Sport History Review, 2013, 44, 99-119
© 2013 Human Kinetics, Inc.
www.SHR-Journal.com
SCHOLARLY ARTICLE
Association Football, Betting,
and British Society in the 1930s:
The Strange Case of the 1936 “Pools War”
Mike Huggins
University of Cumbria
In the mid-1930s, British attitudes toward gambling were complex, diverse, and
confused, with cash betting still largely illegal, and social reformers and nonconformist religious groups generally strongly opposed to betting in all its forms. Yet
horse race betting was a newspaper staple, and throughout Britain, legal credit
“football pool” betting involving small stakes was hugely popular. Put briefly, the
famed 1936 “pools war,” as the press dubbed it, was an attempt by the Football
League Management Committee, the regulatory body for the three divisions of
the English Football League, to put the “football pools” companies (organizations
that made their money from punters betting on League games) out of business or
diminish their impact. As Dave Russell succinctly explains, the League was “fiercely
opposed to the game’s association with any form of mass gambling” and attempted
“a form of sabotage by refusing to announce the fixture list until two days before
games were due to be played,” but was soon forced to back down and “chose once
again to adopt a legislative route.”1 Study of the “pools war” therefore sheds light
on critical connections between football and gambling during this period.
Pool betting on what the English sometimes called soccer first surfaced in more
effective commercial form in the early 1920s. The pool coupons, weekly distributed
in newspapers and by agents, listed the various matches to be played that Saturday.
Bets were credit bets, very limited in amount, and paid the following week. Punters filled in their coupon, predicting the results of various numbers of matches,
depending on the competition. Money was then “pooled” by the company and the
proportion left, after profits and expenses, was shared out between the punters who
had achieved the top result for a particular competition. So for a small “investment,”
lucky punters could win huge “dividends.” Entries, which had to be proved to be
sent before kickoff time, were usually made by post or less often via agents who
walked a local route, collecting coupons and taking a percentage as a fee.
People took quickly and easily to the pools, which combined possible use of
soccer knowledge and expertise with the belief in luck and fate common in workingclass culture. By the mid-1930s the activity was hugely popular, with millions of
coupons filled in weekly, and an estimated £20,000,000 spent each year. The pools
companies directly employed at least 25,000 people. They had become a staple form
Mike Huggins is with the Charlotte Mason Learning Resource Centre, Department of Education,
University of Cumbria, Ambleside, Cumbria, United Kingdom.
99
100 Huggins
of weekly entertainment during the football season, a potential means of escape from
poverty and the effects of the Depression. They were democratic and egalitarian,
and were the common culture of mass-circulation English newspapers such as the
Daily Mirror or Daily Express, which printed coupons and provided journalistic
forecasts of results. Even if punters did not win, there was the slow and considered
filling in of the coupon, sending it off, the anticipatory dreams of a “jackpot” win,
and the wait for the results in the Saturday evening football press or on the radio.2
But the Football League was opposed to football betting, and, supported by a
large number of its clubs, it had decided to stop this by keeping the League fixture
list of matches secret until it would be too late for the pools coupons to be printed.
They did this by cancelling fixtures for Saturday 29th February 1936 and only
announcing a list with relocated opponents on Friday 28th. The pools companies
were able to circumvent this through contacts with clubs, so coupons were available in newspapers on Friday night, and could still be sent in time. But because
home and away supporters did not know opponents till late on Fridays, there was
a major impact on crowd numbers and consequent League club revenue streams.
The League’s action caused massive public resentment. The writer George Orwell
ironically noted that though Hitler’s invasion of the Rhineland caused “hardly a
flicker of interest” the “attempt to quell the Football Pools . . . flung all Yorkshire
into a storm of fury.”3 The League tried again on Saturday 7 March, meeting even
more opposition. But the League’s clubs, themselves under public and financial
pressure, then brought pressure to bear for the Management Committee to reconsider and abandon the scheme, which they did on March 9th.
Academic soccer historiography has given the episode scant attention, and
failed to recognize its broader cultural significance in the relationship between
gambling legislation and the history of leisure. Studies of the interwar period
often ignore it,4 sum it up briefly as a “controversy surrounding fixture lists,”5 and
see the pools merely as helping “to confirm football’s status in English society.”6
More-detailed treatments have interpreted the events as a battle only involving the
Football League, its clubs, and the pools companies, and noted lack of support for
the action by football fans, clubs, and the press.7 The chronology of events has
often been inexact, and the reasons for the League’s action unclear. In the years
afterward, League officials such as Sutcliffe tended either to avoid discussion of
the debacle, or presented self-serving interpretations of events calculated to explain
or excuse their actions, material sometimes later used uncritically.8
This current account exploits a far wider range of sources, including much
material in Home Office and other files, as well as FA and Football League minutes,
in particular drawing on “private” and “rough” minutes recently made available. It
makes clear the hitherto ignored yet central importance of the secret role played by
the English Football Association (henceforth, FA) in shaping the League’s action,
and the importance of their intervention. The FA was regarded as “the supreme
football authority in the country,” and authorized all competitions, including the
Football League, something that the League’s officials always acknowledged.9 It
was the FA’s tacit intervention that clearly explains and accounts for the policy shift
by the Football League Management Committee from initially giving thought to
negotiating with the pools companies to attempting to destroy them.
While it remains difficult to estimate its extent, contemporaries and historians
are in agreement that expenditure on and participation in betting increased between
Association Football, Betting, and 1930s British Society 101
1918 and 1939. The substantial historiography on interwar betting is of a high
standard. McKibbin made clear as early as 1979 that much working-class betting
could be rational, and saw the pools as the principal instrument of mass betting.10
Clapson and Munting subsequently provided useful and perceptive overviews of
popular gambling. Clapson argued that it was “a moderate, economistic and expressive form of recreation . . . used as a form of self-help,” rather than the rash act
sometimes suggested.11 Chinn explored the world of bookmaking, street betting,
and the working classes, and Huggins provided an analysis of betting’s horseracing
manifestations, together with an overview of the changing role of betting in sport
through the interwar years.12 Its political and regulatory manifestations have been
well explored by Miers, Laybourn, and Dixon.13
But such studies have generally not only underplayed the significance of the
“pools war,” but have also demonstrated weak and often inaccurate understanding
of the football context in which the event was set. A few examples must suffice.
Clapson dated the event to 1935, not 1936, and believed wrongly that Sutcliffe
was the “new President” who introduced the pools war.14 More recently, in 2007,
Laybourne repeated both errors, adding for good measure that Sutcliffe persuaded
“the FA” rather than the League to withhold the publication of fixtures.15 Munting skirts over the “pools war” in less than a page, as does Russell.16 Miers also
largely ignored it and believed that in 1935/6 that the FA’s chairman was Stanley
Rous, its actual secretary.17
The wider cultural importance of the “pools war” was that it made very explicit
the decisive shift in public support for small-scale betting and gambling that was
taking place in the interwar years. It reaffirmed positive attitudes toward the football
pools across the bulk of British society. It influenced government policy. Public
anger made politicians realize that they needed to think more carefully about their
attitudes toward betting, despite pressure from interest groups such as the Nonconformist churches and the Church of England episcopate. After the “pools war,” the
football pools were secure from attack from antigambling groups, and no longer
feared political interventions.
