Socialist Sonnet No. 239: Penalties (2026)

 From the Socialism or Your Money Back blog

Penalties

Both captains of England beaming

Out through a betting shop window.

The trophy they hold’s just for show

To entice punters who’re dreaming

World Cup dreams. Footballing success

Against the odds: There is romance

And an outside gamble that chance

Might pay out, and so help to address

The piker’s parlous fiscal state.

Also, there’s national pride at stake,

All lost on a simple mistake;

Seeming perniciousness of fate.

Briefly, the optimism flows,

But then, the final whistle blows.

 D. A.

[Press Cuttings.] (1907)

From the March 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

Child Labour on Farms.

It passes one’s comprehension that after 100 years’ legislation on behalf of factory children, the farmer and other individuals may yet employ younger children than were ever dragged into cotton mills, and may work them for longer hours than were ever known in the history of the factory system ! 

Co-operative News.

____________

Street bookmaking is practically dead ; but its place has been taken by bookmaking through the post. This—according to a prominent member of the Metropolitan Police force, who has been engaged for twenty-five years in the prosecution of street bookmakers—is the main result of the new Betting Act increasing the penalties for street betting, which came into operation at the beginning of the year.

So that in getting rid of one evil it is questionable whether a greater evil is not being created. Street betting has probably disappeared, but the betting will be carried on just as much as before. 

Daily Chronicle

____________

Of all the Western industries introduced into Japan, the one which has made the most rapid progress is, says Engineering, that of cotton-spinning and manufacturing. Its products are also those which compete most directly with the corresponding British manufactures. Some of the most enterprising men of the Japanese Empire control the factories; and behind the young industry is the whole force of the paternal Government urging it on. There are 49 cotton-spinning companies in Japan, operating eighty-five mills. At present Japanese mills are making profits, not because of any special skill of their operatives, but simply on account of the difference in price between the raw materials and the simplest forms of manufactures therefrom. It is simply a question of keeping the belt on the tight pulley ; and that they are doing this to the fullest extent is shown by the fact that for the last six months of the period covered by this report, 81 out of 85 mills ran both night and day, and averaged over 22 hours a day.

____________

The Law Journal, referring to the question raised in the music hall strike whether pickets, whose proceedings lead to the gathering of crowds in the streets can be fined under the provisions of the Highway Act, 1835, having regard to the fact that peaceful picketing is legal under the provisions of the Trades Disputes Act, says it should have supposed that the section was intended to take away doubts as to the legality of picketing itself, and not to make the pickets entitled to over-ride public rights as well as molest individuals in the course of a trade dispute. If Mr. Atherley Jones’s reading of the Trades Disputes Act is correct, pickets would be entitled to trespass on private property in furtherance of their trade dispute.

Blogger's Note:

Llewellyn Atherley-Jones was the son of the famous Chartist, Ernest Jones.

A Look Round. (1907)

From the February 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Street Betting Act was a great victory for Reform, according to the Daily News, which suppresses starting prices but not Stock Exchange quotations.

* * *

The first result has been to intensify the unemployed problem. Men who had been living by “making a book,” acting as touts, etc., have taken to legitimate business, and workmen have been discharged to make room for them. Reynold’s Newspaper says that prominent police officials openly express the opinion that rigid administration of the Act will have a distinct tendency to increase breaches of the law in other directions as an enormous number of persons have been suddenly compelled to find some new means of livelihood.

* * *

What are they going to do ? The Daily News knows that it is impossible for every one to get permanent employment to-day, that a large section of the community must prey upon the others. And if by Acts of Parliament or acts of God certain of them are suddenly deprived of their usual means of livelihood, they must seek a living elsewhere.

* * *

Perhaps the Daily News will permit “L.G.C.M.” to explain how these bookmakers, touts, runners, watchers, and all others connected with street betting can get an honest living in view of the indisputable fact that so many already find it impossible to do so.

* * *

If all drunkards became teetotallers, all pickpockets and burglars reformed, all corner-boys turned over a new leaf, all tramps became enthusiastic for “honest” toil, what a happy land England would be ! Would it, my Christian friends ? Think what it would mean if all these folk entered the labour market and competed for “honest work,” a labour market already so overstocked that many of the largest and strongest Trade Unions find their resources taxed to the uttermost, owing to the heavy and increasing demands upon their Unemployment Funds.

* * *

The Rev. C. F. Aked, who has been “called” from the Pembroke Baptist Chapel, Liverpool, to J. D. Rockefeller’s Fifth Avenue Church, New York, says that he has received hundreds of begging letters and wonders whether people take him for a fool. If it be true that he is giving up £l,500 for £5,000 a year, his wonderment seems somewhat unnecessary.

* * *

Rockefeller did not take him for a fool, but for a tool. The Trust Magnates can foresee the approaching struggle between the “have-nots” and the millionaire holders of aggregated capital. They will endeavour to delay it by every possible means. In this they will be assisted by “advanced” clergymen, who will accept, the slaveholders’ dollars to preach patience and peace to the wage slaves.

* * *

The first number of the Voice of Labour says that “the Labour movement, organised, federated, largely international, holds in its hands, even more than it deems, the forces that, shall fashion the future . . . That is why the politician, Socialist, Labour, and Liberal, promises so much to gain its votes.” This is on page 1. On page 7 it says “When the people find that, the Socialists and Anarchists are not what the Press depicts ” &c.

* * *

We note that “the Editor is not necessarily in agreement with, nor does he hold himself responsible for, signed articles,” and the article on page 7 is signed. According to it the Socialists are not what the Press (i.e, the Voice of Labour) depicts.

