Mike Huggins | University of Cumbria (original) (raw)
Papers by Mike Huggins
H orseracing has a powerful claim to be Britain's leading interwar sport. Cricket had its adheren... more H orseracing has a powerful claim to be Britain's leading interwar sport. Cricket had its adherents; indeed, Jack Williams, the historian of interwar cricket, shows that its supporters presented it as the English 'national game'. 1 But British racegoers claimed that racing was 'our real national sport'. 2 On the basis of active participation, cricket was certainly superior with somewhere between 200,000 and 400,000 playing each week in the early 1930s, although football had even more participants, with 37,000 clubs affiliated to the Football Association by 1937, and many others unaffiliated. In terms of spectatorship, First Division soccer attracted average crowds of over 30,000 in 1938-39, but cricket only got large crowds for test matches and a few important county matches, and these probably never exceeded 50,000 in a single day. Such figures were dwarfed by the crowds attracted to racing's 'national' events: the Grand National, the Derby, 'Royal' Ascot and the Doncaster St Leger. Even small racemeetings got higher crowds than most country cricket games. If a third criterion, interest in betting on the sport, was included, horseracing was supreme, although football pools and greyhound racing were also important. It was racing, not cricket or soccer, which really sold newspapers across Britain. Widespread public interest in results, longer traditions, its year-round season and largest crowds, all support racing's claims as Britain's leading national sport. Yet Ross McKibbin's critically well-received book on classes and cultures in England between 1918 and 1951 marginalised racing, arguing that: Horseracing was a national sport only by a somewhat skewed definition of 'national'. What made it 'national' was popular betting which linked a mass of working-class betters to a sport which was, in fact, aristocratic-plutocratic. Without betting it would have been no more national than 12-metre yachting or deer hunting … many had little interest in horses or horseracing as such. The middle class as a whole and the sober, serious working class were even more indifferent, even hostile. 3 was strongly anti-racing but its numbers, never large, were dropping, while the Church of England was divided and the Roman Catholic Church showed little opposition. Although Labour and Liberal activists and politicians were generally negative, racing was popular amongst many of their voters. The Civil Service, formerly opposed to betting, was split. The Home Office was opposed, but the Customs and Excise and Post Office departments both encouraged it as a useful source of revenue. As the popularity of betting and racing rose, debates over their meaning and importance faded. By the 1930s interest in and support for racing could be found right across the social scale. Increasingly it seemed exciting yet safe. Those worried about class revolution entered racing in large numbers because it had traditional and conservative features. This fascinating variation of views provided a starting point for this study. Popular images of the interwar years have focused largely on mass unemployment, the General Strike, increasing government control, or improved welfare and education. Yet the period also saw a major spurt of growth in leisure, recreation and sport. Mass unemployment and business depression coexisted with increased standards of living within some sectors and for some social groups, creating tensions and opportunities which heightened and transformed social attitudes to leisure. Britain was the originator of much modern sport, and in turn sport was a paradigm of British culture. Historians have been slow to develop an understanding of the way sports influenced and were influenced by the cultural, social and economic changes of the interwar years, a sporting era aptly described by Sir Derek Birley as 'confusing and sometimes contentious', with key continuities alongside a strengthening of professionalism and commercialism. 9 This ambiguity about the treatment of interwar leisure and sport as a whole has not been aided by the potentially problematic role of social class in sport. Sports were differentially presented as 'upper class', 'middle class' or 'working class' in different social contexts. Sport could both unite and divide. Professionalism and amateurism, gender roles, commercialism, and the extent to which physical violence or active support was acceptable were all issues of debate. Sport was popular throughout the class structure of much of Britain, although some of its manifestations were very unpopular with a minority. Class as culture is a complex manifestation, and its visions were socially constructed. The picture sports provided was highly complex, subtle and more nuanced than historians have admitted. For example, some at least amongst the middle classes were always attracted, for a variety of reasons, to more supposedly 'workingclass' sports, including those sports like racing associated with drink and gambling. This could be due to earlier working-class origins, the attractions of More importantly, it helps to move forward our understanding of the ways in which social class, gender, culture and leisure related to each other during this period. McKibbin argues that interwar Britain was characterised by a major divide between manual and non-manual workers, and that leisure, lifestyle and employment created subcultures which he calls 'working-class culture' and 'middle-class culture'. Yet at the same time he accepts that 'England had no common culture, rather a set of overlapping ones', although the sports played and watched were partially at least self-enclosed and determined by class. 11 The social theorist W. G. Runciman sees the cultural gulf between the two major social groups, the working and middle classes, as important in terms of selfascription, but he attaches more importance to employment conditions and self-ascribed status. 12 In leisure terms, Cunningham's picture of overlapping leisure cultures in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is potentially useful, discriminating as it does an upper-class 'leisure' class, 'urban middleclass' and 'artisan' cultures, separate 'religious' and 'rationalist' 'reformist' leisure cultures, 'rural' and 'urban' popular culture forms. But Cunningham has been criticised both for an overly-simplistic picture of middle-class leisure, and for underestimating the extent to which cultural roles in particular leisure contexts were fluid. 13 It is becoming increasingly clear that while social distinctions were still expressed in class terms, social roles were increasingly dependent on leisure contexts. 14 A polarised dichotomous view of class might be embraced at work but not in wider leisure relationships. There might be strong consciousness of status divisions within a middle-class group, yet the group might present a solid face to the world. The spatial aspects of class, expressed in the more middle-class ethos of the suburbs, and the more working-class feel of terraced city streets or newly-built council estates, clearly had their effects. But there were manual labourers in the suburbs, and clerks in city streets, embracing or standing against locally dominant cultural practices like betting. Racing has often been seen as a sport which united the top and bottom of British society. Certainly in part, but only in part, racing was a sport which relied on the continued persistence of working-class deference, and a strong emphasis on rank and status within the sport, helping it sustain a clear rearguard defence of hierarchy. Runciman has presented powerful arguments that fundamental, societal-level changes in social, economic and political practice, and resultant shifting patterns of class, were a result of the First World War, arguing that notions of natural hierarchy were under attack from 1915 onwards. 15 Yet gentlemanliness, and its characteristic sporting amateurism, still complex geographical divisions between north and south, and between the middle classes in competing regions or cities such as Liverpool and Manchester. So in what ways were the middle classes involved in racing? Were they, as McKibbin has suggested, indifferent or even hostile? Not so. In fact the middle classes were increasingly supportive, taking part as spectators, owners, trainers and investors, occupying professional roles in racing's administration, placing bets or heading bookmaking firms. For some, with anti-working-class attitudes, often coupling snobbery and wish-fulfilment, it was the upper-class owners from which they took their model. Others were prepared sometimes to move across what were in reality by this period, highly porous divisions between classes, and between 'roughs' and 'respectables', to enjoy racing's liminal pleasures. Betting could be presented as essentially modernistic, and the reliable, known salary of the middle classes, stepped by age and promotion, allowed them to indulge betting, ownership or spectatorship as a leisure habit. Although the separation of suburban home and work sometimes confined sociability, people in many middle-class occupations, from industrialists to merchants, lawyers to shopkeepers, were able to attend nearby race meetings a few times a year. The bulk of racehorse owners were middle class. Others derived substantial incomes from economic activities which ministered to the needs of the racing world. In terms of academic racing historiography the interwar period has been addressed only en passant in histories covering longer time periods and emphasising economic rather that cultural features. Wray Vamplew's well-researched The Turf focused on regulation of the sport, changes in transport, betting and bookmakers, ownership and breeding, and the lives of jockeys and trainers, covering the last two hundred years. 20 It could profitably be read in conjunction with my recent culturally-oriented study of flat racing from 1790 to 1914. 21 The economic...