The League and the Pools
In the 1920s, readers of the respectable press could still believe there was widespread public opposition to all betting. The Nonconformist churches were strongly
opposed.18 The Labour and Liberal parties had substantial numbers of antigambling
MPs. Antigamblers were vociferous and well organized, and the expression of
their views in local communities, politics, churches, and magistrates benches had
great public visibility. Of over 2,000 resolutions received by the Select Committee
on Betting Duty (1923), nearly all came from antigambling organizations, united
in emphasizing that the popularity of working-class betting on horseracing was
growing and that it should be stopped.19
In reality Britain was divided. The laws were confused and inconsistent. Despite
the fulminations of a moral minority, many thought betting was neither immoral nor
sinful. Classes, religious groups, and political parties were all split. The Conservative
party was more generally tolerant of betting, and many amongst the middle classes
bet. Indeed it was widespread amongst all classes in the community. Cash betting
was illegal yet the law was almost universally ignored. It was already clear that large
102 Huggins
numbers of women bet. The Church of England had taken “no united action on the
question” and was “apparently divided in its views,” while the Roman Catholics
also took a “moderate position.” The British government legalized tote betting on
the racecourse in 1929, pooling stakes and deducting a proportion and paying out
the rest to winning punters.20 Greyhound racing with an artificial hare arrived in
1926 and by the early 1930s had become widely popular as a “modern” betting
and spectator experience, attracting significant cross-class and gender support.21
And in 1930 the legalization in Ireland of the Irish hospital sweepstakes attracted
English lottery gambling on a large scale, despite its illegality.22 In the early 1930s
there was what opponents described as a “mushroom growth” of working-class
“tote clubs,” making horserace betting available all day in pubs and clubs open to
workmen expanded in numbers. Following the Report of the Royal Commission
on Lotteries and Gaming 1932/3 , the government acted, introducing stricter controls on on-course betting at greyhound racing and limiting number of race days,
banning the tote clubs, and clamping down on large lotteries. The commission had
unanimously wished to ban football betting too, but the government failed to do
so for tactical reasons.
However, the powerful stigma that attached to betting on sport was still strong
within the Football League Management Committee. They were from an older
generation. They had grown up with antibetting attitudes reflected in the Street
Betting Act of 1906, which had ensured that all off-course ready money betting
was illegal. Many of them were strongly opposed to betting on moral grounds.
They had hoped that the Royal Commission’s pool ban recommendation would
be taken up by the government. On the Management Committee, a number of key
individuals came from strong Methodist backgrounds. Methodists had long been
involved in the broader reformist moral and social attack on all forms of betting,
whether on horses, greyhound, or football: exploiting sermons, pamphlets, petitions, newspaper coverage, and deputations to the Home Secretary to try to show
that public opinion was opposed to it. Like other antigamblers, they only heard the
self-validating “uniformity of evidence” from other antigamblers: “godly policemen, devout soldiers, earnest foremen and forewomen, Sunday-school teachers . . .
big employers of labour, magistrates of both sexes . . . doctors and other professional men.”23 It is unlikely they really knew how any of the popular betting forms
worked. So the notion of the pools being a “menace to football” was a knee-jerk
reaction to keep football pure and unsullied.
A key Committee member was William Charles Cuff (b. 1868)—former player,
team manager and from 1922 chairman at Everton, and active choirmaster at nearby
St. Domingo’s Methodist chapel. Charles E. Sutcliffe (b. 1864)—ex-footballer and
referee and then Burnley director, a solicitor who joined the Management Committee in 1900 and from 1915 was responsible for the fixture list—was also an
active Methodist and teetotaler. The League’s secretary—Fred Howarth, who was
assistant secretary in 1920 and secretary since 1930, a powerful and authoritarian
figure, and able to control minutes and agenda—was an active Methodist. Also
opposed to pools betting was F.W. Rinder (b. 1858), a former surveyor, and Aston
Villa financial secretary from 1892 and club chairman 1898–1925.
There was general resentment that the pools companies made a private profit
from League matches, but gave nothing back. But there was not unanimity on the
Committee about its position, or about whether to deal with the pools companies and
Association Football, Betting, and 1930s British Society 103
ask for money. The views of John McKenna (b. 1855), the President (since 1910,
and a Vice-President of the FA since 1905), were unclear. He seems to have been
initially interested in making money for the good of the game from the copyright
for pools fixtures. He was a Protestant former vaccination officer and businessman and Liverpool FC secretary/manager—with spells as its Chairman as well
as a director—who was tough, outspoken, and a close friend of Cuff. During the
dispute, Amos Brook Hirst, another solicitor and chairman of Huddersfield Town
from 1924, who joined the Committee in 1931, was widely reported to be opposed
to taking on the pools, seeing them as legal, popular, and impossible to stop.24
The official minutes of the Football League provide only very minimal information on the pools war, but their private minutes and rough minutes, both held
in Lancashire and recently made available, provide much fuller details. They are
unpaginated, and organized by meeting date, so subsequent references to League
meetings by date are based on the private minutes of that date unless otherwise
indicated and are not separately referenced.25 The origins of the pools war lay in
a Football League Management meeting in Whitby of June 22 1934, where the
secretary reported an approach from a Liverpool accountant, Watson Hartley, with
a possible scheme to either “stop football pool betting altogether or control it,”
suggesting that “many thousands of pounds could be diverted from the pool proprietors to be used for the good of the game.” At this stage, although no decision
was reached, the dominant opinion was that “there could be no connection however
vague between the League and gambling.” At a further meeting at Blackpool on
25 July 1934, it was decided that “the League could not entertain the proposal.”
However, undeterred, Hartley continued to push his scheme, and lobbied
hard to get it back on the League’s agenda over the next year. He quickly gained
the support of the Players Union, although their support proved ineffective.26 The
popular press published pools coupons, and its sports journalists provided suggested
forecasts of results to help punters and expand readership, so unsurprisingly it was
positive too. The Daily Express described it as “a revolutionary soccer scheme.”27
The Daily Mirror encouraged Hartley’s views strongly, describing the scheme as
a possible “golden” soccer fund, providing perhaps £75,000 to £100,000 a year. In
“exclusive” interviews, Hartley explained that he had subsequently made personal
approaches to Sir John McKenna, the president, and to other individual members of
the League Management Committee. By late November 1935 he had already had
gained legal opinion in support and laid his scheme in detail before the secretary,
Howarth, and the League vice-president, Sutcliffe, who actually organized the
League fixtures. Hartley’s scheme involved a payment by printers of a copyright
acknowledgment to the League for its fixtures, when used by advertisers, pools
companies, or newspapers. His suggestions for how such money could be spent were
calculated to appeal to League players and clubs: injury compensation, pensions,
or convalescent homes for players, or training facilities, new stands, and financial
assistance, which would “end clubs’ struggle to exist.”28 Sutcliffe, despite his
objections to gambling, seems to have been persuaded. Certainly later Home Office
notes of a meeting with Stanley Rous, the Football Association secretary, indicate
Rous thought Sutcliffe believed that “having regard to the large profits which were
being made by the pools from the game the League should get some payment.”29
The Football League private minutes of the December 3rd 1935 meeting
contained an agenda item entitled “The League and Its Fixtures.” Hartley laid out
104 Huggins
his scheme in person. Even William Cuff spoke in support, seeing it as a way of
raising funds for the benefit of the League, and with Rinder suggested that the
item was of sufficient importance to investigate further and to get Queen’s Council
opinion. Other members were doubtful. Phil Bach, for example, was “keen to stop
coupon betting.”
The minutes of the next meeting on December 16 show that Sir John McKenna
reported that he had been approached by the Football Pools Promoters Association
(PPA) representative Hughes, who had got wind of events and asked for discussions. A meeting was arranged with the pools promoters, despite clear reservations.