* * *

We freely admit that there are some calling themselves Socialists who have promised and do promise all sorts of impossible “reforms” to gain working-class votes. We have charged them with misleading the working class and adding to working-class confusion, and we have given evidence in proof of our charges. But we claim that these people have no right to call themselves Socialists, and we have always held that the workers will not be emancipated until they emancipate themselves. Surely our friends of the Voice of Labour know whether they are Socialists or Anarchists ?

* * *

The Conservative Press are doing their utmost to convey the impression that Progressivism and Socialism are one. They are as wide asunder as the Poles. But there is certainly some justification for this in view of the municipal this and municipal that which members of the Labour Party, S.D.F., I.L.P., and Fabian Society devote their time to advocating. And now, according to Justice, we have Councillor J. Jones (S.D.F.), opposing Mr. B. Sansome in a debate on “That the Progressive and Socialist Policy on Municipal affairs is harmful to the Community and especially to the Working Class.”

* * *

Councillor John Jones opposes the proposition that the Progressive Municipal Policy is harmful to the working class. Why then, does the S.D.F. declare itself in opposition to Progressives, and appeal for funds to enable it to put forward candidates when its candidatures may result in Progressive seats going to the Municipal Reformers and an alternative policy to that of the Progressives and Socialists being pursued ?

* * *

Mr. Will Thorne, M.P., has been interviewed for the Trades and Labour Gazette. “I cannot tell you,” he says, “when I became a Socialist.” Neither can we. “In trade unionism I am known as a Socialist “; he adds, “my municipal work has been done with Socialist ideals before me ; and when I entered the House of Commons it was as a Labour man and a Socialist.” (note which is first). “My constituents sent me there as such. My fellow members know me as a Socialist, at least I think they do. In a short time I hope so to manage things that there will be no doubt about it.” !

* * *

And so, although he became attached to the S.D.F. in 1884, and is still a member, he has a doubt whether his fellow M.P.’s know him as a Socialist ! But it will, he hopes, be all right in a short time, when he manages things differently.

* * *

Mr. Winston Churchill has written, “My dear Bell,” meaning Richard of that ilk, Labour Leader and Liberal M.P. for Derby, defending the action of the Liberal Government in prohibiting the Servants of the Central South African Railways from taking an active part in political agitation. He thinks it right that “prominent political activities should be denied to them, so long as they continue, as Government Servants, to draw Government pay,” and approves of the circular issued by Lord Elgin. The Daily Chronicle considers that Lord Elgin “has acted very properly.”

* * *

What a howl of execration went up from Liberals when it was suggested that certain Tory employers here had endeavoured to deny “prominent political rights” to their employees. But now that the Liberals are in office their dictum is that government employment must carry with it political disabilities. And Mr. Bell, as a good Liberal, will continue to support his Party, even tho’ they prove their readiness, when opportunity offers, to do that which the ordinary capitalist does not attempt to do, viz., control their wage slaves out of working hours.

* * *

In the Journeymen Bakers’ Magazine appears a portrait and interview with Mr. Alexander Wilkie, M.P., General Secretary, Associated Shipwrights’ Society. Asked what books had exercised the greatest influence on his life, he replied, “the Bible and the poetry of Robert Burns.” “When all is said and done” he added, “I fall back upon the Bible and Burns, and I am of opinion that a man cannot build his life upon a more stable foundation.”

* * *

At the December meeting of the London Trades Council a resolution was moved protesting against the sentence passed upon Stoker Moody, and Mr. Quelch moved to add the words “and demands the abolition of courts-martial in times of peace.” He did this, he said, with a view to civilising the Services and breaking the rule of caste. From which it would appear that he believes in courts-martial but only in times of capitalist war, not when the capitalist class are pleased to be at peace with each other and are not ordering the working class to risk their lives in the interests of their masters. And does Mr. Quelch really think that the capitalists will abolish courts-martial because he may persuade the L.T.C. to pass a resolution “demanding” it ?

* * *

Later, Mr. Quelch moved : “That this Council condemns the encouragement of ‘jingoism’ given by the surreptitious introduction of rifle practice into our elementary schools as part of the ordinary curriculum, and calls for the abolition of the standing army as being dangerous, unnecessary, and unconstitutional; this Council being further of opinion that all the military requirements of the nation would be met by the adequate training of all citizens in early manhood to the use of arms, thus constituting the whole manhood of the nation a citizen force for the national defence, and free from the burden and charges of the present military organisation.”

* * *

The italics are ours. What is the nation, and what is national defence ? The nation to-day is the propertied class, in whose interests wars are carried on. Preparing for the national defence means preparing to defend the property and interests of the propertied class of Great Britain against the interests of the propertied class of another country. Should Socialists encourage the working class to believe that they have national interests that must be defended ?

* * *

Mr. Quelch claimed that he was the first to use the phrase in this country the “armed nation.” He said that Mr. Haldane hoped to get his “armed nation” on the voluntary system. But the voluntary system had broken down. He was opposed to teaching children the use of firearms, in the way in which it was being introduced, because he believed it was intended to encourage a love of militarism and to bolster up the voluntary system. What they wanted was universal training—every man drilled and armed as a soldier, but remaining a citizen, as in Switzerland. . . . This was not conscription … it was the antidote to conscription, to militarism, and to jingoism, and so on.

* * *

From which a very clear idea of Mr. Quelch’s position can be obtained. He would civilise the Services, i.e., offer greater inducements to the working class to become “food for powder” in the interests of the capitalist class and their property ; he objects to the surreptitious introduction of rifle practice into elementary schools—he would do it openly and above board, then it would not encourage jingoism ; he is opposed to voluntary effort, and would make it compulsory for every citizen to be drilled and trained in the use of arms ; this compulsion is not conscription, certainly not, “only ignorant or untruthful persons so describe it” ; he would foster the idea of nationalism, and would have the working class compelled, by their masters, to make adequate preparation to defend the national (capitalists’) interests against those of some other national capitalists.

