Sport at Westminster.
“When George the Third was King” used to be a favourite expression amongst my elders when I was a boy, as denoting the many wonderful events which occurred during the first twenty years of the last century, and which terminated that long and glorious reign. Since then the Victorian Era has come and gone, eclipsing in every way the glories of its longest predecessor, and handing down to this twentieth century a record which, as regards sport alone, is vastly in advance of all others, so much so that although we of the elder generation naturally are wont to enlarge occasionally on the greatness of the past, it has to be admitted in our candid moments that our ideas and ideals have been swept away, and can never again be used, except as ancient milestones on the road to Parnassus.
It would seem, however, that thus early in our twentieth century it is destined that a halt should be cried. The why and the wherefore of which it is not befitting that your pages should discuss, except in its one aspect, that of sport, yet, in truth, even sport cannot wholly be dissevered from the growth of democracy, which, for good or evil, has come like a March wind, untempered by sunshine, obliterating bright prospects of spring and summer happiness, foreboding a season of disappointment.
We many of us remember when on the last Tuesday in May, the Prime Minister rising in his place in Parliament moved the adjournment of the House of Commons over the Derby day, and the motion was agreed to nem. con. Our annual classic race at Epsom was a recognised holiday for our legislators. Lord Palmerston was never happier than when, as Premier, he was shaking off the cobwebs of office on this occasion; his horses more than once being competitors in the great race, and once he was second for it. Lord Derby also led his faithful Commons to Epsom, and almost carried off the Blue Ribband. Lord Beaconsfield, when Mr. Disraeli, followed the same practice, and I think it was Mr. Gladstone who first encountered dissentients to this motion. At first the minority of “noes” was an insignificant one, yet it grew, and Gladstone himself not being a sportsman, he soon gave way, and joined the “noes.” Thus the House of Commons has long come to disregard the call of “off to the Derby!” and who in the present Parliament would be bold enough to even raise the question?
In France the President of the Republic leads the way in pompous style to see the great Prix de Paris contested, and most popularly is he welcomed there by citizens of all classes. Why have we as a national community fallen away from a traditional custom?
More Parliamentary days are wasted in almost useless discussion than were wont to be claimed and given to this one day of distinguished sport. Our Gracious King is always present, the noblest patron of all. He must feel the enforced absence of his elected legislators. Painful as it is to admit the fact, we are now, nationally, handed over to people who not only decry sport, but rejoice in its possible overthrow. Some call them “faddists,” but they are worse, they are, many of them, at heart socialists—social democrats, whose aim and object it is to crush or set at naught the pleasures of those whom they are pleased to think are the class that stand between them and the enjoyment of advantages which all should enjoy alike, whether they have legitimately become entitled to them or not.
I am not going to dissect this problem any deeper. It is far too nasty a job for any one except a professional politician to attempt, but in order to prove our case let us see what are the component parts of the present House of Commons as regards sport.
There is only one member of the Cabinet who is a member of the Jockey Club—the Earl of Crewe—as against four in the last ministry.
There is only one Member of Parliament who is also a member of the Jockey Club, and he is Mr. C. D. Rose, representing the Newmarket Division.
There are only eleven Members of Parliament, as far as I can ascertain, who are owners of racehorses, and they are Colonel Hall Walker, Lord Dalmeny, Sir S. Scott, Mr. F. Lambton, Sir J. Jardine, Mr. G. H. Faber, Mr. C. D. Rose, Mr. Bottomley, Mr. E. Lamb, Mr. J. W. Phillips and Mr. John Barker. Hunting testifies to its popularity in spite of the change of opinions which have come over us. There are four M.F.H., in the assembly—Mr. Lane Fox, Lord Helmsley, Mr. Pike Pease and Mr. D. Davies—and four ex-M.F.H., in Lord Valentia, Colonel Legge, Mr. Rowland Hunt, and Mr. Vaughan Davies, backed up by at least a dozen well-known hunting men, such as Lord Castlereagh, Sir P. Muntz, Messrs. Mildmay, Tomkinson, Brocklehurst and Butcher, Sir Clement Hill, Mr. Long and Mr. Meysey Thompson; and, en passant, we can congratulate ourselves on the fact that in the hunting field all political opinions are forgotten, and that, although hunting M.P.’s so often vote in opposite lobbies they are none the less of one opinion as regards hunting.