Cuff advised caution, suggesting a mandate from clubs was important, as was to
ascertain the attitude of the Football Association. Rinder thought that it might be
“unwise to accept money from the pools which would do a great deal of harm as
the public would connect the game with pool betting.”
A four-man subcommittee was formed to meet with pools representatives. The
pools companies claimed in a later statement, issued on February 22, that there
had been a meeting at Liverpool on Friday 3 January, 1936, between the PPA and
a deputation from the League.30 The League contended that they had a copyright
on fixture lists, and “mentioned” a very substantial payment for a license. The PPA
felt this was exorbitant and unreasonable. Having taken counsel’s opinion that the
claim was not well founded, they sent, by acknowledged letter, what they felt was
a reasonable offer, to be directed to the best interests of football, and subject to the
approval of the FA. In fact this was a negotiating position, and according to the
Littlewoods Pools promoter John Moores’s biographer, the PPA was prepared to go
up to £500,000.31 Later, on 2 March 1936, the Daily Mail contained a more detailed
account of the meeting given by Moores, which he claimed had been negotiating
using Watson Hartley’s suggested amount of £100,000.32
A meeting certainly took place, but the League was clearly anxious to keep it
from the press. The subcommittee’s report of the meeting, probably significantly,
is missing from the League’s archives, although the private minutes of the next
Management Committee meeting, on 13 January 1936, which record the presence
of the PPA legal officer Holland-Hughes, say the report was “attached.” Sutcliffe
had got Queen’s Council opinion that the fixtures were copyright, although with
the rider that prosecutions would be difficult and a financial “arrangement” would
be better. Cuff still wanted a mandate from the clubs and felt that it would be
“unwise” to leave the FA “in the dark.” Rinder agreed. Cuff suggested writing to
the PPA demanding a “concrete proposal” within seven days.
But by mid-February the attitude of the Management Committee had decisively
changed. It was more antagonistic, and its discourse was more about the moral and
social reasons for stopping pools altogether, although the reasons behind this shift
of position were unclear. The secretary to the League stated, in an interview with
British Paramount News, that “from the general social point of view the passion
for the pool is evidence of an unhealthy spirit abroad. They teach the young the
idea how to bet and put their foot on the gambling way.”33
The press, public, and clubs were unaware of the shift of attitude. On the 19th
February, newspapers announced that a meeting had been arranged by telegram
with all of the League’s clubs, including those in the Third Division, to be held on
20th February, at Manchester’s Midland Hotel at 2.30 pm to discuss the copyright
question and whether the pools should be allowed to use fixture lists.34 There was
Association Football, Betting, and 1930s British Society 105
still a general assumption this was about getting money. The Daily Mirror headline,
for example, was “LEAGUE ‘YES’ TO POOLS ‘TAX’ PLAN.”35
Before the meeting, the Management Committee discussed strategy. The private
minutes say that “certain members” had already “expressed objection” to taking
money from the pools. Sutcliffe suggested that by rearrangement of the fixtures
pool betting would be seriously hampered if not suppressed. Cuff, seeking further
flexibility, suggested that a resolution be put to the clubs condemning football
betting as a menace to the game, and that if it was passed then a further proposal
could be made to give the Committee open powers to take “any steps that they
deemed expedient” to suppress it.
At the full meeting, attended by representatives of all but three clubs, McKenna
said that the PPA had challenged copyright but had offered an ex-gratia payment.
The key questions were whether the League should continue negotiations or “stop
the pools” and whether clubs gained or lost spectators by pools betting. To an extent
the delegates may have been left with the impression that revenue from the pools
companies might still be possible, and that the Committee had several possible
schemes in hand. Cuff put forward his proposal that pool betting was a “menace”
to the game. Rinder argued that betting was “detrimental” to football and that it
would be fatal to accept money from “a tainted source.” Several delegates were
vocal in antagonism toward the pools. The Tranmere delegate believed that
“football would besmirch itself by accepting money from the pools.” Others
were doubtful about any action. W. B. Moore, representing Derby County, saw
pool betting as “a menace” but believed that the League should confine itself
to an expression of depreciation. Another rebel, Alderman Masser, chairman of
Leeds United, felt that action would merely “look ridiculous” since they “could not
stop betting.” He proposed an amendment: that the League clubs “view with alarm
the growth of betting on Football Pools and they call upon the Parliament of the
country immediately to deal with it.” He received limited support. Sutcliffe then
revealed his scheme for defeating the pools. Although there was some concern that
it might affect gates, a resolution was passed. The meeting believed that “football
pool betting is a menace to the game of Association football and pledges itself to
make every effort possible to suppress the evil.” A second motion empowered the
Management Committee to take such steps as they deemed expedient to bring about
the suppression, including Sutcliffe’s scheme to alter the fixtures and announce
them too late for the completion of coupons. This gained general backing, although
twelve abstained.
There was agreement to keep the decision secret, even though the meeting
was widely reported. That evening the Liverpool Echo saw it as “one of the most
important meetings in the history of the Football League and made reference to
possible charges for use of fixture lists but also told readers that it was “widely
known” that “certain club officials” were opposed to making any profit out of
football pools transactions.36 Even the next day, most newspapers believed that the
negotiations about “money being raised” were still being pursued.37 But Cuff had
already written to the PPA telling them “negotiations were at an end.”38
When the PPA announced their version of the January negotiations, it caused
a public-relations problem for the Committee. Were they being principled opponents of betting or was the issue merely about money? Committee members tried
at first to deny that they had ever mentioned the question of payment. Rinder, for
106 Huggins
example, said allegations that the League suggested payment were “absolutely
without foundation.” They had just listened to what the PPA had to say. Hirst said
“they had never approached the pools and never mentioned a sum of money,”
while T. A. Barcroft, of Blackpool, admitted that at a small subcommittee meeting “a figure was mentioned” but did not know who mentioned it. McKenna had
“nothing to say.” Any admission that they had been negotiating with the PPA over
money weakened their now publicly expressed moral and social opposition to pool
betting. To the Times, as to the public and the press, this denial was “a conflict of
statements” with the PPA version of events.39
Over the next week, there was a series of what the Times described as “meetings and counter-meetings, denials and counter denials, speeches, allegations and
abuse.”40 By Monday 24th February, even before any fixtures had been rearranged,
there was opposition from the clubs, as the implications of action began to sink
in, and the possibility of drops in receipts sank in. The Daily Mirror reported
that officials of clubs were describing action as “gross interference,” “futile,” or
“impossible.”41 The cancellation of the fixture list caused problems. Railways were
not able to issue posters or organize excursions to matches. There were threats of
boycotts by fans. It even affected Sweden, which ran a state monopoly version
of football pools betting based on British teams during the winter. Leeds United
began to organize resistance amongst League clubs, arguing that the action was
futile, inconvenient for clubs, and an issue for Parliament, not the League. Some
northern clubs began considering an injunction because the Manchester meeting
had been arranged by telegram, and had no agenda (fixtures could only be arranged
at an annual fixtures meeting, and under Rule 80 there could be no alteration of
rules except at an Annual General Meeting or at a special meeting with alterations
notified seven days before).42 By now the Committee were in no doubt of the
strength of feeling against them. When Cuff attempted to speak at a public meeting
at Birkenhead on the 24th February in support of political moves against pool betting he was shouted down and the meeting broke up in disorder. And on February
25 he chaired a meeting of directors at his own club, Everton, and was forced to
accept a resolution of protest against the League Management Committee, which
passed with only one vote against it.43 Individual Committee members continued
to deny any demand for cash.44
Late that week the rearranged fixtures were communicated to the clubs: those
with large distances to travel heard Thursday night, and others Friday, but the
press soon had the details, and since the PPA, exceptionally, allowed last postage
for coupons until 3 pm Saturday, there was little effect. Attendances were down at
many games, but the adverse weather that week provided an alternative explanation. Newcastle United got 8,000 instead of the average 22,000; Huddersfield 6,000
instead of 18,000; Bradford City 3,000 instead of 9,500.45
Even by Friday 28th, it was clear that the scheme was likely to be partially
impaired, and, faced with club rebellion, the Management Committee called a
special meeting of clubs for March 9th at Manchester.