* * *

I could understand Mr. Quelch advocating that as a workman becomes class-conscious he should take steps to prepare for the defence of the international working class against the international capitalist class, that he should not pin his faith to one method of attacking and ultimately vanquishing his exploiters, but it is beyond my comprehension how a professing Socialist can advocate a narrow and working-class dividing nationalism. In opposition to his attitude we say : “Workers of all countries unite ; you have nothing to lose but your chains—you have the the world to gain.”

J. Kay

Action Replay: Odds against (2024)

The Action Replay column from the January 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

There are over four hundred gambling-related suicides each year in the UK, and far more people suffer from addiction to gambling. In an attempt to deal with such problems, the Gambling Commission is proposing affordability checks for customers of online sites. This has naturally led to a lot of complaints from bookmakers, but also from others involved in the horse-racing industry. If gamblers are discouraged or even barred from placing a bet, bookmakers’ profits will go down, and so will the amount they pay into racing (the Horserace Betting Levy Board collects 10% of an operator’s profits above £500,000). So owners and trainers may well find themselves losing income too.

Various kinds of triggers are envisaged, such as having a net loss of £125 within a thirty-day period, which could lead to inquiry into, say, whether the punter has a history of unpaid debts. The gambling industry has objected that this would imply perhaps ten times the number involved in problem gambling having their bank statements and so on checked, even though what they are doing is entirely legal.

One view (The Sports Economist, 21 November) is that sports betting is an increasingly important part of gambling in general and it needs to be regulated ‘to ensure a fair game, keep bettors safe, and stop illegal acts’. AI and machine learning could be used to, for instance, evaluate a person’s betting history and recognise suspicious activities. So clearly a great deal of information would be acquired about both individuals and general trends.

There is also a concern that the checks will be extended from online to betting shops and perhaps even racecourses. The Gambling Commission has said that this is not the case, but bookmakers are not convinced. They also point out that amounts spent in high-street bookies are far smaller than what may be spent online, and that checks may be sufficiently intrusive to send punters to bet on the black market, where there will be no checks and no guards against scams and frauds.

Some companies are of course in favour of the checks, as it means business for them, such as the GB Group, which helps companies verify the identity of customers. ‘Keeping players safe online is right for players and gambling operators’, their website states, as it is part of the companies’ ‘corporate social responsibility’. Bet they’ll be happy if the proposals are implemented.

Paul Bennett

Fifty Years Ago (1987)

From the September 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Fifty years ago, in 1937, I had managed to survive three years of life on the dole and, more importantly, had discovered the Socialist Party of Great Britain, offering the only practical alternative to such a life.

The 1929 Wall Street Crash had signalled that capitalism was in for one of its periodic slumps, but despite that in 1931 I landed a so-called permanent job as an LM&S Railway staff joiner. However as Marx said "the only permanence is change" and in 1934 the LM&S reduced its staff, pitching our gang of joiners, plumbers, painters and labourers on to the scrap heap of the unemployed. I found myself signing on at the Albion Street labour exchange in Salford (where Walter Greenwood. author of Love On The Dole had also signed on). My weekly allowance for myself, wife and two children was thirty four shillings out of which I had to pay ten shillings rent. (£1.70 and 50p respectively). The rent was for a bug infested attic flat in Higher Broughton. Many houses in the Broughton area were infested with bugs. Indeed on one occasion I had obtained the keys of another flat from a Mr Lever who then lived in Northumberland Street, Higher Broughton. I had decided to take the flat and had deposited two suitcases there when I noticed something moving on one of the cupboard shelves and to my horror found colonies of bed bugs all over the flat and behind the wallpaper. I quickly removed my suitcases and returned the keys to Mr Lever, declining his offer to have his property fumigated for me.

In an attempt to escape those bed bugs. I fled from Higher Broughton into a house in Lower Broughton as no bugs were to be seen there. I had only been there one night when larger colonies of bugs than ever attacked us. They had been hiding behind the skirting boards. An old man with the longest beard I ever saw sat next door on his doorstep and politely enquired of me . . . "Vell, how you like your house, eh?" . . . I told him how much I disliked it and he waved a hand airily, remarking complacently "Vell, a few bugs".

The gambling "solution"?

Trying to beat the depression with various money making schemes. I finally got hooked on horse racing, although 1 had never gambled in my life before. In those days, the only legal way to gamble off course was to send one's bets by post to Scottish bookmakers and I chose to deal with McLauchlan's of Glasgow and Edinburgh who accepted bets so long as they were time postmarked prior to time of races concerned. To my delight my very first two commissions won me £40 and I decided to study the game from all angles, even sending over to Dublin for a copy of The Irish Horse (an excellent book on breeding) and burned the midnight oil studying systems by the dozen, many of them my own invention. Some of those were successful for a season, but the next season something would inevitably go haywire.

Incidentally, the racing programmes in the daily press in public libraries in the mid-thirties were erased by black ink so that the unemployed, who could ill afford the price of the Sporting Life were denied something so readily available to those frequenting Ascot's Lawns. Also the Black Maria police vans used to prowl around Britain's back street betting dens before 1962 when betting became, for working class punters, a respectable activity. After a period of successful bets with McLauchlans. they placed a restriction on my bets by writing to tell me. that. . . "In future your bets must be in our office before racing" . . . I was torpedoed because that meant posting my bets the day before actual racing which was really restricting me to ante post betting, which was useless to me. So I joined the back street "tapes on the wall" dens from then on, moving from one area to another to evade the Black Marias.

