Why a day at the races was so important to our national life
All sport is affected by the lock-up, none, I would suppose, more grievously than racing. Horses still have to be cared for, fed, mucked out and exercised. As with other sports, nobody knows when normal service may resume. Ascot and the first four Classics of the season have already been cancelled, and even the St Leger in September may follow suit. If there is no racing this summer and autumn, this year’s crop of three year-olds will, like sixth-formers, be denied the stern examination that proves their worth.
No doubt there are more important matters to worry about just now. Nevertheless, at a time when more and more people are considerably less than gruntled as they consider the possibility of being confined to barracks for another fortnight or more, I find myself recalling what Bismarck said to Disraeli: “You will never have a revolution in England as long as you keep up your racing.”
It seems an acute observation, or at least one that was acute in the 1870s. I assume it was made at the Congress of Berlin in 1878, the only occasion – so far as I know – on which the Iron Chancellor met with the Prime Minister he described as “der alte Jude”, adding admiringly, I think, “das ist der Mann”. The only evidence I have that he coupled revolution and racing comes from Lord George Lambton’s splendid memoir, Men and Horses I Have Known. He introduces it adroitly recalling the enthusiasm when Edward VII’s horse, Minoru , won the Derby, and “the police were quite incapable to cope with the crowd, who patted the King on the back and shook him by the hand with cries of ‘Good old Teddie’” (though his family called him Bertie). “Some distinguished foreigner who witnessed it said that nothing like this could happen outside England.”
Perhaps it couldn’t have done so, then anyway. One can’t imagine a surging crowd hailing the Tsar as “Good Old Nicky”. Racing was certainly a bond between what were then known as the Higher and Lower Orders, even if the Nonconformist middle-classes looked with disapproval on the Turf – the Manchester Guardian snootily refused to publish the day’s racecards and yesterday’s results till well after the Second World War. Cricket perhaps served as a similar bond. I think it was in his English Social History that G M Trevelyan suggested there might have been no revolution in France if French aristocrats had played cricket with their tenants as English dukes, earls and squires did.
It may be doubtful if racing has quite the same place in national life now, even though the Queen almost certainly knows more about the sport, form and the stud book than any previous monarch, more probably than most members of the Jockey Club. But will the Prince of Wales or the Duke of Cambridge show even half as much commitment to the sport of Kings? The fact is that few of the leading owners now belong to the old landed aristocracy, and it’s impossible to think that Arab Sheiks serve to bind our nation together, no matter how committed they and other foreigners are, or have been, to the Turf. Of course the Maktoums have had distinguished and welcome predecessors. The old Aga Khan won The Derby several times, twice before the war , though it was said he couldn’t tell one of his Derby winners from the other. Still he was popular – I think it was John Osborne’s barmaid mother who said “I always like to have a few bob on the black man’s horses” – and his son, Aly Khan, and then his grandson, the next Aga were committed, popular and successful owners.
I think Lord Rosebery was the only Prime Minister to have owned a Derby winner; actually he owned three. As a young man he said he had three ambitions: to win The Derby, marry an heiress and become Prime Minister. He achieved all three though only the first two brought him happiness. I suppose it would now be thought rather shocking if a Prime Minister devoted days to the Turf, though several I can think of might have been better occupied at Newmarket and Ascot than at Westminster and Whitehall. Perhaps Churchill was the last Prime Minister to own racehorses. More recently Robin Cook, the Labour Foreign Secretary, and Alex Salmond, did time as newspaper tipsters. I doubt if you would have become rich by following their advice, though, to be fair, you might not have been much out of pocket.
The Derby may still be the best race in the world, and, on account of the peculiar demands of Epsom, the best test of a horse, but Derby Day itself is not the national event it used to be, when Parliament did not sit so that Members could attend the race.
Of course racing itself hasn’t deteriorated. In most ways it’s a better and certainly a straighter sport than it was. Many of the stories of skulduggery recorded by Lord George Lambton are splendidly entertaining and his Rogues’ Gallery is well-peopled. All this is in a way unthinkable now, but racing is now jostled by so many other sports demanding attention that I don’t think that even the best jockeys of recent years are national heroes known even to that swathe of the general public that doesn’t follow form, certainly not as Fred Archer, Steve Donoghue, Gordon Richards and Lester Piggott were in their day. They all, especially Lester, deserve a weekend column.