Rebel clubs arranged a meeting at Leeds for 2 March, 1936, and thirty-six of
the forty-four clubs in the top two divisions sent delegates. Although they expressed
their loyalty to the Management Committee and accepted its right to scrap the
fixture list, twenty-six voted for the immediate restoration of the original fixtures.
The others abstained to consult with their boards.
Association Football, Betting, and 1930s British Society 107
Meanwhile the League Management Committee held a private meeting. Still
concerned about their public image, the rough minutes indicate that they decided
unanimously that “no sum was ever mentioned” in discussion with the pools companies, but if the clubs took away their mandate, they would at the annual general
meeting proceed to copyright the fixtures formally.46 They should get something
for copyright. The private minutes indicate that the Committee discussed whether
to carry on with trying to destroy the pools, revert to the original fixtures and ignore
the pools, ask the government to act, or resume negotiations. They also received
an offer of £50,000 from another source for pools copyright, but this they rejected.
Rearranged fixtures went ahead for a second week, and once again attendances
were generally poorer, especially in the north, where Leeds and Liverpool get their
lowest gates of the season.
Under yet more public pressure, the League Management Committee caved
in. At the meeting on the 9th March, the clubs unanimously voted to restore the
original list. The Minutes record that antigambling attitudes were expressed, and the
Liverpool representative felt that “betting was not a good thing for the game,” but
this was challenged by Moore, who said that “pool betting was the most innocuous
kind of betting. To the pool promoters, whether a match was lost or drawn made
not the slightest difference.” He believed that “the merits or demerits of the pools
had nothing to do with us as a League . . . if there was any evidence that they were
tampering with the game he would be the first to fight them.” Sutcliffe reiterated
the League’s stance that at the meeting with the PPA “no suggestion of payment
for fixtures was ever made.”
The League and FA turned instead to legislation, writing to the Home Secretary,
urging that pool betting be made illegal. Amongst the clubs, however, opinions still
varied about whether it was appropriate to accept revenue from the pools promoters
for fixture list copyrights, although it was accepted that in the current climate the
League would not do so.47
Eminence Grise:
The Role of the Football Association
Contemporary press coverage and modern historians’ accounts concentrated on the
role of the League and its Management Committee. They largely failed to explain
the Committee’s change of direction from negotiations with the pools companies in
order to gain revenue for the good of the game, to deciding to try to destroy them.
At the heart of this lay key individuals in the English Football Association (FA).
The English FA had long been a strong opponent of betting on football in any
form. At the start of the twentieth century, the growing connections between betting
and professional football were already becoming perceived as potentially dangerous
by the various British football associations, initially because of fixed-odds betting
and the opportunities it provided if players tried to fix games.48 The English FA first
specifically prohibited players from betting in 1902. In 1907, a rule (later Rule 43)
was introduced to ensure any club official, referee, linesman, or players proved to
have taken part in football betting were to be permanently suspended from taking
part in football, or in football management. Many professional clubs, worried
about potential player vulnerability, added a contractual clause so that if a player
108 Huggins
was found to have taken part in football betting the contract could be terminated.
Bookmakers and their agents were “a serious menace to the game.”49
In 1920 the FA’s lobbying, led by Nonconformist Chairman Charles Clegg,
secured the introduction of a Ready Money Football Betting Act to ban writing,
printing, publishing, or circulating of any circulars, advertisements, or coupons
of any ready money football betting business. The FA was portrayed as needing
support to “keep the game pure.”50
The passing of the 1920 Ready Money Football Betting Act had only a very
limited effect on coupon distribution. Infractions of the Act were difficult to detect.
Police had no powers of search to enter suspected premises. But alongside coupon
betting, pool betting began to grow rapidly. It too was based on predicting the outcome of top-level association football matches. But most importantly, and quite
unlike the fixed odds, there was no incentive for the bookmakers to attempt to fix
matches since the same profit was made no matter what the result.
Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the FA continued to oppose betting and tried
to distance the game from it. Many of its executives were opposed to all betting, for
moral, ethical, economic, and social reasons. Soccer clubs in England, Scotland,
and Wales all exhibited similar notices to those in pubs stating that no betting was
allowed on the premises, and prosecuted a player publicizing coupons.51
By the 1930s, the FA, always a conservative organization, with an aging leadership, was still trying hard to preserve what it saw as football’s essential values
from the pressures of commercialism and the market, and still fiercely opposed to
any association with betting. In April 1932, Council recommended that football
should not be played on grounds used for greyhound racing or speedway since
both encouraged betting.
The 1932/3 Royal Commission on Lotteries and Betting allowed the various
football associations to express their anxieties. All three organizations urged strongly
that steps should be taken to suppress all forms of football coupon betting. The
English and Welsh FAs believed that football betting was undesirable on general
grounds, and was a potential danger to the sport. But the English FA’s spokesman
admitted that there had only been three occasions in thirty years where players had
been the tool of bookmakers, and they did not think betting was currently affecting
the game. The Scottish FA clearly wanted credit football pools made illegal, and
thought they brought the game into disrepute. It had experienced several cases where
professional footballers had been bribed, or attempts had been made at bribery, by
bookmakers. It also felt that suspicions and allegations of bribery were common,
and that where results went contrary to generally held expectations, crowd rowdiness and hostility to players and the referee were generated. Rather than seeing
this as partisanship they blamed it on the crowds’ pools betting. The overall message of the football authorities was that football was a national asset, requiring
some support from Parliament to keep the game clean. The associations argued,
with limited supporting evidence, that betting opened up football to allegations of
bribery by bookmakers to fix matches, and created hostility amongst spectators at
unwanted results. They failed to point out that match fixing was only practically
possible with fixed-odds betting.52
In October 1935, the President of the FA, Sir Charles Clegg, pushed through
the FA Council’s resolution that having regard to the serious mischief arising from
various forms of betting, and under Rule 43, it was undesirable that clubs should
Association Football, Betting, and 1930s British Society 109
permit pools advertisements or any other forms of betting in their official programs
or advertisement sites.53
So what was the attitude of the FA to negotiations of the Football League
with the pools promoters in 1936? The FA may have been unofficially aware of
discussions in 1935 and early 1936, because by the 1930s all members of the Management Committee were also on the FA Council. And if they were not, then they
would have been by late January 1936. In the files of the League private minutes, a
loose-leaf copy of a letter sent by the Football Pools Promoters Association (PPA)
to the FA on 27th January survives. It told Stanley Rous, the FA Secretary, that the
Association had been in touch with the League about whether its members were
infringing copyright, and had been advised “by Leading Counsel that there is no
such infringement” but that notwithstanding the members “might be prepared to
consider an ex gratia payment to the Football League so long as it was directed to
the best interests of the Sport.” So the PPA “desired to be assured that you would
not view with disfavour any such arrangement.”
