stadium (not to be confused with the short-​ lived Squires Gate greyhound stadium to its south) was opened in 1927 and closed in 1964, with the site becoming housing around Stadium Avenue.53 The Darnell track in Sheffield, opened in 1927, closed in 1964 and became part of the extended Poole Road area of the city. The City Stadium, Bradford, opened in 1932 and became a warehouse shortly after it was closed in 1965. The Powderhall Stadium, opened for athletics in the nineteenth century and famous as the place where the Olympic athlete Eric Liddell (whose story appeared in the film Chariots of Fire) trained in the 1920s, became a greyhound track in 1927 and closed in 1995 for housing. The simple fact is that the closure of upwards of 400 tracks in about ninety years has led to most of them being redeveloped, often for housing.

190

Going to the dogs

190 Conclusion

Greyhound racing has led a precarious existence in the twenty-​first century and is now down to barely 10 per cent of the size it was at the beginning of the 1960s, already considerably shrunken from the late 1940s. Given the changes in leisure, forms of gambling and the growth on television, this was bound to occur. However, a combination of factors –​discriminatory taxation, the rise of off-​course betting and greyhound racing’s image as a cruel sport –​have ensured an unexpectedly rapid rate of decline. Greyhound racing may not now be subject to the same level of discrimination it faced in the inter-​war years but there is still a stigma attached to it, and those who frequent its gates, particularly since the revelations about the cruel treatment of greyhounds. It is no longer the ‘American night out’, the brash new bright-​lights entertainment, that it was initially advertised as being in the 1920s. Instead, it is just another form of leisure and entertainment, a quaint and declining remnant of the past. It is no longer seen as the ‘working man’s turf’, or ‘Ascot for the common man’, but just a thrill for a small number of bettors of all classes in a society where class is no longer the defining social category that it used to be. Times have changed and greyhound racing has had to embrace this and adapt to these changes as it has become a mere adjunct to the betting firms who have increasingly owned and directed it and made it into a streamed service for LBOs. These betting firms now run the sport, they run the betting, they finance many of the races and they, along with property and investment companies, determine whether or not a track survives or dies. This dominance of the large bookmaker was evident in the short-​lived but all-​embracing BAG-​SIS Championship series and the variety of races sponsored by the bookmakers. Faced with the decline of gambling on greyhound racing the gambling firms may, and certainly can, close down the tracks and leave them open to the property development firms. This seems a world away from the situation in New Zealand, South Africa and Ireland where the sport is still thriving. Bob Higgs, groundsman of Wimbledon Stadium for nearly thirty years, until it closed in 2017, reflected, pessimistically:  ‘In about 20  years greyhound racing will be gone –​it will be finished in my opinion. Closing things will have a massive knock-​on effect.’54 His time-​frame may be rather optimistic. Notes 1 Greyhound Board of Great Britain, ‘Track Search’; Morning Star, 7 March 2015. It suggests that this was the first stadium to be opened since 1985 but it should have been 1995 when Harlow, in Essex, was opened. 2 Swindon Advertiser, 30 August 2016. 3 Belle Vue (Manchester), Brighton & Hove, Crayford Stadium (Bexley, London), Doncaster, Hall Green (Birmingham), Harlow (Essex), Henlow (Bedfordshire), Kinsley (Pontefract), Mildenhall (Sussex), Monmore (Wolverhampton), Newcastle, Nottingham, Pelaw Grange (Durham), Perry Barr (Birmingham), Peterborough, Poole,

191

The decline of greyhound racing, 1961–2017

191

Shawfield (South Lanarkshire), Sheffield, Sittingbourne (Swale in Kent), Sunderland, Swindon, Towcester, Yarmouth, and Romford Stadium (Havering, London). There were £2.5 billion wagers and about two million attendances. League Against Cruel Sports and Grey2K USA Worldwide, The State of Greyhound Racing in Britain:  A Mandate for Change (London, 2014). This report suggests and maps twenty-​four GBGB tracks and nine Independent, or flapping, tracks, in 2014 though the composition of the GBGB tracks has changed and there are now (in 2017)  two fewer independent tracks. Guardian, 25 March 2017, article by Paul MacInnes, ‘Gone to the Dogs: Gamblers and Day Trippers at Wimbledon Wave Goodbye to Eighty-​Nine Years of History’ suggests that there are twenty-​four GBGB tracks. An article in the Morning Star, 7 March 2015, indicates twenty-​four GBGB tracks. A BBC Panorama programme suggested that the industry was generating £2.5 billion of gambling per year and, in 2013, that was based on 70,000 races per year which supported 7,000 jobs, and £237 million profits of which £55 million went to the government. 4 The seven surviving independent tracks as of April 2017 are Askern (Doncaster), Easington (Durham), Halcrow (Dumfries and Galloway), Highgate (Barnsley), Thornton (Fife), Valley (Ystrad) and Wheatley Hill (Durham). 5 Guardian, 25 March 2017. 6 Belton, When West Ham went to the Dogs, p. 121. 7 Ibid. 8 Guardian, 26 July 2008, article by Laura Thompson. 9 The [Portsmouth] News, 19 March 2010. 10 Coventry Telegraph, 27 February 2014. 11 Guardian, 25 March 2017. Greyhound racing was said to be the second largest spectator sport in Britain in the mid-​1970s. 12 Guardian, 25 March 2017. 13 The internet and Wikipedia provide a constant supply of updates as to the position. 14 Sunday Times, 11 May 2008, article by Daniel Foggo. 15 The Associate Parliamentary Group for Animal Welfare, The Welfare of Greyhounds (London: Associate Parliamentary Group for Animal Welfare, 2007), pp. 6, 17–​20. 16 Ibid. 17 League Against Cruel Sports and Grey2K USA Worldwide, The State of Greyhound Racing in Britain, p.  30 of that report indicates that the Royal Veterinary College used 300 dogs for teaching and research, Liverpool University 93–​95, the University of Cambridge 70, the University of Edinburgh 20, the University of Bristol 64, the University of Nottingham 8, the University of Glasgow 3–​4, and the University of Dublin 212. 18 Racing Post, 14 March 2018, p. 105. This article, by Philip Donaldson, also indicted that, in 2017, 728 dogs that retired were retained by their owner or trainer, 4,576 were placed by the Greyhound Trust/​Charity, and that 1,129 were rehomed by the owner/​trainer/​breeder. 19 Baker, ‘Going to the Dogs’. 20 HO 320/​64, from a five-​page memorandum written on 9 February 1972. 21 BS3/​26. 22 HO 320/​64, from a five-​page memorandum written on 9 February 1972.

192

192

Going to the dogs

2 3 Belton, When West Ham went to the Dogs, pp. 120–​1. 24 BS3/​26, Memorandum and evidence presented by the National Greyhound Racing Club to the Royal Commission on Gambling (Rothschild, 1976–​78), 25 June 1976. 25 Ibid., p. 27. 26 Ibid., p. 9. 27 Ibid. 28 HO 320/​64, in a five-​page memorandum on ‘Credit Betting and the Greyhound Racing Totalistor’, referring to item BGL 60/​1/​12/​67. 29 HO 320/​64, a five-​page memorandum written on 9 February 1972. 30 HO 320/​65, notes attached to the five-​page memorandum written on 9 February  1972. 31 HO 320/​65, note dated 1 March 1972; also a copy in HO 320/​64. 32 BS3/​26, Report on the speech of Lord Mancroft to the Royal Commission on Gambling (1976–​78), on 7 July 1976 in submitting and talking to the memorandum of the NGRC, 25 June 1976. 33 BS3/​ 26, National Greyhound Racing Club, Report to Royal Commission on Gambling (1976–7​8), submitted 25 June 1976, Appendix A. 34 BS3/​26,  p. 60. 35 HO 320/​64. 36 BS3/​26, Memorandum and Main Evidence of the National Greyhound Racing Club Ltd to the Royal Commission on Gambling (Rothschild, 1976–​78), 25 June 1976, pp. 7–​9. And Appendix A, pp. 41–​43. 37 Ibid., p. 46. 38 Ibid., p. 3. 39 Ibid., p. 7. 40 Ibid., p. 2. 41 Ibid., pp. 15–​27 deals with many of these requests and the reasons for them. 42 Ibid., p. 27. 43 League Against Cruel Sports, The State of Greyhound Racing in Britain, p. 16. 44 Yorkshire Post, 23 December 2017, reported on Ladbrokes acquiring the Coral Group on 2 November 2017, but that this new group was about to be taken over by an online rival, GUC, for £4 billion. 45 Racing Post, 27 December 2016. 46 The Cesarewitch was run at West Ham between 1929 and 1972, moved to Belle Vue on the demise of West Ham, and then transferred to Catford (a sister stadium opened in 1932) until 2013 when it closed. Oxford Stadium, at Sandy Lane, opened in 31 March 1939, then took it over but was itself closed in 2012. 47 The English Greyhound Derby 1927 –​White City until 1984 with exception of 1940 when held at Harringay. From 1985 until 2016 held at Wimbledon. In 2017 it was held on 1 July at Towcester. The winner received £175,000 and total sponsorship exceeds £350,000. 48 http://​sbcnews.co.uk/​eruope.uk/​2016/​05/​08/​. 49 www.gamblingconsultant/​co.uk/​articles/​whogambles. 50 Guardian, 25 March 2017. 51 HLG 131/​229, a survey of the suitability of greyhound tracks for housing and housing regeneration in 1963.