Sport and the English, 1918-1939 is a comprehensive, accessible and innovative analysis of sport ... more Sport and the English, 1918-1939 is a comprehensive, accessible and innovative analysis of sport as an expression of the values and social relations of a nation. Bringing the central place of sport in English life between the wars into sharp focus, this insightful history provides us with a fresh perspective on issues of gender, class, religion and identity, and ideas of morality, continuity and change. Themes include: - the nature of sport and its place in national life - how sport was portrayed in the media and through the sports stars of the age - tradition and change in sport and in society - gaining meaning from sport: the pursuit of pleasure, a moral code, and ideas of Englishness - class, social conflict and social cohesion This original and lucid study is ideal for students of sport and social history, and anyone with an interest in the social role of sport
The International Journal of the History of Sport
On 6 August 1967, the Sunday Express published a cartoon by its regular contributor, Giles (Figur... more On 6 August 1967, the Sunday Express published a cartoon by its regular contributor, Giles (Figure 1). It represents a group of visitors at a museum, attending to a uniformed guard who adopts an oratorical stance while expounding on the virtues of one of the many works displayed on the walls of these ornate surroundings. One of the museum visitors, however, has chosen to ignore this official commentary, listening instead to a sports commentary delivered on the small transistor radio he holds to his ear. Billions of these popular cultural artefacts were sold globally during the 1960s, and became a common sight at sports grounds, as owners listened to commentary and results elsewhere. Here it is specifically a football match that captures the museum visitor’s attention far more than the surrounding art, as the radio commentator announces, as articulated in the accompanying caption, ‘Greaves passes to Gilzean, Gilzean to Greaves, Greaves puts the ball across to Mackay, brilliant header by Chalmers . . .’. The inclusion in the commentary of the names of well-known players – Jimmy Greaves, Alan Gilzean and Dave Mackay of Tottenham Hotspur and Steve Chalmers of Celtic – enables a precise identification of the match being played. On the previous day these two teams had met at Hampden Park in Glasgow in a pre-season friendly; Tottenham appeared as FA Cup victors (having recently beaten Chelsea 2–1) and Celtic as the first British team to bring home the European Cup (having defeated Inter Milan 2–1 in Portugal). This careful staging of a match between the winners of the so-called ‘Cockney Cup Final’ and the ‘Lisbon Lions’ was clearly designed to reflect the current strength of British football, and stand on the shoulders of England’s famous victory in the World Cup the previous summer. It also reflected an increasing media attention devoted to football, not least of all an expansion of television coverage. For example, the BBC’s flagship football programme Match of the Day had first been broadcast just three years earlier in 1964 and live coverage of big games in the FA Cup, the European Cup and the World Cup was increasingly becoming the norm. Football, along with other forms of mass entertainment such as pop music, was changing the face of British culture. In this context, Giles’s cartoon notably highlights the transgressive potential of popular culture when it invades a notionally more highbrow environment, such as
Routledge Handbook of Global Sport, 2020
Flat Racing and British Society 1790–1914, 2014
Choice Reviews Online, 2003
H orseracing has a powerful claim to be Britain's leading interwar sport. Cricket had its adheren... more H orseracing has a powerful claim to be Britain's leading interwar sport. Cricket had its adherents; indeed, Jack Williams, the historian of interwar cricket, shows that its supporters presented it as the English 'national game'. 1 But British racegoers claimed that racing was 'our real national sport'. 2 On the basis of active participation, cricket was certainly superior with somewhere between 200,000 and 400,000 playing each week in the early 1930s, although football had even more participants, with 37,000 clubs affiliated to the Football Association by 1937, and many others unaffiliated. In terms of spectatorship, First Division soccer attracted average crowds of over 30,000 in 1938-39, but cricket only got large crowds for test matches and a few important county matches, and these probably never exceeded 50,000 in a single day. Such figures were dwarfed by the crowds attracted to racing's 'national' events: the Grand National, the Derby, 'Royal' Ascot and the Doncaster St Leger. Even small racemeetings got higher crowds than most country cricket games. If a third criterion, interest in betting on the sport, was included, horseracing was supreme, although football pools and greyhound racing were also important. It was racing, not cricket or soccer, which really sold newspapers across Britain. Widespread public interest in results, longer traditions, its year-round season and largest crowds, all support racing's claims as Britain's leading national sport. Yet Ross McKibbin's critically well-received book on classes and cultures in England between 1918 and 1951 marginalised racing, arguing that: Horseracing was a national sport only by a somewhat skewed definition of 'national'. What made it 'national' was popular betting which linked a mass of working-class betters to a sport which was, in fact, aristocratic-plutocratic. Without betting it would have been no more national than 12-metre yachting or deer hunting … many had little interest in horses or horseracing as such. The middle class as a whole and the sober, serious working class were even more indifferent, even hostile. 3 was strongly anti-racing but its numbers, never large, were dropping, while the Church of England was divided and the Roman Catholic Church showed little opposition. Although Labour and Liberal activists and politicians were generally negative, racing was popular amongst many of their voters. The Civil Service, formerly opposed to betting, was split. The Home Office was opposed, but the Customs and Excise and Post Office departments both encouraged it as a useful source of revenue. As the popularity of betting and racing rose, debates over their meaning and importance faded. By the 1930s interest in and support for racing could be found right across the social scale. Increasingly it seemed exciting yet safe. Those worried about class revolution entered racing in large numbers because it had traditional and conservative features. This fascinating variation of views provided a starting point for this study. Popular images of the interwar years have focused largely on mass unemployment, the General Strike, increasing government control, or improved welfare and education. Yet the period also saw a major spurt of growth in leisure, recreation and sport. Mass unemployment and business depression coexisted with increased standards of living within some sectors and for some social groups, creating tensions and opportunities which heightened and transformed social attitudes to leisure. Britain was the originator of much modern sport, and in turn sport was a paradigm of British culture. Historians have been slow to develop an understanding of the way sports influenced and were influenced by the cultural, social and economic changes of the interwar years, a sporting era aptly described by Sir Derek Birley as 'confusing and sometimes contentious', with key continuities alongside a strengthening of professionalism and commercialism. 