Non-union exploitation

The official union rate for joiners when I joined the ASW (Amalgamated Society of Woodworkers) in 1929 was 1/7½d an hour (about 8p) but the railway rate, when I joined the NUR was l/4d. But there were other benefits such as a guaranteed week with no loss of time for being rained off or foggy weather plus quarter fare travelling facilities anywhere on the railway. After a year of the dole queues I decided to try a non-union firm of cabinet makers situated in the old Ford Auto works in First Avenue, Trafford Park. I was offered 10d an hour which of course I refused and after haggling with them I agreed to start at one shilling an hour. In that factory, many men were doing the same job for different rates. My mate on the other side of the bench was getting 10d; I was getting a shilling - considered a top rate there. We worked from 8am until 8pm with two half hour breaks for tea snacks and they charged us ½d for hot water to brew up. On my first day there a foreman came over to me and shouted in my ear above the din of the machinery: "Any more talking and you're outside". So we became silent automatons, trying to meet the target rate of twenty minutes to fit five drawers in a cabinet by planing off a quarter inch of American oak from each drawer, an impossible task set by management and none of us did better than a half hour minimum. It was of course planing by hand with one's own tools, not machine planing. I got home at 9pm and sank into a chair too tired to wash until later. After six months of that the firm laid us off for a temporary period which I decided to make permanent, so I said goodbye to Trafford Park and its hateful environment of wage slavery which I've no desire to re-visit.

But we've come a long way since those days haven't we? Today there is Social Security. acid rain, nuclear bombs and three million on the dole. Berlin Walls, Belfast ghettos and apartheid . . .

G R Russell

Football Bungs & Sleaze (1995)

From the May 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is so much money involved in football nowadays — not only from takings at the turnstiles but from sponsorship of everything from trophies to televised matches — that the actual playing of the game seems to be a by-product. Is it any wonder that capitalism's business 'ethics' has permeated every aspect of the sport?

It barely makes the headlines if politicians are involved in bribery or corruption, and certainly no-one reacts by saying how unexpected or out-of-character it all is. But rumours of bribery and back-handers in sport still bring out shocked responses of the “I can’t believe it” type. People just don’t want to admit that sporting stars could stoop so low as to accept under-the-counter payments or even fix results. They are supposed to be on a pedestal, role models for the young and modern-day folk-heroes. Yet the last few months have seen a parade of accusations, arrests and sackings, all centred around sporting sleaze and corruption of one kind or another.

Salim Malik, former Pakistan cricket captain, risks being banned for life after being accused of attempting to bribe two Australian players to lose. The biggest scandals, though, have been in football— and this is in addition to players appearing in court on assault charges or admitting to drug-taking. In February Arsenal manager George Graham was sacked for allegedly receiving £425,000 as part of a transfer deal (paid by a mysterious “agent” out of the difference between what Arsenal paid for a player and what the selling club received), and there are many rumours about other managers expecting such pay-offs as a matter of course. In March three Premiership footballers were arrested and questioned about match fixing, though not charged. The story runs that bookmakers in Malaysia, where gambling is illegal but big business, have attempted to rig matches (including even a couple of World Cup games) so as to engineer results or scores favourable to themselves. It is hardly surprising that two of the arrested players are goalkeepers, who are naturally best-placed to affect results by letting in an easy goal or two. Even if all the rumours and scandals turn out to be baseless—and it has to be stressed that at the time of writing nothing has been proved—football’s image is bound to be tarnished.

The shock felt by football supporters is no doubt based on two considerations. One is that footballers and managers earn what are, by most people's standards, fairly high wages. If you are getting £100,000 or over a year anyway, why should you look to dishonest ways of making even more? But one thing that is always at the back of players’ minds is the relative shortness of their careers, the ever-present risk of serious injury, and the prospect of a drastic fall in earnings, once their playing days are over. And as the world of business and politics will show, however much you may have, you can still want more. A taste for the high life can easily develop among those who weren’t born to riches. The other point is the feeling that how dare anyone who has the privilege of playing professionally, something that millions aspire to but few achieve, betray their sport, their club and their supporters by throwing a game. Those who follow a team through lean years and downpours, spending considerable sums of money in the process, expect the players always to be doing their best, even if they can’t all be great players. But sport of course is a business and its practitioners sell their skills just like other workers, so selling a game is really only part of the same logic, the logic of capitalism, where everything, including sincerity and commitment, is for sale.

Nor can it be argued that in the good old days such things never happened, that before the days of the Premiership, live TV, sponsorship, replica shirts and so on, there was a time of innocence untainted by commercial considerations or any whiff of bribery. In the mid-sixties a dozen players, including some internationals, were convicted of match-rigging and banned for life. In 1927, the chairman of Arsenal was suspended for illegal inducements to players to join the club. Back in 1905, Billy Meredith of Manchester City was suspended for attempting to bribe an Aston Villa player; it subsequently emerged that City had been making illegal payments to players: several were suspended for a year, and two directors banned for life. There never has been a golden age when football was just football.

Professional sport is part of capitalism, and cannot be expected to operate on a different basis from that of society as a whole. If it is run by money and considerations of profit. It’s because that is precisely the basis on which capitalism works.

Paul Bennett

50 Years Ago: Betting Becomes Respectable (2012)

The 50 Years Ago column from the October 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

Now that the new legalised betting shops are off to a good start and working class punters adorned with the dubious honour of a mantle of bourgeois respectability wherever they can lose their fair day’s pay in a more dignified way; it may be timely to compare the old back street hole-in-the-corner betting dens of Manchester with some of the present chromium plated outfits blossoming forth under the new regulations.