193

The decline of greyhound racing, 1961–2017

193

5 2 Belton, When West Ham went to the Dogs, pp. 120–​1. 53 Julia Barnes, Daily Mirror Greyhound Fact File (Lydney:  Ringpress Books, 1988), pp.  34–​97. 54 Wimbledon online, 25 March 2017.

194

Conclusion

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

195

Conclusion

195

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

196

196

Going to the dogs

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

197

Conclusion

197

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

198

Going to the dogs

198

other leisure activities but for almost a quarter of a century it became a significant, if not ubiquitous, part of working-​class life. Notes 1 Huggins, ‘Everybody’s Going to the Dogs?’. 2 Beaven, Leisure, Citizenship and Working-​Class Men in Britain, 1850–​1945. 3 Chinn, 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. 4 Leeworthy, ‘A Diversion from the New Leisure’. 5 Belton, When West Ham went to the Dogs.

199

Appendices Appendix 1 

Names of National Greyhound Racing Society tracks in England, Scotland and Wales, June 1933

This list was produced to show the names and numbers of tracks properly licensed by the NGRS. 1. Albion, Salford 2. Arms Park, Cardiff 3. Belle Vue, Manchester 4. Birmingham Kings Heath 5.  Brighton and Hove Stadium 6.  Bristol 7.  Burnley Track 8. Carntyne Racecourse, Parkhead, Glasgow 9. Catford Stadium 10. Clapton Stadium 11. Cleveland Park, Middlesbrough, 12. Coventry 13. Dundee 14. Edinburgh 15. Hall Green, Birmingham, 16. Harringay Park 17. Hull, 18. Leeds Greyhound Track, Elland Road 19. Leicester 20. The Liverpool Greyhound Club Ltd, Breck Park 21. The Knowles Greyhound Stadium, Bristol 22. Long Easton, Proprietor Nottingham Greyhound Racecourse 23. Mansfield and Doncaster Greyhound Racecourse 24. Newcastle on Tyne 25. Newport, Somerton Park 26. National Greyhounds (Monmouth/​Norwich) Ltd 27. Perry Bar at Burchfield 28. Plymouth Greyhound Stadium 29. Portsmouth Greyhound Racecourse 30. Ramsgate 31. Reading Stadium 32. Sheffield Track Pool Road, Darnell 33. Sheffield at Pembroke Road, Owleston 34. Southend Stadium, Southend-​on-​Sea 35. Albion Greyhound (Stoke) Ltd 36. Warrington 37. Welsh White City 38. West Ham Stadium 39. White City, Ibrox, Glasgow 40. White City, London 41. White City, Manchester 42. Wimbledon Stadium 43. Wolverhampton. Source: HO 45/​15853. 663794/​4, letter from the NGRS, 30 June 1933.

200

Appendix 2

The number of greyhound tracks in some towns and communities in England and Wales in 1947

Town Ashington Birmingham Blackpool Bolton Bradford Brighton Bristol Cardiff Cowley Cradley Heath Crayford Exeter Gateshead Gosforth Hanley Hebburn Hull Leeds Liverpool London Manchester Middlesbrough Newcastle Nottingham Plymouth Portsmouth Ramsgate Romford Salford

Number of tracks

A

B

C

Unlicensed

1 3 1 1 2 1 2 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 4 15 2 1 3 1 1 1 2 1 1

1 3 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 0 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 1 3 15 2 1 2 1 1 1 0 1 1

0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 (A) 0 0 0 0 0 1 (A) 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

201

Appendices Town Sheffield Southend South Shields Stockton Wolverhampton

201 Number of tracks 3 1 1 2 1

A

B

C

2 1 1 0 1

1 0 0 1 0

0 0 0 1 0

Unlicensed 0 0 0 0 0

Source: BR 1/​10, 804, TUC files, Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick. The A, B and C tracks are those as listed under the Dog Racecourses Betting (Temporary Provisions) Act of 1947, and categorises all NGRS and, later, PGTCO, flapping tracks. A total of fifty-​one A tracks, fifty-​one B tracks, thirty-​one C tracks and seventeen unlicensed tracks (which had no totalisator facilities), are listed.

202

Appendix 3

Greyhound tracks in England and Wales, by county, in 1947

County

Licensed

Unlicensed

A tracks B tracks C tracks 1. Bedfordshire 0 2. Cambridgeshire 0 3. Cheshire & Staffs 2 4. Cumberland 1 5. Devon &Somerset 1 6. Gloucestershire 1 7. Hampshire 0 8. Kent 0 9. Lancashire 8 10. Leicester 0 11. London area 18 12. Nottinghamshire & 1 Derbyshire 13. Norfolk & Suffolk 0 14. Oxford & Berkshire 0 15. Northumberland & 7 Durham 16. Sussex 1 17. Worcesterhire 4 18. Yorkshire 7 Total 51

Unlicensed tracks

Total (A, B and C)

1 0 2 0 1 2 2 2 10 2 7 3

1 2 0 0 1 0 1 3 0 6 0 2

0 1 (C) 1 (A) 0 2 (B & C) 0 0 0 0 2 (B & C) 1 (B) 2 (2B)

2 3 5 1 3 3 3 3 18 10 26 8

4 2 4

0 0 5

1 (C) 0 3 (1A, 2B)

5 2 19

0 2 7 51

0 0 12 31

1 (C) 0 3 (2B, 1C) 17

2 6 29 150

Source: BR 1/​10, 804, TUC files, Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick. The A, B and C tracks are those as listed under the Dog Racecourses Betting (Temporary Provisions) Act of 1947, and categorises all NGRS and, later, PGTCO, flapping tracks.

203

Appendix 4

Attendances at sixty-​seven of the seventy-​seven NGRS tracks in 1948

Class A (under 2,000) B (2,000 to 5,000) C (over 5,000) D (London) Total

Aggregate of all tracks

Average yearly attendance of all tracks

3,827,363 7,198,192 1,533,620 11,410,812 23,969,987

147,206 (26 tracks) 312,965 (23) 511,207 (3) 760,721 (15) 357,761 (67)

Source: HO 335/​77, in Appendix A of the evidence of the NGRS to the Royal Commission on Betting, Gaming and Lotteries (1949–​51).

204

Appendix 5

List of NGRS greyhound tracks closing in 1950 and 1951 and the list of those leaving the NGRS between 1950 for being unable to keep to NGRC standards Tracks closing Stenhouse, near Edinburgh, 1950 Mond Barton, Exeter, 1950 White Castle, Newcastle, 1950 Tracks leaving the NGRS for being unable to keep to NGRC standards Firhill, Glasgow 1950 Anfield, Liverpool 1950 Seaforth, Liverpool 1950 Stanley, Liverpool 1952 Tamouth 1952 Sansted 1954 Albion, Stanley 1954, which was likely to close down. Source: CUST 49/​4216/​66553/​1954, letter of John Aldridge to A. W. Taylor, 12 October 1954.