Sir Charles Clegg (b. 1851), known as “the Napoleon of football,” held strong
antigambling views. And at a meeting with the FA in London on February 17th
1936, William Cuff in his League capacity formally apprised him of the situation.
The FA secretary Stanley Rous (b. 1895), former teacher and referee, and a stickler
for observing the laws of the game, also attended. Cuff was a well-respected FA
council member, so it is likely that he would have been fully aware of their likely
response already.
Cuff reported back to a private meeting of the League Management Committee at 2 pm on February 20th 1936, half an hour before the meeting with the clubs,
that the FA were definitely against any approach by or to the pools companies.
They were “strongly in favour of trying to suppress football pool betting and were
prepared to give financial assistance to that end.” There is, however, no further
data on the nature of this “assistance.” This FA response explains the subsequent
League actions, although it was not made public. According to the Daily Mirror,
for example, in its next day’s report on the meeting, “The FA has still to express
an opinion on the scheme.”54 Given Cuff’s antagonism towards betting, he may
well have been very unhappy at having to be involved in negotiations with the
pools companies in the first place. Certainly, he was strongly in favor of trying to
eliminate pool betting.
As opposition grew to the League’s action, journalists began to ask whether
there been meetings with the FA. There were, for example, press reports of a joint
meeting of McKenna, Rinder, and Cuff with FA officials at Lancaster Gate London
on Monday 24th February. The Times, for example, announced: “Football Officials
in Conference.” Details were scanty. Both sides denied any meeting about the pools
had occurred.55
The following week, on Monday March 2, as it began to be clear that there were
serious problems with the attempt by the League to put the pools companies out
of business, Sir Charles Clegg and Rous communicated with the Home Secretary,
urging that government legislation aimed at the elimination of football pool betting
be put into effect by the government as speedily as possible.56 The PPA responded
with a counterattack, putting forward the details of their case, and claiming that
the pools were a weekly pastime for millions, and an attack “an invidious class
distinction.” Both letters were soon public knowledge.57 Inside the Home Office
110 Huggins
there was anxiety not to get mixed up in what a note on the PPA letter says was
“this unseemly wrangle that is at present going on between the football authorities
and the pool promoters.”58 The FA minutes of 22 March 1936 show the PPA’s offer
was again discussed and that Rous reiterated that FA rules forbade acceptance of
such money.
Alongside the FA letter in the Home Office files were minutes of a meeting
between Rous and the permanent Secretary, held on the 23rd March. Rous explained
that it was always their policy to keep the game free from betting under Rule 43,
and opposition to the pools was part of their general attitude. Rous accepted that
the mischiefs in terms of “attempts to influence players” were “potential rather
than actual,” and recognized that in fixed-odds betting there “might be more risk
of attempts to influence players.” He thought that recently crowd behavior was
“deteriorating,” with “more barracking of a team expected to lose and showing
signs of winning.” He admitted that he had “no precise data on football betting.”
In April, the FA further spelled out their view to the government in support of
the private members’ bill being put forward by Russell to abolish the pools. The
circular, signed by Sir Charles Clegg, argued that betting was adversely affecting
football. The statement for the first time made clear that the FA had told the League
and the pools companies that they could not permit payment of “a sum of money”
for the use of the League fixtures. The pools were “an evil influence.” The FA kept
the game free from “squaring matches” and only a “few cases” were recorded. The
pools supposedly influenced crowds to barrack players when results did not suit
their forecasts and this discredited the game’s fairness and honesty. The statement
alleged that sixteen and a half times as much money was spent on the pools as on
gate money, so that “there is a danger that football will be regarded having more
importance as a gambling opportunity than as a sport.” The press gave too much
concentration on predicting results for the pools coupons, and there had been an
“enormous increase” in pools betting. They alleged, although as with other antigambling publications, without referring to any evidence, that attendances were
getting lower at amateur and junior professional matches because money was spent
on the pools, that senior boys in school were betting, and junior club secretaries
were being encouraged by promoters to distribute coupons in exchange for football
equipment. They concluded that “people could ill-afford to lose” the money spent
on pools. The FA needed protection from these “parasitical outside organisations”
who were concerned only with profit, out of consideration for “the spirit and good
name of the game.”59 Home Office files show that the FA had also written to Russell,
telling him that “our desire is that you should take every possible step to ensure
that legislation is effected with all speed to eliminate all pool betting on football.”
They had already instructed clubs to ban advertisements relating to pools betting
from programs and hoardings, and circulated county FAs and clubs to remind them
that any club, referee, linesman, or player under their jurisdiction proved to take
part in betting would be permanently suspended.
The government was puzzled by the FA’s attitude. The Home Secretary wrote
privately to Newsham, the Permanent Secretary, asking what lay at the heart of
the FA’s objection: “Do the pools make football unclean? Does it lower public
morals?”60
What seems clear is that many of those opposed to pool betting were opposed
to all betting, and had little understanding of how it operated or its place in working-
Association Football, Betting, and 1930s British Society 111
class life. Many of them used the term bookmaker only as a derogatory word, and
accepted the antigambling groups’ view of them as purely parasitic. Yet as modern
studies have pointed out, the leading pools organizations worked hard to avoid
any hint of dishonesty, and traded heavily on their financial probity.61 Talking as
if football supporters and pools punters were entirely different groups was clearly
nonsense. The implications that pools offered opportunities for betting coups, and
that players could be got at in ways that would ensure a large win, were difficult
to imagine, when the practicalities involved fifteen or so teams, plus referees and
linesmen. There was no evidence that the pools led to corruption, and the pools
promoters had no financial interest in results, odds, or winnings, while the average
punter staked only two shillings. The press, and several club directors, agreed that
talk of corruption was naïve.
The antigamblers emphasized the negative social consequences of betting. But
as the Liverpool Echo remarked, some on the Committee talked of homes being
ruined by football gambling “as if people speculated hundreds of pounds a week
instead of paltry sums such as sixpence or a shilling.”62 Likewise, suggesting that
the pools promoters gave clubs equipment to encourage entries sounded unlikely
when the other advertising they already did was so effective.
The Pools and the Government
The pools dispute was noted in the British Parliament, on Tuesday March 3, 1936,
when an ILP Glasgow member asked the Home Secretary whether, in view of the
dispute between the League Management Committee and the Football Pools Association, he would consider introducing a bill to regulate football betting. The Home
Secretary replied the matter was under consideration.63 When the FA and League
failed in their attempt, they turned to the government for support. They might have
been encouraged in that view because less than three years previously, when the
conclusions of the Royal Commission on Betting and Lotteries were published, it
had reached a unanimous negative conclusion on the pools.