9 This ambiguity about the treatment of interwar leisure and sport as a whole has not been aided by the potentially problematic role of social class in sport. Sports were differentially presented as 'upper class', 'middle class' or 'working class' in different social contexts. Sport could both unite and divide. Professionalism and amateurism, gender roles, commercialism, and the extent to which physical violence or active support was acceptable were all issues of debate. Sport was popular throughout the class structure of much of Britain, although some of its manifestations were very unpopular with a minority. Class as culture is a complex manifestation, and its visions were socially constructed. The picture sports provided was highly complex, subtle and more nuanced than historians have admitted. For example, some at least amongst the middle classes were always attracted, for a variety of reasons, to more supposedly 'workingclass' sports, including those sports like racing associated with drink and gambling. This could be due to earlier working-class origins, the attractions of More importantly, it helps to move forward our understanding of the ways in which social class, gender, culture and leisure related to each other during this period. McKibbin argues that interwar Britain was characterised by a major divide between manual and non-manual workers, and that leisure, lifestyle and employment created subcultures which he calls 'working-class culture' and 'middle-class culture'. Yet at the same time he accepts that 'England had no common culture, rather a set of overlapping ones', although the sports played and watched were partially at least self-enclosed and determined by class. 11 The social theorist W. G. Runciman sees the cultural gulf between the two major social groups, the working and middle classes, as important in terms of selfascription, but he attaches more importance to employment conditions and self-ascribed status. 12 In leisure terms, Cunningham's picture of overlapping leisure cultures in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is potentially useful, discriminating as it does an upper-class 'leisure' class, 'urban middleclass' and 'artisan' cultures, separate 'religious' and 'rationalist' 'reformist' leisure cultures, 'rural' and 'urban' popular culture forms. But Cunningham has been criticised both for an overly-simplistic picture of middle-class leisure, and for underestimating the extent to which cultural roles in particular leisure contexts were fluid. 13 It is becoming increasingly clear that while social distinctions were still expressed in class terms, social roles were increasingly dependent on leisure contexts. 14 A polarised dichotomous view of class might be embraced at work but not in wider leisure relationships. There might be strong consciousness of status divisions within a middle-class group, yet the group might present a solid face to the world. The spatial aspects of class, expressed in the more middle-class ethos of the suburbs, and the more working-class feel of terraced city streets or newly-built council estates, clearly had their effects. But there were manual labourers in the suburbs, and clerks in city streets, embracing or standing against locally dominant cultural practices like betting. Racing has often been seen as a sport which united the top and bottom of British society. Certainly in part, but only in part, racing was a sport which relied on the continued persistence of working-class deference, and a strong emphasis on rank and status within the sport, helping it sustain a clear rearguard defence of hierarchy. Runciman has presented powerful arguments that fundamental, societal-level changes in social, economic and political practice, and resultant shifting patterns of class, were a result of the First World War, arguing that notions of natural hierarchy were under attack from 1915 onwards. 15 Yet gentlemanliness, and its characteristic sporting amateurism, still complex geographical divisions between north and south, and between the middle classes in competing regions or cities such as Liverpool and Manchester. So in what ways were the middle classes involved in racing? Were they, as McKibbin has suggested, indifferent or even hostile? Not so. In fact the middle classes were increasingly supportive, taking part as spectators, owners, trainers and investors, occupying professional roles in racing's administration, placing bets or heading bookmaking firms. For some, with anti-working-class attitudes, often coupling snobbery and wish-fulfilment, it was the upper-class owners from which they took their model. Others were prepared sometimes to move across what were in reality by this period, highly porous divisions between classes, and between 'roughs' and 'respectables', to enjoy racing's liminal pleasures. Betting could be presented as essentially modernistic, and the reliable, known salary of the middle classes, stepped by age and promotion, allowed them to indulge betting, ownership or spectatorship as a leisure habit. Although the separation of suburban home and work sometimes confined sociability, people in many middle-class occupations, from industrialists to merchants, lawyers to shopkeepers, were able to attend nearby race meetings a few times a year. The bulk of racehorse owners were middle class. Others derived substantial incomes from economic activities which ministered to the needs of the racing world. In terms of academic racing historiography the interwar period has been addressed only en passant in histories covering longer time periods and emphasising economic rather that cultural features. Wray Vamplew's well-researched The Turf focused on regulation of the sport, changes in transport, betting and bookmakers, ownership and breeding, and the lives of jockeys and trainers, covering the last two hundred years. 20 It could profitably be read in conjunction with my recent culturally-oriented study of flat racing from 1790 to 1914. 21 The economic...
Usage of any items from the University of Cumbria's institutional repository 'Insight' must confo... more Usage of any items from the University of Cumbria's institutional repository 'Insight' must conform to the following fair usage guidelines. Any item and its associated metadata held in the University of Cumbria's institutional repository Insight (unless stated otherwise on the metadata record) may be copied, displayed or performed, and stored in line with the JISC fair dealing guidelines (available here) for educational and not-for-profit activities provided that • the authors, title and full bibliographic details of the item are cited clearly when any part of the work is referred to verbally or in the written form • a hyperlink/URL to the original Insight record of that item is included in any citations of the work • the content is not changed in any way • all files required for usage of the item are kept together with the main item file. You may not • sell any part of an item • refer to any part of an item without citation • amend any item or contextualise it in a way that will impugn the creator's reputation • remove or alter the copyright statement on an item. The full policy can be found here.