205

Appendix 6

A list of the thirty-​six NGRS and PGTCO track that closed their totalisator between 1947 and 1953

Track England Derby County Devon Exeter Durham County

Shirebrook Kingsbenwith Mond Barton Belmont Wheatley Hill Kent Newington Stadium, Reigate Leicester Coalville Leeds Parkside Notts County Worksop Somerset Taunton Surrey Aldershot Yorkshire, West Riding Stainforth Yorkshire, East Riding Wales Glamorgan Scotland Ayr County Kilmarnock Borough Falkirk Fife Lanark County Coatbridge Motherwell Edinburgh West Lothian County

Boulevard, Hull Barry

Track Brimington Torquay Pelaw Grange Thornley White City, Newcastle Hinckley

Deane Wombwell

Castleford Askern

Aberdere

Swansea

Caledonian Stadium, Irvine Kilmarnock Brockville Thornton Central Park, Cowdenbeath Barrowhouse Coatbridge Wilshaw Stenhouse Armadale

Source: CUST 49/​4216/​66553/​1954, letter of John Aldridge to A. W. Taylor, 12 October 1954. The PGTCO suggested that there were forty-​one.

206

Appendix 7

Pool Betting Duty and Surcharge, September to December 1961

Year

1961 1961 1961 1961

Month

September October November December

Pool Betting Duty (Greyhound Totalisator)

Bookmakers’ Licence Duty

Duty £

Surcharge £

Duty £

Surcharge £

511,476-​3-​5 476,922-​19-​8 479,500-​6-​1 339,021-​17-​9

51,142-​12-​4 47,692-​18-​0 49,750-​0-​7 33,902-​3-​9

127,928-​3-​10 122,849-​5-​4 133,394-​16-​9 98,493-​9-​11

12,792-​10-​4 12,284-​18-​7 13,339-​9-​8 9,844-​7-​1

Source: Official Report, Fifth Series, Parliamentary Debates, Commons, vol. 653, 1961–​2, 13 February, col. 24–​6, written answers to questions.

207

Appendix 8

Money raised from the Greyhound Pool Betting Duty and from the Greyhound Bookmakers’ Licence Duty, April to December 1962 Year

Month

Pool Betting Duty

Bookmakers’ Licence Duty

1962 1962 1962 1962 1962 1962 1962 1962 1962

April May June July August September October November December

£ 443,378-​3-​10 633,976-​11-​11 538,942 549,997 662,718 460,194 440,674 433,634 314,085

£ 117,843-​2-​0 150,827-​5-​0 130,131 130,291 156,420 121,041 123,156 130,358 94,810

Source Official Report, Fifth Series, Parliamentary Debates, Commons, vol. 653, 1961–​2, 13 February, cols. 24–​6, written answers to questions. Taken also from the written replies in volumes 659, 663, 667, 669 and 671.

208

Appendix 9

Indicators of the decline in greyhound racing between 1951 and 1977

Number of courses Number of courses under NGRC rules Number of tracks with totalisator facilities Aggregate annual attendance Total stakes on totalisator NGRC tracks Non-​NGRC Estimated turnover with bookmakers off-​course

1951

1971

198 (210 licences) 68

107 48

138

76

21.2 million £ million at 1977 prices 313.1 million 279.3 33.8 98.5

6.5 million 70 million 70.6 4.4. 358

Source: Royal Commission on Gambling, Final Report, 1978, vol. 1 (London: HMSO, Cmnd 7200), para. 10.7, Table 10.1.

209

Bibliography

Primary sources Manuscript sources National Archives, Kew

Board of Trade BT 31/​29960, BT 31/​29967, BT 31/​29939, BT 30016, BT 31/​30184, BT 31/​32853 Business BS 2/​36, BS 3/​26, BS 3/​36 CRO 16516 Custom and Excise CUST 49/​339, CUST 49/​3504, CUST 49/​4216, CUST 49/​4251, CUST 49/​4252 Home Office HO 45/​14222, HO 45/​14333, HO 45/​14709, HO 45/​15266, HO 45/​ 15267, HO 45/​15843, HO 45/​15850, HO 45/​15853, HO 15863, HO 45/​16279, HO 45/​16317, HO 45/​16319, HO 45/​14709, HO 45/​21932, HO 45/​23691, HO 45/​24210, HO 45/​16279, HO 186/​741, HO 287/​138; HO 320/​64, HO 320/​65, HO 335/​1, HO 335/​11, HO 335/​29, HO 335/​30, HO 335/​52, HO 335/​77, HO 335/​81, HO 335/​87, HO 335/​102, HO 335/​117, HO 35/​229 Housing and Local Government HLG 52/​1422, HLG 52/​1423, HLG 52/​91698, HLG 131/​229, HLG 131/​339 INF  9/​948 LAB  2/​1994 Metropolitan Police Files MEPO 2/​1776, MEPOL 2/​3282, MEPOL 2/​3486, MEPO 2/​ 8553

Archives

Bolton Archives ACCF/​9/​29, AK/​6/​67/​9 Salford Watch Committee Report 1938–​9, located in the Greater Manchester Police Museum, Newton Street, Manchester Trades Union Congress, RB 1/​10/​804 files, Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick

210

Bibliography

210

Parliamentary papers, government papers and reports

Betting and Lotteries Act 1934 Parliamentary Debates The Royal Commission on Lotteries and Betting (1932–​33), Final Report (London: HMSO, 1933). This commission was chaired by Sir Sidney Rowlatt and is often known as the Rowlatt Commission. Royal Commission on Betting, Lotteries and Gaming (1949–​51), Final Report. This was chaired by H. Willink and is often known as the Willink Commission. Royal Commission on Betting, Gaming and Lotteries, Report, Cmnd 8190, March 1951. Royal Commission on Gambling (1976–​78) (London: HMSO, 1978). This was chaired by Lord Rothschild and is known as the Rothschild Commission.

Books, pamphlets, reports and specific articles

Ash, E., The Book of Greyhounds (London: Hutchinson, 1933). The Associate Parliamentary Group for Animal Welfare, The Welfare of Greyhounds (London: Associate Parliamentary Group for Animal Welfare, 2007). Barnes, J., Daily Mirror Greyhound Fact File (Lydney: Ringpress Books, 1988). Carter, H., The Betting Scandal at Wembley (London: National Anti-​Gambling League, 1928). Carter, H., Facts About Greyhound Racing (London:  National Anti-​Gambling League, 1928). Critchley, A. C., Critch! The Memoirs of Brigadier General A.  C. Critchley (London: Hutchinson, 1961). First (Souvenir) Issue, Craven Park Greyhound Stadium and Hull Kingston Rovers Official Year Book 1961 (Hull: Craven Park Stadium, 1961). Glass, Rev. J., Gambling and Religion (London: Longman, Green and Co., 1924). Green, P., The Fight against the Betting Evil: A Trumpet Call by Rev. Peter Green, Canon of Manchester, Chaplain to H. M. the King (n.d.). The Greyhound Year Book 1933 (London: Welbecson Press, 1933). Gulland, J., Canine Casinos (London: National Anti-​Gambling League, 1928). Hills Guide to Greyhound Racing (London: Hills, 1952/​53). Kemsley, W. F. F. and Ginsburg, D., Betting in Britain, National Survey covering 1947–​ 50, published in 1951. Kennedy, G. A.  S., Going to the Dogs (London:  National Emergency Committee of Christian Churches, 1928). The League Against Cruel Sports, The State of Greyhound Racing in Britain: A Mandate for Change (London: The League Against Cruel Sports, 2014). League against Cruel Sports and Grey2K USA Worldwide, The State of Greyhound Racing in Britain: A Mandate for Change (London: League Against Cruel Sports, 2014). MacDonald, J. R., Gambling and Citizenship (London: National Anti-​Gambling League, 1905). Mass Observation, ‘Some thoughts on greyhound racing and national unity’, File Report 1149, March 1942 (Mass Observation Archives, University of Sussex). Mass Observation, ‘Saturday Night’, File Report 2467, April 1947 (Mass Observation Archives, University of Sussex).