Cricket seems poorly represented, although we find a Hornby or a Cobbold on the roll. For fishermen we will not answer, and of golfers there are galore—every man that has arms and legs in these days essays golf. It is alluring and easy until you try to excel in it—then follows disappointment. Probably I am old-fashioned, but I hang lovingly to the test of a public school education when seeking for reliable men, whatever be their walk in life. In classing them, this standard, to my thinking, comes before that of the Universities. Taking this test, I find Eton men in the House number 73, Harrow 21, Rugby 18, Cheltenham 9, Marlborough 7, Winchester 6, Charterhouse 4, Shrewsbury, Wellington and Repton, 2 each. Allowing for a few more men that claim their place as public school men at the smaller schools, we may take it that less than 200 of the total 670 members are public school men. This is not the worst point of our analysis in seeking for the germs of sport in our present House of Commons, for there are sixteen members who claim to be self-taught. In their case they must have either been beyond the age of boyhood before compulsory school education became law, or the school attendance officers must have, in their cases, neglected their duties—and yet these men, whose names it will serve no good purpose to give in these pages, have no mean influence in the Council of the Empire to-day.
If we made a comparison on the same lines between the Parliament of 1900 and the present one of 1906, I fear that our figures would tell of a disastrous change in the whilom aristocracy of the House of Commons. It has been called a billycock House, but, forsooth, it is only by its actions that we must judge it; and let us hope that its bark will be worse than its bite when the realm of sport is on the tapis. If only the present Parliament would approach legislation on sport without malice, we are far from thinking that they may not be benefactors to its true interests, and they may dare to attack abuses which our friends would let severely alone. For instance, why should they not put down their foot on spurious sports, if it so pleases them? So many self-styled sportsmen are trying to spoil sport by artificial means—hunting, shooting and coursing semi-tame animals, and calling it sport. We, in my humble judgment, have the greatest need to uphold true, honest, genuine sport rather than its counterfeits, which only go to make our enemies blaspheme at us with some cause. Perhaps I shall be electrocuted for saying that the days of the carted deer are numbered, and that the trapped pigeon and bagged rabbit should be done away with.
Probably still more dreadful things will happen to me if I say that Dives, who turns his farms into pheasantries and his uplands into hare or rabbit warrens, should be liable for the waste thus created of what would otherwise be profitable to mankind; and should pay rates accordingly, and damage to tenants who took their holdings without the knowledge of the use to which their land, or that adjoining them, would be put.
It may also strike them that the gambling laws may be reasonably amended in such a way as to make betting profitable to the State, as it is now in almost every other country in Europe, as well as in the Colonies, and at the same time to do away with the evil and temptation which besets the working man in what is termed street betting.
To abolish betting altogether, as some faddists would have you attempt, is known by all practical people to be impossible. You may just as well pass a law to close the Stock Exchange, and all the other Exchanges, and make contracts in “futures” illegal. To abolish bookmakers or betting on the “nod,” as it is termed, or not permit it anywhere except on a racecourse under certain conditions, would be a reformation of which even the most Radical Government might be proud, and at the same time add to the prosperity of the country by compelling a percentage on all betting transactions to be paid over to the Board of Agriculture and the Local Government Board in equal proportions, for the benefit of the stock breeders and the poor of the country. This sum would amount to at least a million in the year, and would come out of the pockets of the wealthy and the unthrifty, without any injury to the State—as has been proved in the practice of the system of the Totaliser or Pari mutuel in other countries. I have more than once ventilated this subject in your pages, and it has been discussed and advocated in the Press, although, as yet, the country at large does not appear to appreciate its importance, and very few Members of Parliament have given it a serious thought. There seems to be a holy horror of legalising betting, of which this savours, and this seems to make it impracticable; yet many good and wise people seem to forget that betting is not in itself illegal, and never has been so. The system which we advocate would make no difference in the law. It would only regulate it, with immense advantage to the State and the community.
Parliament very strictly regulates the drink traffic, and I have never, for the life of me, understood why it should not in a similar way regulate the betting business, because it appears to me that they stand on the same footing from a moral and legal standpoint.
However, I fear this subject will descend on deaf ears at Westminster at the present crisis, where anything in the nature of sport is likely to be tabooed, if possible, unless the independent party choose to take it up, in defiance of the somewhat elastic consciences of many of their confrères.
It is, nevertheless, a fact which no Government or Parliament can lose sight of, that sport plays an important part in Great Britain’s life as a nation; and that any serious interference with its material interests will be detrimental to the country, and if attempted will be seriously resented by the people in the future. Let us trust, therefore, that although we now deplore the absence from the House of Commons of so many men whose friendship to sport could be reckoned upon, yet that there are sufficient left to ensure an absence of legislation which will be inimical to the true sporting instincts of the people.
Borderer.