No longer is there any need to slip surreptitiously down a back alley or dodge P.C. 49 and the Black Maria in a frantic effort to play up one’s pension or the rent on the elusive 2.30 winner; one awaits the result, jammed tight in a sweating mass of the unfortunate class of society, who never seem to tire of trying to gamble their way out of poverty, merely because they do not yet realise the cause of it.

Those repulsive conditions of working class punters, in grim contrast to the environment and atmosphere of Ascot lawns, etc., have given way, despite the hypocritical opposition of the men of God, to armchair betting in the main street betting shops, with loudspeaker commentaries, official receipts for all commissions, and rapid payment after results and the weigh in.

(…) [W]e point to the cause of all this gambling activity—the crazy profit system of production which divorces the producers from their products, leads them up the garden to chase shadows in State-organised lotteries, Football Pools and Bingo rackets, and the rest. This is typical of capitalism in 1962: but in a cooperative world of production for use, a money-less, class-less, trade-less community, gambling will cease simply because profits and losses, poverty, privilege and luxury will give way to the social equilibrium of production for use.

(from article by G. R. Russell, Socialist Standard, October 1962)

That £75,000 "Pie in the Sky" (1958)

From the January 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

"And that inverted bowl we call the sky,  

Whereunder, crawling, coopt—we live and die, 

Lift not your hands to it for help, 

For it rolls impontently on, as thou or I.”

Of all the "carrots” that have been dangled before the credulous eyes of the working class (as a loophole for the individual escapologist from wage-slavery) the £75,000 Treble Chance Pools craze certainly takes the proverbial "biscuit.”

Look in any G.P.O. any Friday during the football season and the sight of the queues of budding entrepreneurs for emancipation, feverishly filling in coupons and buying endless postal drafts, is enough to gladden the heart of any government bondholder, let alone the Pools firm’s shareholders.

The giddy idea is to forecast eight draws in one column from about 54 matches—despite the odds against same being in the region of several millions to one.

Capitalism is certainly the gambling system par excellence—from the glittering casinos of Monte Carlo and the Riviera (to say nothing of the fashionable English, Continental and American race meetings) where patrons— drawn from the parasitical "elite” of the international capitalist class—"relieve” their ennui frittering away some of the "filthy lucre” filched from the international working class via the medium of the wages robbery system.

On the other hand, the small-town back-alley dog tracks or the slot-machine craze of Las Vegas, where the lure of the "Almighty Dollar” is too much for working class flesh and blood—writhing under a frustrating poverty-ridden system of society—to withstand.

Certainly a few may hit the "Jack Pot” and deliver themselves from bondage, but, for the vast majority, defeat is inevitable and the slough of despair under capitalism is a "bottomless pit.”

"Let Not Ambition Mock Their Useful Toil”
By and large, trying to emulate a Lipton or a Nuffield or to "Win the Pools” is merely a form of procrastination on the part of those who produce the wealth of the world and in whose hands lies the future welfare of society as a whole.

Instead of being "led up the garden path” by the "success” propagandists of capitalism or by the social bait of a chimerical £75,000 and allowing their life span to "slip through their fingers” struggling in comer shops, offices, mills, mines and factories, trying to get a foot on the proverbial "bottom rung’’—the workers of the world should "support” their own "horse,” which is entered in the "race” for their emancipation—the Socialist Party— which has a "ton” in hand of the “opposition” and with their class conscious support can achieve the Socialist Revolution.

As it is, the years roll on and capitalism is still our unwelcome companion, spreading the diseases of Nationalism, Commerce and Religion, together with the eternal "success” phantasy ad nauseum to ourselves and our children. Confusion enough when it comes to educating them for their real social responsibility—the organsation and achievement of Socialism. Be that as it may, the world organisation for Socialism, with 53 years' "spade” work behind it and equal to the task which lies ahead, will not be found wanting when the mighty organism of the world-wide working class shakes off its political confusion and sallies forth to claim its social heritage— a place in the Socialist “sun.”

Finally, and using Thoreau’s words—"As in the long run man only hits what he aims at, he better aim high" — let us make our “target” nothing short of revolutionary scientific Socialism, from which we can all reap a richer and socially more satisfying “harvest” than any improbable parasitical "successful entrepreneur” existence within the profit system.

G. R. Russell

Sport and Socialism. (1926)

From the May 1926 issue of the Socialist Standard

Whereas the term “sport” was at one time associated with the idea of pleasure in “disparting” together, it would seem that the progress of Capitalism has rendered such an association (except in rare instances) ludicrous in relation to prevailing facts. It has, moreover, debased the original motive of social enjoyment into either a means to acquire profit, on into one of the potent methods of distracting the attention of the workers from the incessant gnawing of their problems of poverty and slavery. At the same time it helps to increase the physical efficiency (and thus the profit-making capacity) of those workers who participate, and provide an effective nerve-restorative for the tired wage-slaves who have merely the stamina required of spectators.

However far we may look back into the distant past, we fail to discover a period where games or sports of a similar character to those now indulged in were not prevalent. Indeed, Montague Shearman, who wrote the celebrated “History of Football," found traces of that pastime throughout the whole period of recorded history. It is not, however, our purpose to probe this question of origin, but rather, at this stage, to draw attention to the corrupting influence of Capitalism in revolutionising ideas which at one time were uninfluenced by the motives of a ruling class, and to point out that “sport," once free to all except the bodily impaired, has become, like other institutions, an organised business ministering predominately to the interests of the master class.