211

Bibliography

211

Mass Observation, ‘Mass Gambling’, file report 2560, January 1948 (although often indicated as having appeared in 1947 (Mass Observation Archives, University of Sussex), Greyhound racing, pp. 111–38. Mass Observation, ‘Dog Fever’, May 1948 (Mass Observation Archive, University of Sussex). Paton, J. L., The Rights and Wrongs of Gambling (London:  National Anti-​Gambling League, n.d.). Perkins, Rev. E. B., The Problem of Gambling (London: Epworth Press, 1919). Perkins, Rev. E. B., Betting Facts: Being an Account on the Facts of Gambling Given in Evidence Before the Select Committee of the House of Commons Committee on Betting Duty (London: Wesleyan Methodist Church, 1925). Rowntree, B. S., Poverty and Progress: A Second Survey of York (London: Longman, Green & Co, 1941). Smith, A. C., Greyhound Racing and Breeding (London:  Gay and Hancock Ltd., 1927). The Times, 16 January 1923, ‘Clerkenwell Shooting Charge: Italians on Trial’. The Times, 11 June 1926, ‘D. Sabini’s Bankruptcy: A Dismissed Libel Action’. Zweig, F., Labour, Life and Poverty (London: Gollancz, 1948).

Banyan Coventry Telegraph Daily Express Daily Herald Daily Mail [London] Evening News The Field Greyhound Star (online from 2015) Guardian John Bull Manchester City News Manchester Evening News Manchester Guardian The Morning Post Morning Star The [Portsmouth] News The News Chronicle Racing Post Salford Daily Despatch The Star Sunday Times Swindon Advertiser The Times The Truth Wimbledon Stadium News Bulletin

Newspapers

212

Bibliography

212 Secondary sources Books

Bailey, P. C., Music Hall: The Business of Pleasure (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1981). Beaven, B., Leisure, Citizenship and Working-​ Class  Men in Britain, 1850–​ 1945 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004). Belton, B., When West Ham went to the Dogs (Stroud: Tempus, 2002). Best, G., Mid-​Victorian Britain 1851–​1875 (London: Littlehampton Book Service, 1971). Chinn, C., Better Betting with a Decent Feller: A Social History of Bookmaking (London: Aurum, 2004 edition). Chinn, C., The Real Peaky Blinders, Billy Kimber, the Birmingham Gang and the Racecourse Wars of the 1920s (Birmingham: Brewin Books, 2014). Clapson, M., A Bit of a Flutter:  Popular Gambling and English Society c.  1831–​1961 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992). Cunningham, H., Leisure in the Industrial Revolution (London: Palgrave Macmillan,  1980). Davies, A., Leisure, Gender and Poverty: Working-​Class Culture in Salford and Manchester 1990–​1939 (Buckingham and Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1992). Davies, A, and Fielding, S. (eds), Workers’ Worlds: Culture and Communities in Manchester and Salford 1880–​1939 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992). Dixon, D, From Prohibition to Regulation:  Bookmaking, Anti-​Gambling and the Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991). Genders, R., The Encyclopaedia of Greyhound Racing (London: Pelham Books, 1990). Gutzke, D. W. and Law, M. J., The Roadhouse Comes to Britain: Drinking, Driving and Dancing, 1925–​1955 (London: Bloomsbury, 2017). Hill, J., Sport, Leisure and Culture in Twentieth Century Britain (London: Palgrave, 2001). Huggins, M. and Williams, J., Sport and the English Between the Wars (London: Routledge, 2006). Jones, S. G., Sport, Politics and the Working Classes (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992). Jones, S. G., Workers at Play:  A Social and Economic History of Leisure1918–​ 1939 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986). Joyce, P. (ed.), The Historical Meaning of Work (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1989). Joyce, P., Vision of the People: Industrial England and the Question of Class (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). Joyce, P., Work, Society and Politics: The Culture of the Factory in Late Victorian Britain (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1980). Kroes, R., Rydall, R. and Bosscher, D. (eds), Cultural Transmissions and Receptions: American Mass Culture in Europe (Amsterdam: VU University Press, 1993). Lawrence, J., Speaking for the People:  Party, Language and Popular Politics in England, 1867–​1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). Laybourn, K., Working-​Class Gambling in Britain, c 1906–​1860s: The Stages of the Political Debate (Lampeter: Edwin Mellen, 2007). Laybourn, K. with Taylor, D., The Battle for the Roads of Britain: Police, Motorists and the Law, c. 1890–​1970 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2015).

213

Bibliography

213

Laybourn, K. and Taylor, D., Policing in England and Wales, 1918–​1939: The Fed, Flying Squads and Forensics (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). Linnane, F., London Underworld (London: Robson Books, 2004). MacDonald, B., Gangs of London (London: Milo, 2010). McConville, M. and Wilson, C. (eds), Handbook of Criminal Justice Process ( Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). McKay, G. (ed.), Yankee Go Home (and Take Me with U): Americanization and Popular Culture (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997). McKibbin, R., Classes and Culture in England 1918–​1951 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998). Miers, D., Regulating Commercial Gambling:  Past, Present and Future (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2004). Morton, J. and Parker, G., Gangland Bosses (London: Time Warner, 2005). Reiner, R., The Politics of the Police, 4th edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). Reith, G., The Age of Chance: Gambling and Western Culture: Gambling in Western Culture (London: Routledge, 2002). Rowntree, B. S. and Lavers, G. R., English Life and Leisure (London: Longman, Green & Co., 1951). Savage, M. A. and Miles, A., The Remaking of the British Working Class, 1850 to 1940 (London: Routledge, 1994; also second edition London: Routledge, 2017). Slater, D. and Taylor, P. J. (eds), The American Century:  Consensus and Coercion in the Projection of American Power (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999). Stevenson, J., British Society 1914–​1945 (London: Penguin, 1984). Vamplew, W., The Turf:  A Social and Economic History of Horseracing (London:  Allen Lane, 1976; second edition 2016). Zweig, F., The British Worker (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1952). Zweig, F., Labour, Life and Poverty (London: Gollancz, 1949).

Book chapters Gatrell, V. A. C., ‘Crime, Prevention and the Policeman-​State’, in F. M. L. Thompson (ed.), The Cambridge Social History of Britain 1750–​1990 (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1990). Jones, S., ‘Working-​Class Sport in Manchester between the Wars’, in R. Holt (ed.), Sport and the Working-​Class in Modern Britain (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990). Reiner, R., ‘The Organisation and Accountability of the Police’ in M. McConville and C. Wilson (eds), Handbook of Criminal Justice Process (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2002). Taylor, M., ‘Mass Observation, Sport and the Second World War’, in R. Snape and H. Pussard (eds), Recording Leisure Lives: Sports, Games and Pastimes in C 20th Britain (Eastbourne: LSA Publications, 2010).

Articles and conference papers Bailey, P., ‘Leisure, Culture and the Historian: Reviewing the First Generation of Leisure Historiography in Britain’, Leisure Studies, 8.2 (1989), 107–​27.