Flat Racing and British Society 1790–1914, 2014
J.A. Mangan’s work has long been recognized as providing a strong stimulus to further historical ... more J.A. Mangan’s work has long been recognized as providing a strong stimulus to further historical investigation of the complex and highly nuanced inter-relationships between athleticism, masculinity and education. This paper explores his work on masculinity, and suggests some of the more fruitful ways in which his work can be taken forward. Recent work has shown, for example, the multiple masculinities that emerge in educational contexts in private and state schools and universities, moving beyond athleticism to explore their other dimensions. The sociology of the body has stimulated research on embodiment, queer studies and sexuality which can certainly be applied to schooling. Masculinity and femininity are both aspects of gender order and inter-related. Recent feminist work can be helpfully drawn on to examine male-female relationships inside and outside schools in terms of boys’ masculinity constructions. Finally, the history of the relationship between masculinity, sport and rel...
Vice and the Victorians explores the ways the Victorian world gave meanings to the word ‘vice’, a... more Vice and the Victorians explores the ways the Victorian world gave meanings to the word ‘vice’, and the role this complex notion played in shaping society. Mike Huggins provides a richer and more nuanced understanding of a term that, despite its vital importance to the Victorians, has thus far lacked a clear definition. Each chapter explores a different facet of vice. Firstly, the book seeks to define exactly what vice meant to the Victorians, exploring how the language of vice was used as a tool to beat down opposition and dissent. It considers the spatial dimension of vice in the public and private spheres, before moving on to look at specific vices: the unholy trinity of drink, sex and gambling. Finally, it shifts from vice to virtue and the efforts of moral reformers, and reassesses the relationship between vice and respectability in Victorian life. In his lively and engaging discussion, Mike Huggins draws on a range of theory and exploits a wide variety of texts and images from the periodical press, parliamentary reports and Acts, novels, obscene publications, paintings and posters, newspapers, sermons, pamphlets and investigative works. This will be an illuminating text for undergraduates studying Victorian Britain as well as anyone wishing to gain a more nuanced understanding of Victorian society.
Histoire sociale/Social history, 2019
Horseracing and the British 1919–39, Oct 6, 2010
I n 1923 an assistant mistress of a London County Council boys' school reported that betting was ... more I n 1923 an assistant mistress of a London County Council boys' school reported that betting was fairly general in her class. While she and the head took this seriously, the boys treated it as nothing wrong, and her remonstrations as a joke. They were actually 'encouraged by their parents'. She felt helpless. She could not go to the police because 'in a poor neighbourhood it is a very dangerous thing to excite the animosity of the parents'. 1 The popularity of betting in that particular culture was clear. His Majesty's Inspectors of Schools felt in 1924 that such reports were exaggerated. 2 HMI were in no position to know. Pupils were unlikely to boast to an unknown, middle-class visiting school inspector of their involvement in illegal gambling. Betting was probably exceeded only by cinema-going as the leading leisure spending activity during the interwar years. 3 The 1853 Betting Houses Act and 1906 Street Betting Act had both assumed that the perceived 'problem' of working-class cash betting could be substantially reduced by prohibition and police action. They were wrong. Enforcement was erratic, courts were unwilling to imprison offenders, and bookmakers evaded the law. By contrast both oncourse cash betting and credit betting remained legal. So credit bookmakers in most towns catered for middle-and upper-class off-course horserace betting. Despite betting's popularity we still know less than we should about its social and cultural meanings. The two state-initiated reports on betting, those of the Select Committee on Betting Duty of 1923 and the Royal Commission on Lotteries and Betting of 1933, were concerned almost entirely with the supposedly adverse consequences of working-class betting, mediating the views of punters through the eyes and ears of anti-gamblers, police, bookmakers, the Jockey Club, or similar interest groups. A pathological view of betting, and the ethical, moral, social and economic arguments surrounding its consequences, dominated. The real meanings of betting for ordinary people were neglected.
Flat Racing and British Society 1790–1914, 2014
H orseracing has a powerful claim to be Britain's leading interwar sport. Cricket had its adheren... more H orseracing has a powerful claim to be Britain's leading interwar sport. Cricket had its adherents; indeed, Jack Williams, the historian of interwar cricket, shows that its supporters presented it as the English 'national game'. 1 But British racegoers claimed that racing was 'our real national sport'. 2 On the basis of active participation, cricket was certainly superior with somewhere between 200,000 and 400,000 playing each week in the early 1930s, although football had even more participants, with 37,000 clubs affiliated to the Football Association by 1937, and many others unaffiliated. In terms of spectatorship, First Division soccer attracted average crowds of over 30,000 in 1938-39, but cricket only got large crowds for test matches and a few important county matches, and these probably never exceeded 50,000 in a single day. Such figures were dwarfed by the crowds attracted to racing's 'national' events: the Grand National, the Derby, 'Royal' Ascot and the Doncaster St Leger. Even small racemeetings got higher crowds than most country cricket games. If a third criterion, interest in betting on the sport, was included, horseracing was supreme, although football pools and greyhound racing were also important. It was racing, not cricket or soccer, which really sold newspapers across Britain. Widespread public interest in results, longer traditions, its year-round season and largest crowds, all support racing's claims as Britain's leading national sport. Yet Ross McKibbin's critically well-received book on classes and cultures in England between 1918 and 1951 marginalised racing, arguing that: Horseracing was a national sport only by a somewhat skewed definition of 'national'. What made it 'national' was popular betting which linked a mass of working-class betters to a sport which was, in fact, aristocratic-plutocratic. Without betting it would have been no more national than 12-metre yachting or deer hunting … many had little interest in horses or horseracing as such. The middle class as a whole and the sober, serious working class were even more indifferent, even hostile. 