To those who may doubt the soundness of our contentions we would ask “Why do the master-class in their Press (which is largely dependent upon advertisement revenue) devote whole pages to the discussion of future sporting events?” “Why do they pour out reservoirs of slush in detailing the family history of Mademoiselle Pit-pat, who is to meet the doughty American champion, Tilly Slapbonk, at the Tooting Stadium?” “Why are we regaled with stories of the ingestive prowess of Charlie Bashem, and tales about the fondness of his protagonist, Teddy Tinribs, for Metaphysics and the Einstein Theory, before the inevitable fiasco is staged at the Talbot Hall?” "Would not the revenue to be derived from advertisements be more profitable than the insertion of some of this atrocious flap-doodle?” The answer to these questions is simple; the paid scribes of the master-class have acquired the grip of your psychology and they know how to take advantage of your gregarious instincts and innate love of sport to blind you to the imperative necessity for devoting some time and energy to the study of your slave position and the means of escaping therefrom.

Religion, Patriotism and "Sport"— these form the holy trinity of dope lavishly ladled out by the ruling class. Quite recently, through its mouthpiece, the Duke of York, the Government announced its intention of devoting £200,000 towards the development of "sports" in the Civil Service. This token of good will towards its employees was accompanied by further instances of benevolent intentions in the wholesale sacking of temporary workers (“ex-service" and others) and strenuous efforts in the direction of "speeding-up" and depressing the already exiguous conditions of the “permanent" staff. Could a better example be adduced to show the paramount value of sport to the employer in his attempts to gloss over the glaring class antagonism that now exists! It can be said, however, that this proposal of the Government was merely typical of the actions of the ordinary industrial “sweater” who will not demur at providing bowling greens for his employees or at subscribing to their football or other funds, but test his generosity in respect of the payment of higher wages or shortening hours of toil and a far different result is obtained !

Another aspect of the class division in society may be observed in the designations employed in various branches of "sport." We have the "amateur" and the "professional,” the "gentleman" and the "player,” the "select” clubs and the "working class” clubs; and the gulf between these divisions is the chasm that separates riches from poverty. It would be "infra dig” for a University boat-crew to row a race with a working class crew [especially as such a contest might reveal the unpalatable truth that the latter (who would be referred to as "those bounders") might achieve a "walk-over." !] Anyway, such a contest is inconceivable, for are not the workers, although capable of doing piece-work for eight hours at a stretch upon arduous and monotonous tasks, deficient in the stamina so essential for the sustained exertion of a twenty-minutes race?

Lest it be thought that the socialist is of the Puritan mould and disdains participation or interest in ‘‘sports” we can assure the reader that we begrudge the jaded worker none of the exhilaration he experiences in playing or looking on at games, and we see nothing pernicious in such indulgence provided he is alive also to his own class interests. Furthermore, the "sports” in favour with the workers are of a character entirely different from, and in no way so brutal or degrading as those held in regard by a large section of the bourgeoisie, whose atavistic desires, impulses, and propensities are fully catered for in the "blood" sports which occupy so much time and attention during a large portion of their useless existence. Tame, carted, deer and specially nurtured foxes afford excellent hunting material for these people of such "delicate sensibilities," but for whose genius, monumental industry, thrift, and "directive ability" (so we are assured), the worker would be bereft of the conspicuous amenities he is allowed to "enjoy"—amongst which amenities the hunting of a more prolific, a far less expensive kind of "livestock," is often an unwished-for privilege! We have no time for mawkish and sloppy sentiment—that can safely be left to our masters; but we confidently challenge the records of the most benighted “savage" customs to produce a more preposterous and equally abominable practice than that of "blooding" or bedaubing and smearing the blood of the slaughtered fox over the features of some girl of tender years after the completion of the chase. If additional evidence of the existence of a peculiarly "bourgeois" psychology is desired the pictures recently published in the Press depicting the “heroine" of the Quorn, whose horse fell dead beneath her during the hunt, should help to remove any doubts that might be entertained upon the subject. As to the effects upon character of these brutal "spirits," is not the evidence to be found in the chronicles of the Divorce Court?

Fortunately, in but one respect, the economic conditions affecting the working class tend to produce in them a more tolerant attitude towards non-human varieties of animal life, but this phase of the subject is not entirely relevant to our purpose. The easy gotten plunder which enables a robber class to live without the expenditure of physical effort in wealth production, tends to divert the energies of such a class in the direction profitable to their own comfort and pleasure, and so abundant leisure seeks its outlet in those "sports” which satisfy a craving for excitement and rescue idleness from the letters of "ennui." On the other hand, the worker who spends much of his time in looking for, or in holding, a “job,” is always afflicted by a desire to overcome the torture of insecurity. Hence some workers fall an easy prey to the press sirens of the master-class who encourage a belief that they can escape from poverty by “putting a bob on” or  "beating the book” and such-like fantastic nonsense, and so lure them from the study of the one solution to their problems—Socialism. A little thought would convince the down-at-heel “punter” that the millionaire race-horse owner, and the “bookie” (that somewhat sebaceous gentleman of the expansive smile and a protuberant frontage, seemingly held together by a heavy gold chain, which partially circumscribes that modern denotation of prosperity) do not exist solely to dispense largesse to the poor and needy. But this disease of betting, in its present form, will be swept away when the workers have tested the remedy offered by the socialist.

Again we emphasise that we do not deplore ‘‘sport ” as such, but we desire the workers to realise that the blighting influence of Capitalism has perverted the idea of seeking joy in social rivalries into a means on the one hand for the slaves to forget their lot, and so become more amenable to their task of grinding out profits, and, on the other hand, for the masters indulging in a quest for unwholesome pleasure, resulting in the reckless dissipation of wealth robbed from the wage-slaves.