214

Bibliography

214

Baker, N. ‘Going to the Dogs –​Hostility to Greyhound Racing in Britain: Puritanism, Socialism and Pragmatism’, Journal of Sports History, 23 (1996), 97–​119. Cronin, M., ‘Arthur Elvin and the Dogs of Wembley’, Sports Historian, 22 (2002), 100–​14. Dimont, C., ‘Going to the Dogs’, New Statesman, 30 November 1946. Farmer, R., ‘“All Work and No Play”: British Leisure Culture and the 1947 Fuel Crisis’, Contemporary British History, 27 (2013), 22–​43. Griffin, C., ‘Going to the Dogs: Some Further Evidence’, Journal of Sports History, 25 (1998),  601–​4. Guardian, 20 July 2002, ‘In Praise of Brighton Rock’. Huggins, M., ‘Betting Sport and the British, 1918–​1939’, Journal of Social History, 41.2 (2007), 283–​306. Huggins, M., ‘“Everybody’s Going to the Dogs”? The Middle Classes and Greyhound Racing in Britain between the Wars’, Journal of Sport History, 34.1 (Spring 2007), 97–​120. Lawrence, J., ‘The British Sense of Class’, Journal of Contemporary History, 35 (2000), 307–​18. Laybourn, K., ‘ “King Solomon’s mines cannot compare with the money raked in by greyhound racing”: Greyhound Racing and its Critics and the Working Class c. 1926–​ 1951’, Labor History, 5 (October/​November 2014), 607–​21. Leeworthy, D., ‘A Diversion from the New Leisure: Greyhound Racing, Working-​Class Culture and the Politics of Unemployment in Inter-​War South Wales’, Sport in History, 32.1 (2012), 53–​73. McKibbin, R., ‘Working-​Class Gambling in Britain 1880–​1939’, Past & Present, 82.1 (1979), 147–​78. Rose, S. O., ‘Sex, Citizenships and the Nation in World War II in Britain’, American Historical Review, 103 (1998), 1147–​76. Taylor, M., ‘Mass-​Observation, Sport and the Second World War’, recording of paper at the Conference of Leisure Studies Association Conference, University of Bolton, 7 April 2009. Taylor, M., ‘Sport and Civilian Morale in the Second World War’, Journal of Contemporary History (2017), 1–​24. Taylor, M. ‘Sport and Civilian Morale in Second World War Britain’. Paper delivered at IHR ‘Leisure and Sport History’ seminar series, 3 October 2011.

Unpublished dissertations, theses and other works Foley, K., ‘Going to the Dogs:  A Social History of Greyhound Racing 1926–​1960’, unpublished MA thesis, Lancaster University, 1998 Indecom International Consultants (2014) Review of certain matters relating to Boarding kennels, submitted to the Department for Agriculture, Food and the Marine. http://​ tinyunl.com/​kenuk8n. Trippier, C., ‘Albion Stadium, Salford’, MA at the University of Salford in 2013.

Websites http://​sbcnews.co.uk/​eruope.uk/​2016/​05/​08 www.gamblingconsultant/​co.uk/​articles/​whogamble

215

Index

AA see Automobile Association AGROA see Allied Greyhound Racecourse and Owners’ Association Aldridge, John 49, 65, 71, 73 Allied Greyhound Racecourse and Owners’ Association (AGROA) 27, 30, 41, 117 ‘American night out’ 14, 22, 76, 120, 123, 129, 138, 190, 197 Archbishop of Canterbury 38 Askwith, Lord 4, 27–​8, 32, 37–​8, 43, 45, 128 Associated Greyhound Racecourses Ltd 33 Associated Parliamentary Group for Parliamentary Welfare 176 The Welfare of Greyhounds (2007) 176 Attlee, Clement 5, 63, 65, 67, 75, 195 Labour governments (1945–​51) 5, 11, 59–​68, 75, 195 Attorney General v. Luncheon Sports Club 41 Automatic Electric Company 89, 147 Automobile Association (AA) 143 BAGS see Bookmakers’ Affiliated Greyhound Scheme Bailey, P. C. 7, 13 Baker, Norman 5, 12, 59 Baldwin, Clarissa 188 Baldwin, Stanley 41, 43 government (1924–​9)  41 Ballyrehan Lass 115 Bartlett, Captain 150–​1 Baylen, Raymond 153 BBC see British Broadcasting Company

Beavan, Brad 8, 13, 114, 197 Leisure, Citizenship and Working-​Class Men in Britain (2004) 8 Bell Punch Totalisator Equipment 195 Belton, Brian 10, 101, 137, 174, 195 Betfair 186 Betfred 185 Betting Act (1853) 41–​2 Betting and Gaming Act (1960) 14, 179, 182, 195 Betting and Gaming Lotteries Act (1963) 180 Betting and Gaming Lotteries Act (1971) 180 Betting and Lotteries Bill/​Act (1934) 4, 10, 22, 34, 40, 46–​9, 64–​5, 79–​80, 95–​6, 125, 147, 152, 161–​2, 179 Bevan, Aneurin (Nye) 5–​6, 34, 136 BGTCS see British Greyhound Tracks Control Society Blythe Bridge breeding farm 112 Bolton 36 and Farnworth Congregational Church 36 Federation of the Church of England’s Men Society 36 Greyhound Racing Company Ltd 81 Greyhound Racing Society 26 bookmakers 25, 28, 67–​9, 70–​4, 96 Bookmakers’ Affiliated Greyhound Scheme (BAGS) 183–​7 BAGS/​SIS Track Championship 185, 187 Bookmakers’ Committee at the Horse Race Levy Board 188

216

216 Bookmakers (Tax) Licence Duty Tax/​Pool Fee/​Scheme 67–​74, 87, 96, 98, 199, 207 Bournemouth Labour Exchange 93 Bradford Greyhound Racing Federation 118 British Broadcasting Company (BBC) 195 British Greyhound Club 181 British Greyhound Federation 164, 181 British Greyhound Racing Federation (1974–​77) 176, 179 The Welfare of Greyhounds (2007) 176 British Greyhound Racing Fund 176 British Greyhound Tracks Control Society (BGTCS) 20, 27, 28, 30, 35, 45, 60, 91, 115 Brough, C. H. 93–​4 Browne, Lt. Col. 33 Buchan, John 4, 38, 51, 81, 127, 143, 145, 166 Buchanan, Mr J. (MP) 47, 90, 95 Burhill kennels 109 Calcutt, Lesley V. 74 Caledonian Investments 185 Cant, Percy 149 Cardiff Athletic Club 137 Cearns, W. J. 33, 175 Chamberlain, Mr 44, 127 Chandler, William 174 Chapman, Percy 84 chief constables passim Bacup 147 Barnsley 147 Birmingham 145 Blackpool 144 Bolton 144 Bradford 144–​5, 151 Brighton 156–​8 Buckinghamshire 151, 153 Burnley 144 Caernarvon 147 Cambridgeshire 153 Cardiff 153–​4 Carmarthenshire 147, 153 Colchester 144 Derby 147 Derbyshire 153 Devon 144, 153 Flint 147 Grantham 147

Index Hampshire 144 Huddersfield 147 Hull 144 Kendal 147 Kent 144 Lancashire 144, 163 Leeds 144 Leicester 144 Lincoln 147 Liverpool 144, 148, 150 Manchester 1, 3, 42, 130, 142, 144, 147, 152 Mansfield 24 Newcastle-​upon-​Tyne  147 Nottingham 147 Oxford 153–​4 Preston 42 Salford 130, 152 Sheffield 144 South Shields 147 Southend-​on-​Sea  144 Sunderland 147 Walsall 147 Wolverhampton 144 Chief Constables’ Association of England and Wales 162–​3, 167 Chief Constables Association of Scotland 15, 159, 163 Chinn, Carl 11, 195 Churchill, Winston 4, 27, 27, 51, 101, 127, 166 CID see Criminal Investigation Department City Tote 71 Clapson, Mark 12, 106, 107–​8, 195 Clapton Orient Football Club 31 Clarry, Mr (MP) 34 Clynes, J. R. 29, 145 Coleman, Ernest Allday 81 Coleman Steeplechase Electric Hare 81 Control of Fuel Dog Races (Association) Order 1947 65–​6 Cope, Alfred 69–​70 Coral/​s 74, 185 Cortesi gang 154–​5 Cotterill, George 36 Council of Action 3 coursing 10 Coventry Bees motorcycle speedway team 175 Criminal Investigation Department (CID) 155, 160, 163, 165