It had been swayed by the lobbying from antigambling groups and the Football
Association. The Christian Social Council, the Church of Scotland, the National
Anti-Gambling League, the Scottish National League against Betting and Gambling,
and others had all argued that betting had major social problems, was a frequent
cause of crime, had adverse effects on character, and caused impoverishment. The
arguments voiced against pool betting were the same arguments levied at other
forms of betting. Solid statistics to support them were never advanced, and they
were repeatedly returned to. Liberal MPs were often opposed to betting, whereas
many Labour MPs had long seen betting as wrong in principle.64
But they led the Commission to believe that the total volume of pools betting
was “very considerable.” Three of its members wanted complete suppression of all
football betting, including the pools, regarding pools as a menace to soccer. The rest
of the Commissions, to the surprise of many punters, recommended that bookmakers should be registered and then allowed to conduct football combination betting
at fixed odds like other forms of betting. They all wanted the pools to be banned,
the exact opposite of what one might have expected if the main danger of betting
was of corrupting football. This suggests that their opposition to the pools sprang
from broader antigambling evidence, which linked football “pools” to debates about
112 Huggins
similar pooled “totalisator” betting at many greyhound stadiums, and the “tote”
clubs, open all day, often selling alcohol, and providing cash pools betting on horse
racing, which had sprung up between 1930 and 1932 across working-class urban
areas, particularly in London. The Commission seem to have believed that pools
betting appealed to a different public to starting-price betting, and that off-course
pools betting was spreading demoralizing betting habits more widely.
The Home Secretary, Sir John Gilmour, who took a strong antigambling view,
was keen to respond positively to the Commission’s report. Following pressure
from the Commission and some MPs in 1934, the resulting first draft of the 1934
Lotteries and Betting Bill banned the football pools. But MPs were bombarded
with critical letters from constituents, and the Conservative Private Members
Committee met with Gilmour to express their concerns. The PPA pointed out in a
memorandum that pools generated revenue of £5,500,000 a season for the Postmaster General, and argued that there was no public demand for the prohibition of
a harmless and popular form of betting. It soon became clear to Gilmour that there
was great diversity of opinion on the subject but little public support for a ban, and
so the government decided tactically to drop the relevant clauses.65 An attempted
amendment by R. J. Russell, the Liberal MP for Eddisbury, Cheshire, who was
a Methodist lay preacher vehemently opposed to gambling, to reintroduce it in
November 1934 in Committee in the House of Commons failed.66
British antigamblers were dismayed, but tried to influence public opinion,
although their sermons, memoranda, and books largely reached only their own
committed supporters. Two books, John Gulland’s From Pontoon to Pool (National
Anti-Gambling League, 1934) and R. J Russell’s The Peril of the Pools (Epworth
Press, 1935) were issued to provide material to inform antigambling speakers and
social workers. Canon Peter Green, from Salford, an indefatigable antigambling
campaigner, wrote Betting and Gambling (London: SCMP, 1935) describing pools
punters as “five million mugs” (p. 32). The police too became more active against
betting. Between 1934 and 1935, the police prosecutions in the Metropolitan area
for betting and gaming rose by 60.4%.67
The fight against pool betting continued. In early 1936, Russell gained the
opportunity to have a private members’ bill, and with the failure of the League’s
actions, seized his opportunity. He may have been encouraged by the appointment
of a new Home Secretary, Sir John Simon, in June 1935, since Russell had been a
leading figure in supporting Simon’s formation of the National Liberal Party. But the
evidence of public opinion had convinced Simon privately that the pools provided
“excitement in many drab lives” and that “legislation is not to be thought of.”68 The
Home Office civil service, influenced by its policing of illegal betting, might be
influenced by antigambling views, but the Treasury and Postmaster General were
influenced by the very substantial revenue in terms of stamps and postal orders the
pools generated. Simon’s strategy, hammered out by officials, was to pretend to
accept responsibility for the bill but to ensure it was left to a free vote. At a poorly
attended first reading, the bill gained support from four Conservatives, two Liberals, and four Labour MPs. Church leaders lobbied in support of it too, including
nine Church of England bishops, and the leaders of the Church of Scotland, the
Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Salvation Army, and the YMCA.
It was unavailing. On 3 April 1936, the bill’s second reading failed. Public
pressure was far more powerful. Eric Errington, the Conservative MP for Bootle,
Association Football, Betting, and 1930s British Society 113
told his constituents he had received over a hundred letters and now saw the pools
as “a small gamble.” By the abolition of football pools, “you would be depriving
a large number of working people of a very reasonable and proper kick out of
life.”69 MPs from all sides opposed it. The independent MP for Oxford University, the writer A. P. Herbert, described the bill as “rotten,” an “attempt to cosset
people,” and suggested that Parliament should not dictate how poor people spend
their money. According to Conservative MP Alan Lennox-Boyd, the bill was “an
unjustifiable interference with private liberty.” Another Conservative, Philip Dunne,
saw it as “the most harmless of all forms of gambling,” something that “brought a
little happiness and excitement to a great many people, many of whom lead very
dull and monotonous lives.” Like others, he believed that suggestions of possible
match fixing were “absurd.” A third Conservative, G. Lloyd, announced that he had
received a letter from a farm laborer saying, “please oppose this bill. The pools keep
the old woman quiet for at least two hours a week.” John McGovern, the Glasgow
ILP representative, also opposed the bill. Most ILP members, rather surprisingly
given its early close affiliations with serious-minded Nonconformity, called for a
more broad-minded and tolerant approach and less interference with recreational
pursuits, arguing that workers were entitled to spend their own money in their own
way, while the Church should try and understand the workers instead of continually
condemning them. Even one of the bill’s few supporters, Labour MP Ted Williams,
admitted that he had received more letters from his constituents threatening never to
vote for him again if he voted for the bill than at any other time in the past thirteen
and a half years. The vote against was decisive, by 287 votes to 24.70
Media Attitudes
Newspaper coverage varied from paper to paper, sometimes within papers, and over
time. Much of the popular press proved partial, portraying the League’s action as
foolish, mean minded, or out of touch with public opinion and the fans. There was
broad press support for the public’s right to spend a little each week on a pools
entry, although many pointed out that the pools promoters contributed nothing to
football. There was an increased marginalization of antigambling views, and some
suggestions that this was a class-based attack. The Daily Express was on the side of
pools punters. It saw the action as a “scatter-brained idea . . . when you’ve earned
your money, it’s your own, to spend as you like.”71 Its columnist Cassandra saw
the anti-pools approach as the action of “a handful of moralists.” He claimed with
some exaggeration, that “about one hundred people in the country entirely oppose
the will of six million people. The majority of the hundred people are concerned
with the moral welfare of the six million. The remainder of the hundred people are
more sensibly concerned about the welfare of the game of football and the enormous sums of money that go into the pockets of people who contribute nothing
to the sport.” But, he suggested to his readers, “they don’t like the way you and I
spend our money. With glaring crazy eyes they see ruin . . . because Uncle George
spends three-pence believing he knows Everton will win next Saturday.”72 Later
it called on the League to “stop fooling with football.”73 Writers in the Liverpool
Post described it as “mean and spiteful,” and “a shocking blow to the liberties of
the working class.”74 The decision to defeat the pools created huge agitation and a
storm of protests amongst working folk, while many League clubs began to receive
114 Huggins
substantial numbers of letters and telegrams opposing the action. George Orwell
numbered such betting as “the cheapest of luxuries,” a form of working-class
compensation that distracted them from their exploitation and averted revolution.75
From late February onward, the national press mostly reflected wider public
opinion, and were increasingly uncomplimentary about the League. There was
little mention of the Football Association. Cartoonist David Lowe, in a 29 February cartoon, also ridiculed the League’s action: “Hunt the Football: It is officially
stated that if the measures already taken do not fool the football pools, the League
has decided next week to hide the ball.”76 The Daily Telegraph saw the League as
“putting through their own goal” and suggested that “the moral stroke which they
aimed at the football pools has singularly failed to impress the football public.”77
The Morning Post described it as a “misfire” and suggested that in view of the
“ineptitudes” of the last days the League should “beat an ignominious retreat.”78
The Daily Sketch predicted that the scheme would die, “unloved, un-mourned.”79
The Daily Mail said that “the ill-conceived notion” had “failed miserably” and
that it had “caused the strongest resentment among thousands of supporters.”80
The Glasgow Herald claimed the controversy “had shaken the foundations of the
football world.” It had been a “farce” that “resulted merely in chaos for the clubs.”81
Only a very few newspapers supported the League. The Manchester Guardian,
which was generally antibetting, initially saw it as “a determined protest” by the
League against a “vested interest” that “ought to impress the government.”82 The
Times, an establishment, respectable newspaper, usually encouraging any antigambling moves, ridiculed both sides in its “Football Pools” editorial of 29th February.