Socialism alone can bring that joy which will express itself in an exuberance of healthful movement, such as is at present conceived of only in the dream which brings a transient solace to the weary worker when “slumber’s chain” has bound him to a world of pleasant unreality.

W. J.

The Workers and the Dogs. (1928)

From the January 1928 issue of the Socialist Standard

Greyhound racing! A baby sport, which has not yet seen its first birthday, yet the turnstiles have recorded 4,500,000 spectators. Why? It is because of its comparative cheapness and ease of access, that it attracts the working class.

At first sight, one would imagine that, beyond making a contribution to the Exchequer in the form of Entertainment and Betting Taxes, the sport had little to do with politics or class interest. But, according to the Morning Post (26/10/27), greyhound racing and its effects on the working class formed the subject of a discussion the previous evening at a dinner of the Thirty Club at Claridge’s Hotel.

A viewpoint was put by a Mr. Philip Emmanuel, who deprecated greyhound racing because, he said, it tempted the poor man to lose more than he could afford, to the detriment of his family. How eager for the welfare of the working class are these people who dine at first-class hotels. Or did the gentleman really mean that money spent on racing, instead of food and clothing, would lessen the efficiency of the wage-slave to produce profits for the master class?

Brigadier-General A. C. Critchley contributed the following to the discussion:— 

  “If you can give the working man something wholesome to talk and think about, it stops a lot of Communistic nonsense, which occurs simply because there is nothing else to do. Greyhound racing, properly handled, is one of the greatest counter irritants to Socialistic revolution we have yet seen.”

This soothing effect of sport and other pastimes has often been pointed out by us, but it is so uncommon for a Capitalist representative to admit this fact frankly. Of course, General Critchley only did so from self-interest; he is a director of the Greyhound Racing Association. The statement explains the apparent generosity of Capitalists who donate sums of money and trophies to sports clubs, and resist with all their might an attempt by their employees to secure a slight increase in wages.

H. M.

Here and There: When Mussolini Would Not Fight (1939)

The Here and There column from the February 1939 issue of the Socialist Standard

When Mussolini Would Not Fight.

During the past ten years or so The Socialist Standard has more than once had to debunk the idea, popular with Communists and the daily Press, that Mussolini established the Italian dictatorship in defiance of the State and its armed forces, and with the aid of a few thousand Blackshirt hoodlums. Frank Owen, editor of the Daily Express, in an article, “The March on Rome” (Evening Standard, January 13th, 1939), supports our view and reproduces a statement by Mussolini which has a bearing on the question. Frank Owen refers to the events of 1919, when Italy was demanding the Austro-Hungarian port of Fiume from the Allies, who were then dividing up the spoils of victory. D’Annunzio, the Italian poet and Fascist colleague of Mussolini, led a Fascist march on the port to demand of its Italian military commander, who held it for the Allied Powers, its surrender to Italy. Owen tells us that Mussolini sat tight and, when accused of deserting D'Annunzio, snapped : —

“Revolution will be accomplished with the Army, not against it: with arms, not without them: with trained forces, not with undisciplined mobs called together in the streets."

Which opinion he remembered and acted upon in connection with the miscalled “March on Rome" in 1922.

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“What’s Up in Palestine?”

The November issue of Fact is a booklet of ninety pages, crammed with the sort of information which the Socialist looks for when attempting to get behind the appearance of world events. It is called “What's up in Palestine?” and is written by Michael Greenberg. The author analyses the historical, social and industrial background of the conflict between the Arab and Jewish nationalisms and brings clarity to it.

The interest of the British Government in the Palestine Mandate needs very little explaining. Palestine is on the British Empire sea route to India and is therefore of strategical importance, particularly since the political independence of Egypt. An oil pipe-line, which fuels the British Navy, also runs through Palestine. Whatever settlement is the outcome of the present disturbance, it is not likely that British dominance will suffer.

The origin of the present conflict goes back to the setting up of a National Home for the Jews under the protection of the British Government.

After early difficulties, out of which many observers prophesied the failure of. the experiment, Palestine became the scene of a thriving Jewish capitalist industrialism. Between 1919/1938, £80,000,000 of Jewish capital poured in with 300,000 skilled immigrants. The result was intense capitalist agriculture where formerly peasant farming prevailed. The effect was something like the Industrial Revolution through which the Western capitalist countries had passed. Peasant farming began to break up. When it remained it had to enter into cut-throat competition with the efficient and up-to-date Jewish capitalism, which meant a lower standard of living for the peasantry. Former peasant proprietors became landless labourers. At one time there were 200,000 of these dispossessed peasants employed as labourers on public works and by large Jewish firms.

Not unnaturally, the anti-capitalist sentiment of the Arabs takes an anti-Jewish form, and is canalised into support, for Arab nationalism. It may take the Arab worker some years to realise that his real enemy is capitalism in general, and not only the Jewish capitalist in particular. At the moment, another factor complicates the struggle. Thousands of Arab workers, accustomed to a very low standard, enter the labour market in competition with the Jewish workers, and threaten to depress the latter's relatively higher standard of living.

Fact, at sixpence a copy, is usually a sound investment. The November issue is worth that amount many times.

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Morals and Football Pools.