217

Index Cripps, Sir Stafford 4–​5, 49–​51, 67, 129, 154, 159, 168, 195 Critchley, Brigadier-​General A. C. 21–​3, 27, 33, 43, 48, 82–​4 Cunningham, Hugh 6–​7, 13 Leisure in the Industrial Revolution (1980) 6 CUST see Customs and Excise Customs and Excise (CUST) 70–​1 Daily Express 2, 129 Daily Mail 149 Daily News 81, 84 Dalton, Hugh 67, 75 Dane, Sir Lewis 33 Davies, Andrew 7 Davies, Rhys (MP) 40 Dawson, Sir Philip 33 Defence Regulation 18B 155, 158 Devon and Cornwall Bookmakers’ Association 69 Dimont, Charles 125 Dixon, A. L. 145 Dixon, David 3 From Prohibition to Regulation: Bookmaking, Anti-​Gambling and the Law (1991) 3 Dixon, Major L. Lynne 22, 27 Dog Betting Act (1971) 179 dog breeding 106–​19 passim Dog Local Option Bill (1933) 39–​40 dog owning 106–​19 passim Dog Racecourse Betting (Temporary Provision) Act 1947 65–​6 Regional Procedures (Industrial Committees) 65–​6 Dog Racecourse Regulation (1975) 180 Dog Racecourse Totalisator Regulations 180 Dog Racing Bill (1928) 38, 145 Dog Racing Bill (1932) 39 Dog Racing Temporary Order/​Provisions Bill/​Act (1947) 44, 65–​6, 135 dog training 106–​19 passim Done, Fred 185 Donnelly, Jim 188 Donoghue, Lord 188 du Maurier, Sir Gerard 113 Eardsley, C. R. 93 Eckersley, James 149

217 Ede, Chuter 66 Edwards, Superintendent 127 Eger, J. 144 Ellam, Sgt G. 148–​9 Emeryville (California) 23 employment 79–​80 engineers 81, 84 Entertainment Duty 66–​7, 72, 98, 125 Entry Bridge 1, 25, 112 Ernest Hayes of Hove Ltd 71 European Racing Company Ltd 82 Evans, Captain Arthur (MP) 43 Evening News (London) 84 Farnworth 64 Methodist Church 64 Farr, John 84 flapping tracks 2, 12, 20, 20–​35, 68–​9, 87, 92, 94–​100, 108–​19, passim, 136–​7, 164, 166, 173, 196–​7 Foggo, D. 176 Fox, TreNsal 157 France 176 France, James B. 33 Freeman, Arthur 84 Freemantle, Sir Sidney 33, 128 Gainford, Lord 128 gambling turnover 9 Gatrell, V. A. C. 7, 13, 167 GBGB see Greyhound Board of Great Britain Gentle, Sir William 22, 32, 83–​4 Gibbins, Walter Cordley 189 Gibbons, Lt. Col. Sir Walter 36, 143 Gilbert, Rev. E. R. 64 Gillett, Edward 84 Gillett, Thomas Frank 84 Gillett, Woodward 84 Gilmour, Sir John 12, 40, 43, 46–​7, 123, 129, 146 ‘Betting in Britain’ 133 Glasgow 19, 38, 61, 80 Greyhound Racecourses Ltd 33 police 152 Godfrey, Major 130, 152 Gosforth 148, 151 Graham, Captain M. W. A. P. 33 Graham, Robert Osborne 81 Green, Canon Peter 3, 36, 45, 127

218

218 Greene, Graham 154 Brighton Rock 154 Greyhound Association of Wales and the West of England 164 Greyhound Board of Great Britain (GBGB) 21–​2, 173, 176–​7, 184, 186 Greyhound Commitment, an operational charter 177 Greyhound Breeder and Exporter 109 Greyhound Breeder and Gazette 25 Greyhound Breeder Information Centre 106 Greyhound Media Group 185 Greyhound Owner and Breeder 109 greyhound racing attendances 2, 19–​20, 26, 31, 41–​2, 48, 50, 59–​60, 62, 97–​8, 126–​7, 132–​3, 138, 152, 173–​4, 180–​1, 183, 203, 208 breeding 109, 111, 115, 117 costs 110–​11 cruelty 175–​7 enclosures 87 income 95–​8 numbers 107–​9, 116, 119–​20, 164, 176, 189 prize money 41, 95, 118 profits 44–​5, 98, 125 races Cesarewitch 25, 112, 186 Champion Hurdle 25 Coronation Cup 25 Greyhound Derby 25, 100, 108, 175, 186–​7 Greyhound Grand National 25 Greyhound St. Leger 25 Gymcrack 186 Ladbrokes Golden Jacket 186 Northern Flat Championship 25 Oaks 25 Regency 187 The Laurels 25, 108 training 114–​15 Greyhound Racing Association 19, 27, 33, 43–​4, 81, 83, 110, 112, 137, 174 Greyhound Racing Association (Manchester) Limited 33 Greyhound Racing Association Trust Ltd 23, 27, 81, 174 Greyhound Racing Protection Association 11

Index Greyhound Racing Society 28 Greyhound (Racing) Totalisator (Control) Board 43 Greyhound Racing Track (Touring) 83 Greyhound Racing Yearbook for 1933 30 Greyhound Star 187 Greyhound Stud Book 106 greyhound tracks/​stadiums costs of greyhound stadiums 82–​3, 97–​9 employment 90–​4 levy on off-​course betting 180–​1 registered number of greyhounds 177 tracks 2, 20–​2, 60–​2, 75, 81–​2, 87–​94, 173, 181, 183, 189–​90, 200, 207–​8 Aberdere (Glasgow) 205 Abbey Meads (Blunden, Swindon) 173 Albion (Glasgow) 33, 45, 93, 152 Albion (Salford) 33, 48, 137, 199 Albion (Stanley) 204 Albion (Stoke) 199 Aldershot (Surrey) 205 Anfield (Liverpool) 204 Armadale (West Lothian) 205 Arms Park (Cardiff) 81, 96, 98, 133, 137, 199 Ashby-​de-​la-​Zouch  116 Askern (West Riding) 205 Aylston Road (Leicester) 24 Barrowhouse (Lanarkshire) 205 Barry (Glasgow) 205 Belle Vue Stadium (Manchester) 1–​2, 19, 22–​3, 25, 32, 48, 69, 85–​6, 98, 109, 112, 124, 126–​7, 142, 187, 199 Belmont (Dunbar) 205 Bideford (Devon) 153 Blackpool Borough Road 136 Blackpool Greyhound Track, St. Anne’s Road 85, 98, 136, 189 Blackpool Squires Gate 136, 189 Bradford (Legrams Lane) 99, 151 Brandon Gate (Coventry) 174–​5, 199 Breck Park (Liverpool) 24, 26, 148–​9, 199 Brighton and Hove (now Coral Brighton and Hove) 45, 86, 90, 112, 136, 155–​6, 187–​6, 199 Brimington (Derby County) 205 Bristol (Knowles Park) 199

219

Index Brixton 31, 152 Burnley 33, 199 Caerphilly 116 Caledonian (Ayr County) 205 Carntyne (Glasgow) 32, 33, 47, 89–90 Castleford 205 Catford (London) 112 Central Park (Fife) 205 Charlton (London) 27, 31 City Greyhound and Sports Club/​Stadium (Legrams Lane, Bradford) 43, 99 Clapton (London) 32–​3, 44, 62–​3, 90, 160–​1, 189, 191 Cleveland Park (Middlesbrough) 199 Cowdenbeath (Fife) 205 Crayford (London) 31, 160, 186–​7, 189 Crystal Palace (London) 39 Dagenham (London) 31, 85, 189 Darnell (Sheffield) 49, 187, 189, 199 Dartford (London) 27, 31, 153 Deane (West Riding) 205 Dundee 33, 199 Dunstable 27 Edinburgh 45, 199 Edmonton (London) 27, 31, 160–​1 Elland Road (Leeds) 24, 85, 199 Firhall (Glasgow) 204 Fullerton Park (Leeds) 24 Gosforth (Newcastle-​upon-​Tyne)  151 Greenfield (Bradford) 24 Hackney Wick (London) 31–​2, 39, 137, 159–​60, 189 Hall Green (Birmingham) 23–​4, 33, 175, 186, 189, 199 Harlow (Essex) 186 Harringay (London) 23, 33, 44, 47, 50, 62–​3, 65, 82, 85–​6, 90, 126–​7, 130–​1, 160–​2, 189 Hawthorn Grange (Pontypridd) 116, 136 Hendon 85–​6, 90 Henlow 24, 187 Hull (Craven Park) 33, 44 Irvine (Ayr County) 205 Kingbenwith (Devon) 205 King’s Heath (Birmingham) 24, 33, 69, 199