It saw the pools promoters as “a combination of bookmakers,” but in explaining
to its readers what pool betting was it also acknowledged that it was “difficult to
see what a bookmaker working on the pool system would gain by [fixing matches]
for he gets his flat rate . . . whoever wins.” It represented the League as concerned
for “the purity of sport.” But it also mentioned the allegations that the League had
initially demanded a price for the fixture list. Now, it claimed, “the issue is reducing
the most popular of all open-air entertainments to chaos.” It suggested that Parliament should “grasp the nettle” because it was possible that “betting demoralises
people” and “a settlement” should be reached. It felt that “public ridicule” was the
current result of the League action.83 By March 10th it had accepted that the pools
war was “football’s greatest muddle.”
Newsreel coverage, essentially conservative, tended to avoid possible offence
toward antigambling views, pools promoters, or punters. The carefully studied
neutrality of the British Paramount News report, entitled “Should they be illegal?
Anti-gambling League sets out to stop gigantic £20,000, 000 ‘flutter,’” included
shots of pools coupons, football games, post office sorting activities, antigambling
material, but also much material from inside the pools offices, and girls working
there.
Conclusion
So what were the results of the “pools war”? In pure football terms, it demonstrated
“the usually latent collective power of the clubs.”84 And as Russell argued, the
Management Committee’s defeat “represented a small but significant defeat for
the custodians of Victorian values.”85 However, the League’s tactical blunder in
Association Football, Betting, and 1930s British Society 115
taking on the pools did little long-term reputational harm within football to those
involved. The clubs voted in Sutcliffe as President of the League in the summer of
1936 and Cuff followed him in 1939. Hirst became president of the FA in 1941.
Yet social historian Ross McKibbin was certainly correct to argue that it was “a
foolish and mean-minded episode,” that “demonstrated yet again how isolated from
its popular following were so many of the administrators of English sport.”86 The
leading administers were from a different generation, with antibetting attitudes
rooted in their religious faith. Institutional secularization, moderate rates of decline
in church attendance from the 1920s, and the fading of Nonconformity meant that
England in which they lived was increasingly secular, and less influenced by moral
antigambling arguments.
But its resonances went far wider. The pools war provides scholars with a way
of making fruitful research connections between “football” history and broader
work on gambling history. In the 1920s and early 1930s, football betting was still
seen within the Home Office as controversial, and certainly not to be encouraged.
It was under threat, a threat made explicit by the decision of the Royal Commission
on Lotteries and Betting in 1932/3 to recommend banning the pools, alongside
lotteries such as the Irish Hospital Sweepstake and the horseracing urban tote
clubs. But when legislation followed, and the Government passed the Betting and
Lotteries Act in 1934, the Commission’s conclusions on pool betting were ignored
for tactical reasons.
The events of a fortnight in 1936 made clear from the public reaction that the
pools had become socially legitimate. Press coverage proved crucial in educating
the public. Over the days from the 20th February to mid-March 1936, the publicity
provided by the press gave to punters, the wider public, and to British MPs a much
better understanding of the way the pools operated, the limited amount spent by
individual punters, and a clear sense of their widespread popularity. As a result,
the media heavily influenced subsequent discussion of the pools and had a major
and significant impact on later governmental responses.
Morality, respectability, and reformist belief might still gain rhetorical coverage in the pulpit, press, and antigambling publications, but were no longer having
much public impact. As it became clearer that moral arguments were ineffective,
antigambling writing had increasingly targeted the supposed “social effects” of
betting. People simply did not believe these applied to the few pence spent each
week on pools coupons. The pools were regarded as above or beyond betting, an
exercise of skill and knowledge about football, not chance, or as a cheap bit of fun.
The “war” made clear too, that the pools offered no threat to football, and that
they were not associated with match fixing. Press coverage reemphasized that they
were perhaps the greatest leisure phenomenon of the decade, and a major part of
British social life. It emphasized to the Home Office, and to the Government, that
any attempt to ban the pools was doomed to failure.
It also made clear that, as leisure historian Stephen Jones has pointed out, “the
mass of the British people were opposed to restrictions being imposed on their right
to bet.”87The pools offered a variety of alternatives: from effort-based approaches,
such as self-appointed expertise, to the use of a three-sided dice or other chancebased approaches, and from individual or family effort to being a member of a
syndicate in factory, office, works, or club. On Saturdays, the radio results would
be eagerly anticipated, or the evening football paper would be scanned. The pools
116 Huggins
had become what Jeff Hill has summed up as “one of the great institutions of British life,” showing how popular commercial entertainment could be adapted to meet
popular tastes.88 Their popularity was underlined from 1937, when the British Mass
Observation surveys took an interest in the anthropology of pools gambling, asking
people why they did them, and noting their comments and behavior.89
In April, when Russell’s bill was brought before Parliament, it was abundantly
clear that public opinion had decisively shifted away from antagonism towards the
pools, despite the sound and fury of antigambling groups. Its defeat was inevitable.
The Daily Telegraph thought it was “a decisive verdict” on an “ill-conceived little
bill.”90 The Daily Express represented the defeat as “the most crushing defeat which
any private members’ Bill has received for many a long day.”91 Paradoxically, while
the League Management Committee had set out to destroy the pools, the result of
the “pools war” was to secure their enhanced status in wider society.
Notes
1.
Dave Russell, Football and the English (Preston: Carnegie Publishing, 1997), p. 105–106.
2. Mark Clapson, A Bit of a Flutter: Popular Betting and English Society c. 1823–1961
(Manchester, MUP, 1992), pp. 162–186; Keith Laybourn, Working Class Gambling in Britain c.
1906-1960s (Lampeter: Edward Mellen Press, 2007), 151–166.
3.
George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier (London: Victor Gollancz, 1937), p. 89.
4. Martin Johnes, Soccer and Society in South Wales, 1900-1939 (Cardiff: University of Wales
Press 2002).
5. Richard Cox, Dave Russell and Wray Vamplew, The Encyclopaedia of British Football
(London: Frank Cass, 2002), p. 122.
6.
James Walvin, The People’s Game (London: Allen Lane, 1975), p. 120.
7. Simon Inglis, Soccer in the Dock London:Willow Books, 1985), pp.93–115; Nicholas Fishwick, English Football and Society 1910-1950 (Manchester University Press, 1989) pp. 127–129.
8. Charles Sutcliffe, J.A. Briery and F. Howarth, The Story of the Football League 1888-1939
(Preston: The Football League, 1938)
9. Matthew Taylor, The Leaguers: The Making of Professional Football in England, 1900-1939
(Liverpool University Press, 2005) p 35.
10. Ross McKibbin, “Working-class gambling in Britain 1880-1939”, Past and Present 82, 1,
1979, pp. 147–178.
