Sport and Colonialism in 19th Century Australasia - LA84 Foundation

other's needs, wherever there was a grandstand the mixing of
the classes could be minimised; though real segregation could
not be achieved until the second half of the nineteenth century,
when the enclosed racecourses were carefully divided into sections
for the various strata of society - each section charging
a different admission price and providing different forms of
additional entertainment. 21
In late eighteenth century Britain, however, the gentry and
the labouring classes found their traditional gambling and
general leisure pursuits under attack from a highly vocal
middle-class group which adhered to and expressed the new values
of the industrialising society. As the nation rapidly became
more industrialised, the strength of the new values grew and
their adherents' power to reform the society also grew. The
three main elements in the subsequent attempts to reform traditional
recreations were the concept of an industrial labour discipline,
a reinforcement of Britain's puritan tradition and the
physical consequence of rapid urbanisation.
The new concept of industrial labour discipline drew a firm
distinction between work and leisure. It was concerned with
efficiency and productivity in work time and saw recreation or
leisure as unproductive idleness and consequently as a drain
on the national economy. As such, leisure could be seen as unpatriotic
in a society which was beginning to view industrial
progress as the supreme symbol of civilisation and the proof of
British superiority. 22
This attitude to leisure was reinforced by the remnants of
Britain's long standing puritan tradition, which had had its
foremost expression during Oliver Cromwell's post civil-war
protectorate in the seventeenth century. This tradition was
given a new lease of life by an eighteenth century evangelical
religious revival. Evangelicalism, with its emphasis on selfdiscipline,
sin and salvation, and standards of morality, was
well suited to the aims of the growing urban-industrial middle
class. It nicely complemented the industrial labour discipline. 23
The third major element promoting reform of traditional
recreation practices was the process of industrialisation. The
rapid and haphazard growth of the industrial towns and cities
11