219 Kinsley 187 Leicester 199 Little Hutton (Bolton) 36 Long Easton (Nottingham) 199 Maine Gardens 45 Mansfield and Doncaster 199 Marine Drive (Edinburgh) 33 Middlesbrough 131 Mildenhall (Suffolk) 186 Mond Barton (Exeter) 205 Monmore 186–​7 National Greyhounds (Monmouth/​ Norwich) 199 New Cross 31, 50, 160 Newcastle-​upon-​Tyne  187 Newington (Kent) 205 Owleston (Sheffield) 199 Oxford (Sandy Lane, Cowley) 72–​4, 153–​4, 174 Park Royal 31, 85, 189 Parkside (Hunslet in Leeds) 42 Parkside (Leeds) 204 Pelaw Grange (Chester-​le -​Street) 186, 205 Perry Bar (Burchfield) 187, 199 Perry Hill 31 Peterborough 187 Plymouth 69, 199 Poole 187 Portsmouth 174, 199 Powderhall (Edinburgh) 23, 33 Raikes Park (Bolton) 24, 42 Ramsgate 199 Reading 199 Romford (London) 27, 31, 187, 189 Sansted 204 Seaforth (Liverpool) 204 Shawfield (Glasgow) 186 Shirebrook (Derbyshire) 205 Sittingbourne 187 Southall (London) 31–​2, 150 Southend 199 Spennymoor 90 Stainforth (West Riding) 205 Stamford Bridge (London) 50, 79, 85, 160, 189 Stenhouse (Edinburgh) 205 Stoke 31, 98 Stratford (West Ham) 31, 98 Sunderland 187

220

Index

220 greyhound tracks/​stadiums (cont.) Swansea (Glamorgan) 205 Swindon 187 Tamouth 204 Taunton (Somerset) 205 Temple Mills 31 Thornley (Durham County) 205 Torquay (Devon) 205 Towcester 187 Tredegar 34 Walthamstow (London) 31, 62–​3, 86, 98, 137, 174, 189 Wandsworth (London) 31, 62–​3 Warrington 199 Watford 31 Welsh Harp (London) 19, 23 Welsh White City (Cardiff) 199 Wembley (London) 25, 33, 62–​3, 65, 69, 79, 81, 85, 160–​1 West Ham (London) 25, 65, 81, 86, 98, 112, 137, 150, 174, 189, 199 Wheatley Hill (Durham County) 205 White Castle (Exeter) 200 White City (Ibrox, Glasgow) 33, 69, 98, 199 White City (Liverpool) 48–​9 White City (London) 3, 25, 32–​3, 37, 44, 48, 63, 81, 98, 108, 144, 160–​1, 199 White City (Manchester) 33, 47–​8, 142, 199 Wilshaw (Motherwell) 205 Wimbledon (London) 2–​3, 23, 25, 33, 62–​3, 81, 90–​1, 109–​10, 114–​15, 126, 160–​1, 175, 186, 189, 199 Wolverhampton 199, 205 Wombwell 66, 85 Worksop 205 Yarmouth 187 York 45 Greyhound Trust 106 Gulland, John 3, 35 Canine Casinos (1928) 3, 35 Guntrips Ltd 71 Hackney Town Council 31–​2, 39, 146 Hailsham, Lord 43 Handley, Frederick 155 Hardman, Henry Howard 83–​4

hare coursing 19 Harrisson, Tom 129 Hartropp, James Alfred 83–​4 Heartbreak Harry 115 Heath, Edward 179 Heath, John 36, 124 Hill, Jeff 10, 127 Hiller, W. C. 156–​8 Hills Guide to Greyhound Racing (1952–​53)  131 HLG see Housing and Local Government Hobsbawm, Eric 8 Hollyoak Irish Training Establishment 3 Home Office (HO) 1, 22–​3, 30, 34, 38–​42, 61, 127, 144–​5, 158 Home Secretary 3–​4, 28–​30, 32–​4, 37, 42–​ 3, 66, 81, 129, 144–​6 Hook Estate training centre and kennels 112 House of Commons 14, 34, 146, 196 House of Lords 27 Housing and Local Government (HLG) 64 Howarth, Ernest 84 Huggins, Mike 5, 11, 20, 24–​5, 51, 80, 194, 196 Hull 127 Hynd, H. (MP) 66 Industrial Christian Fellowship 35 Ireland 176, 188, 190 Irish greyhounds 76, 189 Jack Solomon’s Ltd 71 Jennings, Humphrey 129 Joe Coral 59 John Bull 43, 91 John McLauchlan Ltd 150 Johnson, Luke 175 Jones, J. (MP) 10 Jones, Stephen G. 7, 127 Jowitt, Sir William 29, 145 Joyce, Patrick 7 Work, Society and Politics: The Culture of the Factory in Late Victorian Britain (1980) 7 Joynson-​Hicks, William  4, 143 Kearsley Urban District Council (Bolton) 64 Kempton, Arundel 110

221

Index Kemsley, W. F. F. 133 ‘Betting in Britain’ 133 Kendall, Sir Norman 157 Kennell Club 106 Kilmorey 27 Kimver, P. R. 84 Lacey, John 8 Ladbroke Corals 185 Ladbrokes 59, 185–​6 Lambeth Council 32 Lancashire County Police 153 Lavers, G. R. 133 with B. Seebohm Rowntree, English Life and Leisure (1951) 133 LBOs see Licensed Betting Offices League Against Cruel Sports 188 Leeds Greyhound Association Ltd 81 Leeworthy, Daryl 12, 133, 136, 196 Leicester Racecourse 185 Leicestershire Greyhound Racing Ltd 84 Leitch, Archibald Keith 85 Lenmarch, William 83 Lewisham Exchange 93 Licensed Betting Offices (LBOs) 179–​80, 183–​4, 190, 197 Licensed Greyhound Racecourse Association 165 Scotland 165 West Yorkshire Federation 165 Liverpool Greyhound Club 165 Loch, Major-​General Edward Douglas, Lord 28, 33, 43, 115 Logan, D. G. (MP) 48 London 19, 41, 61, 63, 80, 144, 189 Lord Bishop 128 Londonderry, Marquis of 128 Lord’s Day Observance Acts (1780s) 29, 145 Lord’s Day Observance Society 29 Lovat, Lord 43 Lovett, W. F. 46 Lyons, John 43 MacDonald, J. Ramsay 5, 19, 43 Madge, Charles 129 Manchester 7, 19, 36, 38, 48, 60, 80, 127, 130 City Police 127, 152

221 Evening News 127 Guardian 36, 40, 162 Lord Bishop of 130 Watch Committee 36, 124 Mancroft, Lord Stormont Samuel 181 Manners, Lady R. 84 Marie-​Gushin, Geoffrey Maurice 83 Marleybone Police Court 128 Mass Observation (MO) 50, 129–​32, 134–​5, 138, 195 ‘Dog Fever’ (1948) 131–​2 Mass Gambling (1948) 130, 133, 135 Worktown (1937) 129 Maxwell, John 42, 142, 152 May Mansard 115 McGovern, John (MP) 47, 90 McGrath, W. H. 33 McKibbin, Ross 7 Classes and Culture: England 1918–​1951 (1998) 10 Mears, Lt. Col. E. L. 33 Mecca 74 mechanical hare system 86 Inside Sumner 86 Inside McWhirter 86 Outside Breco Silent 86 Outside McCable 86 Outside McGee (McKee) 86 Outside Sumner 86 Mee, Harold F. 84 Merton Council 175 Metropolitan Police 29, 99, 144–​6, 152–​3, 160–​2, 167 Mick the Miller 25, 109–​10, 112 Middlesbrough Greyhound Association 81 Midland Counties Turf Commission 69 Mobile Tote Ltd 150 Moore-​Brabazon, Lt. Col. 29, 39–​40, 43 Morgan, Sir David Hughes 83 Morley Lodge training kennels 112 Munn, Charles 19, 22–​3 NAGL see National Anti-​Gambling League National Anti-​Gambling League (NAGL) 3–​4, 9–​10, 35, 45, 125, 133–​4, 166, 194–​5 National Bookmakers’ Protection Association (NBPA) 20, 28, 69–​74 Banyan 28