3 was strongly anti-racing but its numbers, never large, were dropping, while the Church of England was divided and the Roman Catholic Church showed little opposition. Although Labour and Liberal activists and politicians were generally negative, racing was popular amongst many of their voters. The Civil Service, formerly opposed to betting, was split. The Home Office was opposed, but the Customs and Excise and Post Office departments both encouraged it as a useful source of revenue. As the popularity of betting and racing rose, debates over their meaning and importance faded. By the 1930s interest in and support for racing could be found right across the social scale. Increasingly it seemed exciting yet safe. Those worried about class revolution entered racing in large numbers because it had traditional and conservative features. This fascinating variation of views provided a starting point for this study. Popular images of the interwar years have focused largely on mass unemployment, the General Strike, increasing government control, or improved welfare and education. Yet the period also saw a major spurt of growth in leisure, recreation and sport. Mass unemployment and business depression coexisted with increased standards of living within some sectors and for some social groups, creating tensions and opportunities which heightened and transformed social attitudes to leisure. Britain was the originator of much modern sport, and in turn sport was a paradigm of British culture. Historians have been slow to develop an understanding of the way sports influenced and were influenced by the cultural, social and economic changes of the interwar years, a sporting era aptly described by Sir Derek Birley as 'confusing and sometimes contentious', with key continuities alongside a strengthening of professionalism and commercialism. 9 This ambiguity about the treatment of interwar leisure and sport as a whole has not been aided by the potentially problematic role of social class in sport. Sports were differentially presented as 'upper class', 'middle class' or 'working class' in different social contexts. Sport could both unite and divide. Professionalism and amateurism, gender roles, commercialism, and the extent to which physical violence or active support was acceptable were all issues of debate. Sport was popular throughout the class structure of much of Britain, although some of its manifestations were very unpopular with a minority. Class as culture is a complex manifestation, and its visions were socially constructed. The picture sports provided was highly complex, subtle and more nuanced than historians have admitted. For example, some at least amongst the middle classes were always attracted, for a variety of reasons, to more supposedly 'workingclass' sports, including those sports like racing associated with drink and gambling. This could be due to earlier working-class origins, the attractions of More importantly, it helps to move forward our understanding of the ways in which social class, gender, culture and leisure related to each other during this period. McKibbin argues that interwar Britain was characterised by a major divide between manual and non-manual workers, and that leisure, lifestyle and employment created subcultures which he calls 'working-class culture' and 'middle-class culture'. Yet at the same time he accepts that 'England had no common culture, rather a set of overlapping ones', although the sports played and watched were partially at least self-enclosed and determined by class. 11 The social theorist W. G. Runciman sees the cultural gulf between the two major social groups, the working and middle classes, as important in terms of selfascription, but he attaches more importance to employment conditions and self-ascribed status. 12 In leisure terms, Cunningham's picture of overlapping leisure cultures in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is potentially useful, discriminating as it does an upper-class 'leisure' class, 'urban middleclass' and 'artisan' cultures, separate 'religious' and 'rationalist' 'reformist' leisure cultures, 'rural' and 'urban' popular culture forms. But Cunningham has been criticised both for an overly-simplistic picture of middle-class leisure, and for underestimating the extent to which cultural roles in particular leisure contexts were fluid. 13 It is becoming increasingly clear that while social distinctions were still expressed in class terms, social roles were increasingly dependent on leisure contexts. 14 A polarised dichotomous view of class might be embraced at work but not in wider leisure relationships. There might be strong consciousness of status divisions within a middle-class group, yet the group might present a solid face to the world. The spatial aspects of class, expressed in the more middle-class ethos of the suburbs, and the more working-class feel of terraced city streets or newly-built council estates, clearly had their effects. But there were manual labourers in the suburbs, and clerks in city streets, embracing or standing against locally dominant cultural practices like betting. Racing has often been seen as a sport which united the top and bottom of British society. Certainly in part, but only in part, racing was a sport which relied on the continued persistence of working-class deference, and a strong emphasis on rank and status within the sport, helping it sustain a clear rearguard defence of hierarchy. Runciman has presented powerful arguments that fundamental, societal-level changes in social, economic and political practice, and resultant shifting patterns of class, were a result of the First World War, arguing that notions of natural hierarchy were under attack from 1915 onwards. 15 Yet gentlemanliness, and its characteristic sporting amateurism, still complex geographical divisions between north and south, and between the middle classes in competing regions or cities such as Liverpool and Manchester. So in what ways were the middle classes involved in racing? Were they, as McKibbin has suggested, indifferent or even hostile? Not so. In fact the middle classes were increasingly supportive, taking part as spectators, owners, trainers and investors, occupying professional roles in racing's administration, placing bets or heading bookmaking firms. For some, with anti-working-class attitudes, often coupling snobbery and wish-fulfilment, it was the upper-class owners from which they took their model. Others were prepared sometimes to move across what were in reality by this period, highly porous divisions between classes, and between 'roughs' and 'respectables', to enjoy racing's liminal pleasures. Betting could be presented as essentially modernistic, and the reliable, known salary of the middle classes, stepped by age and promotion, allowed them to indulge betting, ownership or spectatorship as a leisure habit. Although the separation of suburban home and work sometimes confined sociability, people in many middle-class occupations, from industrialists to merchants, lawyers to shopkeepers, were able to attend nearby race meetings a few times a year. The bulk of racehorse owners were middle class. Others derived substantial incomes from economic activities which ministered to the needs of the racing world. In terms of academic racing historiography the interwar period has been addressed only en passant in histories covering longer time periods and emphasising economic rather that cultural features. Wray Vamplew's well-researched The Turf focused on regulation of the sport, changes in transport, betting and bookmakers, ownership and breeding, and the lives of jockeys and trainers, covering the last two hundred years. 20 It could profitably be read in conjunction with my recent culturally-oriented study of flat racing from 1790 to 1914. 21 The economic...