It used to be argued that to close the public houses would provoke “revolution." Somewhat exaggerated, perhaps, but nevertheless expressive of the fact that pubs did (before so many other diversions came to engage the worker's interest) provide a means of offsetting the drabness of the worker's working and social life, and of keeping his mind away from political problems. One of the later diversions are the football pools, concerning which the Daily Telegraph recently featured much correspondence from readers, both for and against them. The letter from the managing director of Goodsway Tates, Ltd., claimed for the pools what, in the past, has been claimed by the pubs, politicians and churches. He says (Daily Telegraph, December 10th, 1938): —

  “They have certainly brought interest into many drab lives, and from a political point of view have done much good in keeping the minds of the populace occupied during depressing times and combating Communism than any other factor.”

*    *    *

The Swastika over the Andes.

The current issue of the American journal, The Reader's Digest, contains an article called “The Coming Struggle for Latin America,” which is a condensation of the book of the same name by Carleton Beals. It deals with the penetration of German trade into the countries which make up South America. The extent of the penetration may be judged by the fact that there are one hundred thousand Germans in the Argentine alone. Most of them are there in connection with the interests of German trade. The industries they pursue are hardware, agriculture and electrical machinery, printing, chemical, motor cars and dyes. In Mexico, Chile and Brazil, Germans own the textile factories. In Chile, German munition factories have been established. Throughout the whole continent German capitalists are getting control of copper mines, nickel mines, oil and iron-ore producing land.

In 1933/1936, German trade with Central South America increased by 500 per cent. The imports of munitions from America into Nicaragua were displaced in favour of munitions from Germany and Italy. And recently, Mexico entered into an agreement with Germany to exchange oil for industrial machinery on barter basis. Evidence of a similar penetration by Japanese trading interests is also given.

German, Italian and Japanese influence in South America goes still further afield than trade. Immigrants, workers and trading agents are trained to propagate the doctrines of Nazism and Fascism, to understand the traditions and customs of South Americans, to perpetuate the idea that English and American capitalism is decadent. In this they are assisted by the fact that most of the American States are under dictatorships. That American capitalism is perturbed by these developments is evidenced by President Roosevelt's calling of the Lima Conference for the professed object of exploring the possibility of the mutual defence of the American States from attack, and his violent attacks on Nazism and Fascism. 

The Manchester Guardian, at the time of this conference, stated that the town of Lima was bedecked with thousands of Swastika and Fascist flags, but with only two American flags, one of which flew over the American embassy.

The expansion and development of German, Italian and Japanese capitalism has resulted in a weakening of the world influence of British and American capitalism, and is a threat to their interest s in the world's markets.

It is that clash of interests which is the material basis for the apparent clash between the so-called ideologies of Fascism and Democracy.

Harry Waite

Going to the dogs (1970)

From the December 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

Belle Vue is the oldest established greyhound track in the Manchester area, and to an uncritical observer the hundreds of cars parked outside the Stadium on a Saturday evening may convey an impression of working class affluence (whatever that may be!). But many of these punters arriving at dog tracks in their own conveyances are tired, jaded market stall-holders, one-man shopkeepers, commercial travellers and such like seeking a few hours escape from the treadmill of their lives; plus the chance of an easy buck. However, thousands also arrive by Corporation Buses and some even on foot! Old Age Pensioners, men on the dole or so called “social security”, conserving their meagre cash for a bet in an effort to increase their government Poverty Line allowances, but generally managing by decreasing it, to increase their hardship instead, For it is a stupendous feat to leave the track on the winning side, despite such popular bets as . . . taking three of the six dogs and combining them in every possible combination for the Tote Forecast of First arid Second dog past the post; a total of six bets at 2s. each, which is an outlay of 12s. per race.

To the novice, this may appear to be a somewhat easy task, at first sight, of half the field running for the punter, but if the remaining three dogs are added; thirty combinations are totalled, so that the six bets made on three of the dogs, is really a four to one against hazard which is the reason they are defeated so often.

In the atmosphere of a dog track, many punters fail to realise this and curse their bad luck in obtaining the winner on many occasions with this type of bet, but not the second dog.

“Lady Luck”, however is simply a mystical term from the dim and distant superstitious past and, leaving aside the odd case of fixing a race, it is figures and odds of probabilities and possibilities linked with form, going, and fitness which defeats those hopeful punters.

So far in the history of greyhound racing at Belle Vue six* dogs have been the maximum number employed, but plans are in hand to accommodate eight dog races at some future date which will boost the falling tote dividends recently, but not the chances of the punters. For if they persist in taking half the field of eight, they will find that the odds against this type of bet have risen to Nine to Two against them.

Anyone interested in human behaviour has only to visit a dog track to note a change in the behaviour of many punters after a few races have gone by; for, with only a certain number of races left to get out of trouble with their dwindling cash, this leaves scant respect for the etiquette of drawing room manners, as they push and shove into Tote queues, making desperate last minute decisions. And, fearful they may not reach the tote windows before the off, many a female operative at the tote machines gets a volley of curses, (in many cases completely unjustified) for failing to punch yet one more ticket. Generally a physical impossibility because the electrically operated machines are cut off just before the traps open to let, (ironically enough) “Man’s Best Friend” fly around a 500 yard track to relieve him of his hard earned cash. However, as recently the glass fronted enclosures and upholstered seating capacity has been enlarged, some punters caustically refer to this as “the painless extraction method”.

After the last race, suddenly all the hubbub ceases; the bookies shouting the odds, glasses clinking at the bars, loudspeakers blaring forth, music while you lose and the constant, punch, punch of the tote ticket machines. Silently the crowd filters through the gates, and now the sound of footsteps are plainly audible. Out again into the mundane world, the world they have never left! The money jungle of capitalism.

G. R. Russell

*At the opening meeting at Belle Vue in 1926 seven dogs were in fact used, but this was a long time ago and ever since the war at any rate, no more than six have been used.