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Twentieth Century British History Advance Access originally published online on August 5, 2008
Twentieth Century British History 2008 19(3):288-313; doi:10.1093/tcbh/hwn018
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© 2008 Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Socialism, Puritanism, Hedonism: The Parliamentary Labour Party's Attitude to Gambling, 1923–31

Gregg McClymont*

St Hugh's College, Oxford

* gregg.mcclymont{at}st-hughs.ox.ac.uk.


  Abstract

This article examines one aspect of the Parliamentary Labour Party's (PLP's) attitude to gambling between 1923 and 1931: its opposition to the taxation and legalization of working-class gambling on horses with street bookmakers. The first section explores the mixture of ethical socialism and religious and cultural Puritanism which led many Labour MPs to hold that gambling was wrong in principle and which informed the PLP's defence of prohibition. The second section identifies MPs who disagreed with the party's position: a minority itself divided between those who saw the issue as a distraction from more pressing political matters, and those who more systematically defended the working classes’ right to gamble. The latter group was culturally distinctive, appearing hedonistic in comparison with their parliamentary colleagues. The final section develops this distinction: in particular it suggests that the PLP's puritanical political culture informed, and was informed by, Labour's political ideology of ethical socialism. Culture and ideology met in opposition to gambling.


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