Sport and the English, 1918-1939 is a comprehensive, accessible and innovative analysis of sport ... more Sport and the English, 1918-1939 is a comprehensive, accessible and innovative analysis of sport as an expression of the values and social relations of a nation. Bringing the central place of sport in English life between the wars into sharp focus, this insightful history provides us with a fresh perspective on issues of gender, class, religion and identity, and ideas of morality, continuity and change. Themes include: - the nature of sport and its place in national life - how sport was portrayed in the media and through the sports stars of the age - tradition and change in sport and in society - gaining meaning from sport: the pursuit of pleasure, a moral code, and ideas of Englishness - class, social conflict and social cohesion This original and lucid study is ideal for students of sport and social history, and anyone with an interest in the social role of sport
The International Journal of the History of Sport
On 6 August 1967, the Sunday Express published a cartoon by its regular contributor, Giles (Figur... more On 6 August 1967, the Sunday Express published a cartoon by its regular contributor, Giles (Figure 1). It represents a group of visitors at a museum, attending to a uniformed guard who adopts an oratorical stance while expounding on the virtues of one of the many works displayed on the walls of these ornate surroundings. One of the museum visitors, however, has chosen to ignore this official commentary, listening instead to a sports commentary delivered on the small transistor radio he holds to his ear. Billions of these popular cultural artefacts were sold globally during the 1960s, and became a common sight at sports grounds, as owners listened to commentary and results elsewhere. Here it is specifically a football match that captures the museum visitor’s attention far more than the surrounding art, as the radio commentator announces, as articulated in the accompanying caption, ‘Greaves passes to Gilzean, Gilzean to Greaves, Greaves puts the ball across to Mackay, brilliant header by Chalmers . . .’. The inclusion in the commentary of the names of well-known players – Jimmy Greaves, Alan Gilzean and Dave Mackay of Tottenham Hotspur and Steve Chalmers of Celtic – enables a precise identification of the match being played. On the previous day these two teams had met at Hampden Park in Glasgow in a pre-season friendly; Tottenham appeared as FA Cup victors (having recently beaten Chelsea 2–1) and Celtic as the first British team to bring home the European Cup (having defeated Inter Milan 2–1 in Portugal). This careful staging of a match between the winners of the so-called ‘Cockney Cup Final’ and the ‘Lisbon Lions’ was clearly designed to reflect the current strength of British football, and stand on the shoulders of England’s famous victory in the World Cup the previous summer. It also reflected an increasing media attention devoted to football, not least of all an expansion of television coverage. For example, the BBC’s flagship football programme Match of the Day had first been broadcast just three years earlier in 1964 and live coverage of big games in the FA Cup, the European Cup and the World Cup was increasingly becoming the norm. Football, along with other forms of mass entertainment such as pop music, was changing the face of British culture. In this context, Giles’s cartoon notably highlights the transgressive potential of popular culture when it invades a notionally more highbrow environment, such as
Routledge Handbook of Global Sport, 2020
Flat Racing and British Society 1790–1914, 2014
Choice Reviews Online, 2003
H orseracing has a powerful claim to be Britain's leading interwar sport. Cricket had its adheren... more H orseracing has a powerful claim to be Britain's leading interwar sport. Cricket had its adherents; indeed, Jack Williams, the historian of interwar cricket, shows that its supporters presented it as the English 'national game'. 1 But British racegoers claimed that racing was 'our real national sport'. 2 On the basis of active participation, cricket was certainly superior with somewhere between 200,000 and 400,000 playing each week in the early 1930s, although football had even more participants, with 37,000 clubs affiliated to the Football Association by 1937, and many others unaffiliated. In terms of spectatorship, First Division soccer attracted average crowds of over 30,000 in 1938-39, but cricket only got large crowds for test matches and a few important county matches, and these probably never exceeded 50,000 in a single day. Such figures were dwarfed by the crowds attracted to racing's 'national' events: the Grand National, the Derby, 'Royal' Ascot and the Doncaster St Leger. Even small racemeetings got higher crowds than most country cricket games. If a third criterion, interest in betting on the sport, was included, horseracing was supreme, although football pools and greyhound racing were also important. It was racing, not cricket or soccer, which really sold newspapers across Britain. Widespread public interest in results, longer traditions, its year-round season and largest crowds, all support racing's claims as Britain's leading national sport. Yet Ross McKibbin's critically well-received book on classes and cultures in England between 1918 and 1951 marginalised racing, arguing that: Horseracing was a national sport only by a somewhat skewed definition of 'national'. What made it 'national' was popular betting which linked a mass of working-class betters to a sport which was, in fact, aristocratic-plutocratic. Without betting it would have been no more national than 12-metre yachting or deer hunting … many had little interest in horses or horseracing as such. The middle class as a whole and the sober, serious working class were even more indifferent, even hostile. 3 was strongly anti-racing but its numbers, never large, were dropping, while the Church of England was divided and the Roman Catholic Church showed little opposition. Although Labour and Liberal activists and politicians were generally negative, racing was popular amongst many of their voters. The Civil Service, formerly opposed to betting, was split. The Home Office was opposed, but the Customs and Excise and Post Office departments both encouraged it as a useful source of revenue. As the popularity of betting and racing rose, debates over their meaning and importance faded. By the 1930s interest in and support for racing could be found right across the social scale. Increasingly it seemed exciting yet safe. Those worried about class revolution entered racing in large numbers because it had traditional and conservative features. This fascinating variation of views provided a starting point for this study. Popular images of the interwar years have focused largely on mass unemployment, the General Strike, increasing government control, or improved welfare and education. Yet the period also saw a major spurt of growth in leisure, recreation and sport. Mass unemployment and business depression coexisted with increased standards of living within some sectors and for some social groups, creating tensions and opportunities which heightened and transformed social attitudes to leisure. Britain was the originator of much modern sport, and in turn sport was a paradigm of British culture. Historians have been slow to develop an understanding of the way sports influenced and were influenced by the cultural, social and economic changes of the interwar years, a sporting era aptly described by Sir Derek Birley as 'confusing and sometimes contentious', with key continuities alongside a strengthening of professionalism and commercialism. 9 This ambiguity about the treatment of interwar leisure and sport as a whole has not been aided by the potentially problematic role of social class in sport. Sports were differentially presented as 'upper class', 'middle class' or 'working class' in different social contexts. Sport could both unite and divide. Professionalism and amateurism, gender roles, commercialism, and the extent to which physical violence or active support was acceptable were all issues of debate. Sport was popular throughout the class structure of much of Britain, although some of its manifestations were very unpopular with a minority. Class as culture is a complex manifestation, and its visions were socially constructed. The picture sports provided was highly complex, subtle and more nuanced than historians have admitted. For example, some at least amongst the middle classes were always attracted, for a variety of reasons, to more supposedly 'workingclass' sports, including those sports like racing associated with drink and gambling. This could be due to earlier working-class origins, the attractions of More importantly, it helps to move forward our understanding of the ways in which social class, gender, culture and leisure related to each other during this period. McKibbin argues that interwar Britain was characterised by a major divide between manual and non-manual workers, and that leisure, lifestyle and employment created subcultures which he calls 'working-class culture' and 'middle-class culture'. Yet at the same time he accepts that 'England had no common culture, rather a set of overlapping ones', although the sports played and watched were partially at least self-enclosed and determined by class. 