11. Mark Clapson, A Bit of a Flutter: Popular Betting and English Society c. 1823–1961 (Manchester, MUP, 1992), p. 210; Roger Munting, An Economic and Social History of Gambling in
Britain and the USA (Manchester, MUP, 1996).
12. Carl Chinn, Better Betting with a Decent Feller: Bookmaking, Betting and the British Working Class 1750–1990 (London, 1991); Mike Huggins, Horseracing and the British. 1919–1939
(Manchester, 2003); Mike Huggins, “Betting, Sport and the British 1918-1939,” Journal of Social
History 30 (Winter 2007), pp. 283–306.
13. David Dixon, From Prohibition to Regulation: Bookmaking, Anti-gambling and the Law
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991: David Miers, Regulating Commercial Gambling, Past, Present
and Future (Oxford, OUP, 2004); Keith Laybourn, Working Class Gambling in Britain c. 19061960s (Lampeter: Edward Mellen Press, 2007).
14.Clapson, A Bit of a Flutter, p. 170.
Association Football, Betting, and 1930s British Society 117
15.Laybourne, Working Class Gambling, p. 158.
16. Roger Munting, An Economic and Social History of Gambling in Britain and the USA
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996), p. 130; Russell, Football and the English, pp.
105–106.
17.Miers, Regulating Commercial Betting, p. 318–319.
18. Report of the Select Committee on Betting 1923 pp. xiv–xv, p. 39.
19. For a more detailed analysis of the antigambling movement’s efforts, see David Dixon, From
Prohibition to Regulation: Bookmaking. Anti-Gambling and the Law (Oxford, Clarendon Press,
1991).
20. Mike Huggins, Horseracing and the British 1919-1939 (Manchester: MUP, 2004), pp. 34–38.
21. Mike Huggins, “Everybody’s going to the dogs? The middle classes and greyhound racing
in Britain between the wars,” Journal of Sport History 34, 1 (2007), pp. 401–444.
22. Marie Coleman, The Irish Sweep: A History of the Irish Hospitals Sweepstake (Dublin:
University College Dublin Press, 2009).
23. Peter Green, Betting and Gambling (London: Student Christian Movement, 1934) p. 11.
24. See for example, Liverpool Echo, Feb 26 1936. The occupational and religious affiliations of
committee members provided here draw on County Directories and online searches of the Times
and National Newspaper Library material to pick up newspaper obituaries and other references.
25. The printed minutes of the Football League 1935-6 Lancashire Archives DDFOL 1/1/5/2; The
Private Minutes of the Football League Management Committee 1933-36, Lancashire Archives,
DDFOL 1/1/2/2; The Rough Minutes of the Football League 1930s, Lancashire Archives DDFOL
1/3/7.
26.Taylor, The Leaguers, p. 170, note 194 says August 1934. Reported in Daily Express 28 and
29th August 1935
27. Daily Express 29 August 1935.
28. Daily Mirror 29 and 30 November 1935.
29. National Archives, Home Office Papers, Betting and Gambling, HO 45/16680/673249/144
meeting with Rous.
30. See for example the Times 24 February 1936.
31. Barbara Clegg, The Man Who Made Littlewoods: The Story of John Moores (London: Hodder
& Stoughton, 1993), p. 68.
32. Daily Mail, 2 March 1936.
33. British Paramount News, 17 February 1936.
34. Such as Daily Express, 19 February 1936.
35. Daily Mirror, 21 February 1936.
36. Liverpool Echo, 20 February 1936.
37. Daily Express, 21 February 1936.
38. Football League private minutes, meeting of 2 March 1936.
39. The Times, 24 February 1936.
40. Times, 29 February 1936.
41. Daily Mirror, 24 February 1936.
42. Times, 26 February 1936
43. Times, February 1936; Liverpool Echo, 26 February 1936.
44. Daily Mirror, 24 February 1936
118 Huggins
45. Daily Express, 2 March 1936.
46. Football League Private Minutes Lancashire Archives, DDFOL/1/3/7.
47. A point made forcibly by Jack Simmons, “Here and There,” Daily Express, 6 April 6 1936.
48.Mason, Association Football and English Society, pp.179–185.
49. W. Pickford, A Glance Back at the Football Association Council 1888-1938 (Bournemouth:
Bournemouth Guardian, 1939), p. 25; Mark Clapson, A Bit of a Flutter, p. 168. Derek Birley,
Playing the Game: Sport and British Society 1910-1945 (London: Cass, 1995), p. 181.
50. Daily Mirror, 6 March 1920. Times, 6 March 1920.
51.Clapson, A Bit of a Flutter, p. 169.
52. Evidence given to Royal Commission on Lotteries and Betting, 1932/3 Report, p. 97. See
also Times, 2 December 1932.
53. FA Council Minutes, 7 October 1935; Times, 8 October 1935.
54. Daily Mirror, 21 February 1936.
55. Times, 25 February 1936; Liverpool Post, February 26 1936.
56. National Archives, Home Office Papers, HO 45/16680/673249/144.
57. See, for example, Glasgow Herald, 10 March 1936. Times, 9 March 1936.
58. National Archives, Home Office Papers HO 45/16703/673249/ 154.
59.See Manchester Guardian 2 April 1936 and Times 2 April 1936 for details.
60. National Archives, Home Office Papers HO 45/16703/673249/ 154.
61. David Miers, Regulating Commercial Betting (Oxford: OUP 2004), p. 317.
62. Liverpool Echo, 24 February 1936.
63. Times, 4 March 1036.
64. Greg McClymont, “Socialism, Puritanism, Hedonism. The Labour Party’s Attitude to Gambling, 1923-1931,” Twentieth Century British History, 19, 3, 2008, pp. 288–313.
65. The Times, 24 April 1934; Greyhound Track Review, 6 October 1934.
66. Hansard, House of Commons Debates vol. 293, col. 683 (5 November 1934).
67. Stephan Slater, “Street Disorder in the Metropolis, 1905-1939,” Law, Crime and History,
1, 1 2012, p.72.
68. National Archives, Home Office Papers HO 45/16703/673249/ 154.
69. Catholic Herald, 3 April 1936.
70. Hansard, House of Commons Debates vol. 310, col. 2370 (3 April 1936).
71. Daily Express, 22 February 1936.
72. Daily Express, 26 February 1936.
73. Daily Express, 29 February 1936.
74. Liverpool Post 24 February, 1936; Liverpool Post 25 February 1936.
75. George Orwell, quoted in Birley, Playing the Game, p. 293.
76. Evening Standard 29 February 1936.
77. Daily Telegraph 29 February 1936.
78. Morning Post, 2 March 1936.
79. Daily Sketch, 2 March 1936.
80. Daily Mail, 7 March 1936.
81. Glasgow Herald, 10 March 1936.
Association Football, Betting, and 1930s British Society 119
82. Manchester Guardian 22 February 1936.
83. Times, 29 February 1936.
84.Taylor, The Leaguers, p. 74.
85.Russell, Football and the English, p. 106.
86.McKibbin, Classes and Cultures, p. 377.
87. Stephen G. Jones, Workers at Play: A Social and Economic History of Leisure 1918-1939
(London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986), p. 173.
88. Jeffrey Hill, Sport, Leisure and Culture in Twentieth Century Britain (Basingstoke: Palgrave,
2002), p. 39.
89. Mass Observation Archive, Sussex University. For example, Worktown Collection 1937-40,
Box 4F Gambling; SxMOA1/2/8 TC86 Gambling 1937-51.
90. Daily Telegraph, 4 April 1936.
91. Daily Express, 4 April 1936.