222

222 National Council of Evangelical Free Churches Federation 124 National Coursing Club 106 National Emergency Committee of Christian Churches 3 National Emergency Committee of Christian Citizens 35, 38 Facts about Greyhound Racing (1928) 35 National Greyhound Patrons’ Association 66 National Greyhound Racing Board 188 National Greyhound Racing Club (NGRC) 20–​1, 23, 26–​7, 29–​30, 32–​3, 35, 40, 48, 74, 79–​80, 86–​7, 94, 100–​1, 107–​9, 113, 115, 119, 131, 163–​4, 167, 173, 178, 180–​3, 197 National Greyhound Racing Society (NGRS) 12, 19–​23, 26–​8, 37, 40–​1, 43, 45, 47–​9, 51, 59–​61, 65–​6, 71, 74, 79–​80, 82–​3, 86–​90, 94–​101, 107–​9, 110–​15, 117–​19, 128, 135–​7, 146, 164–​5, 167, 178–​81, 196–​7, 200, 204–​5 National League of Education for Gambling 130 National Lottery 187, 195 NBPA see National Bookmakers’ Protection Association Nelson, M. 93 New Zealand 176, 190 Newcastle Police 151 NGRC see National Greyhound Racing Club NGRS see National Greyhound Racing Society Nightingale, Rev. Thomas 36–​7 Nixon, Patrick 188 nonconformity 5 Northern Association of Tote Club Proprietors 43 Northern Bookmakers and Backers’ Protection Society Ltd 42 Northern Captain (MP) 46 Ormsby-​Gore, Rt. Hon. 45, 129, 146 Peacock, Robert (Chief Constable of Manchester) 3, 45 PGTCO see Provincial Greyhound Tracks Central Office Piratin, Phil (MP) 66 police/​policing 126, 130, 142–​68 passim

Index Pool Betting Duty/​Tax 66–​7, 71, 206–​7 Portland, Duchess of 113 Powell, Lt. Col. G. R. 83 Priestley, J. B. 11 Primitive Methodists 3, 43 Provincial Greyhound Tracks Central Office (PGTCO) 20, 27, 34, 60–​1, 66, 72, 74, 82–​3, 87–​8, 90–​1, 95, 97, 107, 110, 115–​19, 131, 135, 163–​5, 167, 182, 205 Group 1–​4 tracks 60 Provincial Greyhound Tracks Federation (1973) 182 Public Entertainment Act 49 Randall, W. J. 9 rational recreation 7, 13, 195 Rawlinson, John Molyneux 43 Rawson, Sir Alfred Cooper (MP) 157 Risk Capital Partners 175 Rose, Sonya 9 Rowlatt, Sir Sidney Arthur Taylor 29 see also Royal Commission on Betting, Lotteries and Gaming Rowntree, B. Seebohm 3–​4, 35, 45 with G. R. Lavers, English Life and Leisure (1951) 133 Royal Commission on Betting, Lotteries and Gaming 22, 46, 61, 67, 69–​72, 133, 159, 163–​4, 179, 195 Royal Commission on Gambling (1976–​78) 107, 165, 182–​3 Royal Commission on Lotteries and Betting (1932–​33) 29, 34, 40, 45–​8, 89, 116, 180 Rushton, Thomas 176 RSPCA 176 Sabini, Charles 154–​5 Sabini, Darby (also Derby) 154–​5 Sabini, Frederick 154–​5 Sabini, Harry 153 Sabini, Joseph 154 Sabini, Ottavio (Ottavius) Handley 130, 154–​7 Sabinis 130, 154–​9, 197 Salford 7, 38, 60, 152 and District National Committee of the Evangelical Free Churches 36 Satellite Information Services (SIS) 184–​6

223

Index Savage, Mike 8 Scottish Football Association 42 Scottish Greyhound Racing Co. Ltd 33 Second World War 5, 13, 20, 34, 46, 48–​51, 59–​60, 63, 96, 129, 135, 154, 194–​5 Select Committee on the Betting Duty (1923) 3 Sherman survey 195 Shinwell, Manny 65 Shuttleworth, I. 41–​2 Shuttleworth v. Leeds Greyhound Racing Company (1932) 41, 127, 147 Skerritt, William 112 Sky (TV) Sports 185, 195 Smith, J. (of Peckham) 29–​30 Smith, Owen Patrick 19, 23 South Africa 176, 190 South London Greyhound Association Racecourse Ltd 148 Spectator 9 Spender, Humphrey 129 St. Stephen Parochial Church Council, Farnworth 64 Standing Conference of Women’s Organisations 65 Stanley, Hon. R. 182 Stanley, Oliver F. G. 30 Star Sports 187 Stevens, Lt. Col. F. A. D 145 Strathan Council 150 Strathan v. Albion Greyhound (Glasgow) Ltd 152 Street Beting Act (1906) 3 Sunday Closure debate 29–​30 Sunday Times 176 Sunderland Echo 176 Tarist 110 Taught, Superintendent 151 Taylor, James 150 Taylor, M. 157 Taylor, Matthew 50 The British Totalisator Manufacturers’ Conference 89 The City and Provincial Dog Racing and Trackster House Ltd 84 The Council of Christian Ministers on Social Questions Joint Committee 45

223 The European Racing Company Ltd 81 The Greyhound Mirror and Gazette 25 The Greyhound Racing Association of South Wales 83–​4 The Greyhound Racing Yearbook 1933 30, 90, 110 The League Against Cruel Sports 176 The State of Greyhound Racing in Great Britain: A Mandate for Change (2014) 176 The Lord’s Day Observance Society 29 The Metropolitan Dog Racing Association 182 The Midland Dog Racing Association 82 The Morning Post 142 The Nottingham Greyhound Racing Company Ltd 82–​3 The Portable Dog Racing Trackster House Ltd 84 The Southern Course Racing Stadium Company 81 The Stratford Express 174 The Times 176 Thirsk Racecourse 185 Thomas, Kenneth 83 tote or totalisator 41–​6, passim, 63, 87 All-​Electric Totalisator  147 Bell Punch Totalisator Equipment 88 human tote 147–​52 Premier Totalisator 147 Tote Act (1928) 42 Tote Bill (1969) 178 tote clubs 41–​2, 147–​8 crisis (1932–​34) 4, 20, 40–​6, 109–​10, 146–​54, 160 Tote Pool Betting Duty (1948) 66–​8, 72–​4, 83, 87, 90, 98, 107, 111, 178 tote take 44–​5, 62, 73 tote tracks 42 tote turnover 44, 51, 60, 68, 72, 74, 98 Touring Greyhound Race Ltd 82 Town and Country Planning Act (1932) 39 Town Planning Act (1925) 38–​9 Trenchard, Lord Hugh 150, 161 Truth 10 Tryan, Rt. Hon. G. C. (MP) 136 Turf Guardians 9 Turf TV 185

224

Index

224 Urban District Council Association 40, 64 United States 1, 19–​20, 23, 51, 175 Waggles substitution case 165 Wall Street Crash (1929) 40 Waterloo Cup 106 Watkins, Hugh 92–​3 Wells, H. Garland 33, 43, 66 Welsh National Sporting Association 69 Wembley (Greyhound and) Speedway Control Board 66 Wesleyan Methodist Conference 38 West Ham Greyhound Racing Ltd 81 West of England Bookmakers’ Protection Society 69 Western Mail 129 Westmorland, Earl of 182 White, Alf (‘Big Alf ’) 159, 197 White City Racing Association 32

Whitley, Viscount Ward of 182 William Hill Ltd 59, 71, 74, 185–​6 Williams, T. (MP) 47, 90 Wilson, Len. C. 131 Wimbledon Stadium News Bulletin 114 Wombwell (Barnsley) speedway track 66 Worth, Percy 163 The Security Side of Greyhound Racing 163 Yates, G. 69–​70 Yiddishers 154 YMCA see Young Men’s Christian Association Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) 44, 127 Zweig, Ferdinand 132–​4, 195 Labour, Life and Poverty (1949) 132 The British Worker (1952) 132–​3