11 The social theorist W. G. Runciman sees the cultural gulf between the two major social groups, the working and middle classes, as important in terms of selfascription, but he attaches more importance to employment conditions and self-ascribed status. 12 In leisure terms, Cunningham's picture of overlapping leisure cultures in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is potentially useful, discriminating as it does an upper-class 'leisure' class, 'urban middleclass' and 'artisan' cultures, separate 'religious' and 'rationalist' 'reformist' leisure cultures, 'rural' and 'urban' popular culture forms. But Cunningham has been criticised both for an overly-simplistic picture of middle-class leisure, and for underestimating the extent to which cultural roles in particular leisure contexts were fluid. 13 It is becoming increasingly clear that while social distinctions were still expressed in class terms, social roles were increasingly dependent on leisure contexts. 14 A polarised dichotomous view of class might be embraced at work but not in wider leisure relationships. There might be strong consciousness of status divisions within a middle-class group, yet the group might present a solid face to the world. The spatial aspects of class, expressed in the more middle-class ethos of the suburbs, and the more working-class feel of terraced city streets or newly-built council estates, clearly had their effects. But there were manual labourers in the suburbs, and clerks in city streets, embracing or standing against locally dominant cultural practices like betting. Racing has often been seen as a sport which united the top and bottom of British society. Certainly in part, but only in part, racing was a sport which relied on the continued persistence of working-class deference, and a strong emphasis on rank and status within the sport, helping it sustain a clear rearguard defence of hierarchy. Runciman has presented powerful arguments that fundamental, societal-level changes in social, economic and political practice, and resultant shifting patterns of class, were a result of the First World War, arguing that notions of natural hierarchy were under attack from 1915 onwards. 15 Yet gentlemanliness, and its characteristic sporting amateurism, still complex geographical divisions between north and south, and between the middle classes in competing regions or cities such as Liverpool and Manchester. So in what ways were the middle classes involved in racing? Were they, as McKibbin has suggested, indifferent or even hostile? Not so. In fact the middle classes were increasingly supportive, taking part as spectators, owners, trainers and investors, occupying professional roles in racing's administration, placing bets or heading bookmaking firms. For some, with anti-working-class attitudes, often coupling snobbery and wish-fulfilment, it was the upper-class owners from which they took their model. Others were prepared sometimes to move across what were in reality by this period, highly porous divisions between classes, and between 'roughs' and 'respectables', to enjoy racing's liminal pleasures. Betting could be presented as essentially modernistic, and the reliable, known salary of the middle classes, stepped by age and promotion, allowed them to indulge betting, ownership or spectatorship as a leisure habit. Although the separation of suburban home and work sometimes confined sociability, people in many middle-class occupations, from industrialists to merchants, lawyers to shopkeepers, were able to attend nearby race meetings a few times a year. The bulk of racehorse owners were middle class. Others derived substantial incomes from economic activities which ministered to the needs of the racing world. In terms of academic racing historiography the interwar period has been addressed only en passant in histories covering longer time periods and emphasising economic rather that cultural features. Wray Vamplew's well-researched The Turf focused on regulation of the sport, changes in transport, betting and bookmakers, ownership and breeding, and the lives of jockeys and trainers, covering the last two hundred years. 20 It could profitably be read in conjunction with my recent culturally-oriented study of flat racing from 1790 to 1914. 21 The economic...
Usage of any items from the University of Cumbria's institutional repository 'Insight' must confo... more Usage of any items from the University of Cumbria's institutional repository 'Insight' must conform to the following fair usage guidelines. Any item and its associated metadata held in the University of Cumbria's institutional repository Insight (unless stated otherwise on the metadata record) may be copied, displayed or performed, and stored in line with the JISC fair dealing guidelines (available here) for educational and not-for-profit activities provided that • the authors, title and full bibliographic details of the item are cited clearly when any part of the work is referred to verbally or in the written form • a hyperlink/URL to the original Insight record of that item is included in any citations of the work • the content is not changed in any way • all files required for usage of the item are kept together with the main item file. You may not • sell any part of an item • refer to any part of an item without citation • amend any item or contextualise it in a way that will impugn the creator's reputation • remove or alter the copyright statement on an item. The full policy can be found here.
Flat Racing and British Society 1790–1914, 2014
J.A. Mangan’s work has long been recognized as providing a strong stimulus to further historical ... more J.A. Mangan’s work has long been recognized as providing a strong stimulus to further historical investigation of the complex and highly nuanced inter-relationships between athleticism, masculinity and education. This paper explores his work on masculinity, and suggests some of the more fruitful ways in which his work can be taken forward. Recent work has shown, for example, the multiple masculinities that emerge in educational contexts in private and state schools and universities, moving beyond athleticism to explore their other dimensions. The sociology of the body has stimulated research on embodiment, queer studies and sexuality which can certainly be applied to schooling. Masculinity and femininity are both aspects of gender order and inter-related. Recent feminist work can be helpfully drawn on to examine male-female relationships inside and outside schools in terms of boys’ masculinity constructions. Finally, the history of the relationship between masculinity, sport and rel...
Vice and the Victorians explores the ways the Victorian world gave meanings to the word ‘vice’, a... more Vice and the Victorians explores the ways the Victorian world gave meanings to the word ‘vice’, and the role this complex notion played in shaping society. Mike Huggins provides a richer and more nuanced understanding of a term that, despite its vital importance to the Victorians, has thus far lacked a clear definition. Each chapter explores a different facet of vice. Firstly, the book seeks to define exactly what vice meant to the Victorians, exploring how the language of vice was used as a tool to beat down opposition and dissent. It considers the spatial dimension of vice in the public and private spheres, before moving on to look at specific vices: the unholy trinity of drink, sex and gambling. Finally, it shifts from vice to virtue and the efforts of moral reformers, and reassesses the relationship between vice and respectability in Victorian life. In his lively and engaging discussion, Mike Huggins draws on a range of theory and exploits a wide variety of texts and images from the periodical press, parliamentary reports and Acts, novels, obscene publications, paintings and posters, newspapers, sermons, pamphlets and investigative works. This will be an illuminating text for undergraduates studying Victorian Britain as well as anyone wishing to gain a more nuanced understanding of Victorian society.
Histoire sociale/Social history, 2019
Horseracing and the British 1919–39, Oct 6, 2010
I n 1923 an assistant mistress of a London County Council boys' school reported that betting was ... more I n 1923 an assistant mistress of a London County Council boys' school reported that betting was fairly general in her class. While she and the head took this seriously, the boys treated it as nothing wrong, and her remonstrations as a joke. They were actually 'encouraged by their parents'. She felt helpless. She could not go to the police because 'in a poor neighbourhood it is a very dangerous thing to excite the animosity of the parents'. 1 The popularity of betting in that particular culture was clear. His Majesty's Inspectors of Schools felt in 1924 that such reports were exaggerated. 2 HMI were in no position to know. Pupils were unlikely to boast to an unknown, middle-class visiting school inspector of their involvement in illegal gambling. Betting was probably exceeded only by cinema-going as the leading leisure spending activity during the interwar years. 3 The 1853 Betting Houses Act and 1906 Street Betting Act had both assumed that the perceived 'problem' of working-class cash betting could be substantially reduced by prohibition and police action. They were wrong. Enforcement was erratic, courts were unwilling to imprison offenders, and bookmakers evaded the law. By contrast both oncourse cash betting and credit betting remained legal. So credit bookmakers in most towns catered for middle-and upper-class off-course horserace betting. Despite betting's popularity we still know less than we should about its social and cultural meanings. The two state-initiated reports on betting, those of the Select Committee on Betting Duty of 1923 and the Royal Commission on Lotteries and Betting of 1933, were concerned almost entirely with the supposedly adverse consequences of working-class betting, mediating the views of punters through the eyes and ears of anti-gamblers, police, bookmakers, the Jockey Club, or similar interest groups. A pathological view of betting, and the ethical, moral, social and economic arguments surrounding its consequences, dominated. The real meanings of betting for ordinary people were neglected.
Flat Racing and British Society 1790–1914, 2014
international journal of the history of sport 35, 2/3, 2018
Match-fixing has a long history, but while use of drugs in sport has a substantial secondary lite... more Match-fixing has a long history, but while use of drugs in sport has a substantial secondary literature, match-fixing has only recently begun to attract the attention of historians. This essay begins with a brief overview of its global contemporary contexts, the broad range of sports where it now surfaces, increased recognition of its moral, social and economic threat, and the varied responses of leading sports organisations, legal gambling operators, police forces, governmental departments and regulators. The following section explores the challenges of finding any reliable evidence of match-fixing in the past. Such material can include reports of criminal trials and investigations, the decisions of national and international sporting bodies, journalistic investigations, players’ confessions, suspended investigations and the many various unsubstantiated allegations of fixing. An overview shows that match-fixing has been a major and substantial long-standing historical continuity in sport usually but not always linked to gambling and sporting materialism. Examples are brought forward to show that it could be found in Ancient Greece and Egypt, and was widespread across the early modern and modern periods in Britain, America or Australia. The essay concludes by suggesting some key questions which a future historical agenda for the study of match-fixing might address.
forthcoming on Routledge Handbook of Sport History, 2021
This explores the range of visual representations; recent work on the visual in sport; topics and... more This explores the range of visual representations; recent work on the visual in sport; topics and methodologies; photography, film and TV; and ways of extending the field.
International journal of the History of Sport 32,15, pp. 1813-1830, 2015
Survey paper coverin the approaches, methods and sources used by historians when studying the vis... more Survey paper coverin the approaches, methods and sources used by historians when studying the visual aspects of sports history
A Cultural History of Sport during the Enlightenment , 2020
The overview provided here falls into three parts. It begins by exploring the difficulties and ch... more The overview provided here falls into three parts. It begins by exploring the difficulties and challenges of exploring sports’ purposes. It then outlines a selection of the main reasons and purposes of sports during the Enlightenment, some like commercialism, gambling or associativity having grown in importance, while others such as the promotion of health and fitness, enjoyment of carnival and military preparedness were assuming a lesser role. Finally it provides two contrasting studies, of hunting and bull baiting, which illustrate the way such sports had different purposes and attractions.
journal of sport history, 2020
This paper argues that Stefan Szymanski’s theory that formal associativity in terms of British cl... more This paper argues that Stefan Szymanski’s theory that formal associativity in terms of British clubs and societies during the eighteenth century was the key factor in sport’s spread has been over-stated. It was wagering, most especially the high-stakes “wagers” between wealthy individuals on sporting contests, stemming from notions of politeness, civility and honor, that generated media coverage, wider spectator interest, a larger betting market and growing numbers of events, increasingly on a commercial basis. Wagering encouraged the development of sporting regulations to create “fair play” in gambling terms and to avoid subsequent disputes. Formal clubs and societies followed from this, but few were created before the 1760s. Later clubs were largely exclusive in membership terms, placed restrictions on play and enjoyed dining (and drinking) as much as sport. The informal associativity around gambling was much more important.
Keywords Americanization, cinema, sport, inter-war, leisure, culture Abstract After World War I,... more Keywords
Americanization, cinema, sport, inter-war, leisure, culture
Abstract
After World War I, there was growing Anglo-American antagonism. In a period of recuperation, cultural transition and shifting social mores, the ‘soft power’ of the United States of America exercised a more ‘modernist’, materialist, consumerist and egalitarian challenge to English elite culture. It created strong debate about working –class leisure and its place in national identity, and anxieties about the impact of American language, behaviours and attitudes on a wide range of English leisure activities. This paper briefly reviews existing approaches to Americanization, and argues that given the upsurge of work, a broader approach to American leisure’s inter-war impact is now required, with tighter specification and more detailed analysis and reassessment. It begins by briefly reviewing some key approaches to American leisure’s impact, examining their limitations, and ways in which its reception can be better explored, in order to spark interest in subsequent more detailed examination of some of the topics discussed. It then explores in more detail some of the nuances of the reception of Americanization in some of the most popular leisure forms, including film, dance, music, sport and radio broadcasting. It shows that responses were highly complex, and often dependent on identities such as class, gender, generation or region. Film was variously responded to by appropriation, accommodation or modification, with the British government trying to resist by encouraging an expansion of the British film industry, though American films often proved more popular. Dance and music provided a complexity of resistance, adaptation and adoption. Sport was more resistant still while the BBC stood out as a beacon of strong resistance.