The Case of the Missing Letter Box

By A. P. HERBERT

4HEREVER I am not,' said Napoleon, after the surrender of Paris, 'nothing but folly is committed.'

I feel as Napoleon did very often, and especi- ally when I view the misfortunes of Authority in the world of wages. The poet H. wrote, several decades ago, in a Shakespearean drama:

Man, like a pebble on a glacier, Moves imperceptibly, but always down.

That would not be absolutely fair in this case, except about the rate of advance. Often the trend is upward. But Authority, in the field of personal speculation, has a genius for fiddling With the right thing in the wrong way. It is like the famed old racehorse Tishy, which ran benevolently but crossed its legs. Just now there is a good deal of respectable worry about the `betting shops:* There are 'too many' of them, and too many people spend too much time in them (and this is said by veteran bookmakers as well). Moreover, they are not taxed, and so draw off the greyhound fan, for example, from healthy evenings in the open air (where he is taxed 10 per cent. on his modest predictions), All this was not merely foreseeable, but foreseen —and foreboded—by some of the neglected Napoleons in our midst.

It is not always easy to trace the origin of our laws: but the history of the Betting Shop is clear---and comical. Far back in 1932 there was a Royal Commission on Lotteries and Betting. It was not one of those gay, licentious Com- missions. For one thing, it wanted to abolish `office pool betting' (or, as we now say, 'the Pools'). But democracy burned in its bosom, and it wished to give the 'working class bettor' some reasonable facilities other than street betting. First, then, it proposed to legalise cash betting, and—the glacier moving strongly—this was ac- tually done by Parliament twenty-eight years later. But the rich would still be able to put their money on by telephone on the morning or afternoon of the race, while the proletarian punter would have to post his bets, with in- sufficient information, the night before. The Commission, though, were against 'cash betting Offices,' where men might 'loiter and bet con- tinuously.' Experience shows that easy betting leads to an increase in betting.' So they devised, in my view, a sensible British compromise:

A bookmaker who has secured permission in the manner indicated below should be permitted to receive, through a special letter box attached or appurtenant to his office, bets from persons who come to his office, provided they do not enter the premises or come into personal con- tact with the bookmaker or his servants.

The years whizzed by, a war took place, and, seventeen years later, another Royal Commis- siort deliberated—from 1949 to 1951.

This Commission considered the letter box (which was supported by the Magistrates' Asso- ciation), but thought it 'impracticable.' The principal difficulty is that the bettor has no proof that his bet has been accepted.' (But this is equally true of the myriad patrons of the pools, or anyone who bets by post or phone.) So the * See the Questions in the House on February 7. Commissioners recommended licensed betting offices to which persons should be allowed to `resort.' They, too, were anxious to avoid 'loitering and continuous betting.' But whenever they considered practical means of averting these evils—the closing of the offices, for example, during racing hours or part of them—one of two thoughts discouraged them: (a) the proletariat might be driven back to illegal street betting, and (b) 'It would not, in our view, be in accor- dance with the principle that the law should apply fairly to all sections of the community to make it impossible for shift workmen and others who are unable to place their bets during the morning to place bets at offices during racing hours.'

Very fine, you must admit. So they settled for the 'offices' to be open from 10.30 a.m. to 6.30 p.m. BUT, they said firmly:

It is necessary that there should be power to prevent the congregation of persons in a betting office especially during the hours of racing. We think that it should be an offence for any person to loiter either inside or outside the premises and that it should also be an offence for the bookmaker to permit loitering within the premises. It has been suggested that it is impossible to define what is meant by loitering or to enforce its prohibition. The police witnesses, however, were unanimously of the opinion that loitering should be prohibited and did not consider that there would be any prac- tical difficulties about enforcement. . .

The provision in a betting office of seating accommodation for the public and the payment of winnings during racing hours should be prohibited.

You begin to realise, I think, what troublous conundrums our Commissioners and our legis- lators in committee have to answer. Mr. Butler's Act (Betting and Gaming Act, 1960) was brave and bonhomous. It did a lot of good clean work, and Parliament faithfully followed the banners of freedom and fair play. But when they came to the licensed betting office they adopted neither the letter box of Commission One (I don't think it was mentioned) nor the strict precautions of Commission Two.

The Act makes it clear that the betting shop is not to be a haunt of miscellaneous joy. There must, says the Second Schedule, be no television, radio, music, dancing, or other entertainment— and 'no refreshment of any kind'—nothing but serious betting. But there is no word in the Rules against 'seating accommodation,' loiter- ing,' or 'continuous betting,' as Commission Two desired; and the 'blower' is expressly permitted. This is a loud account, straight from the horse- course, of the movement of the betting there— which animal is favourite, etc.—and later of the actual race. It would not be astounding, then, if such facilities led to the odd touch of loitering. If you show a tendency to over-loiter, I am told, the bookmaker may ask you to depart, and here and there the police have been known to take discouraging action, but on what legal ground is not clear. In any case, you can go and have a coffee next door, and come back, for successive comings and goings can hardly be described as loitering. Honourable and Right Honourable Members, then, who show a significant trend towards coronary thrombosis because of the proliferation of 'betting shops,' and the recruiting of uncount- able innocents to continuous betting, are not much entitled to complain. The whole elaborate edifice, with its annual licences and fees and renewals and appeals and dubious Rules, could have been avoided by the simple device of the letter box. (Nor is this being wise after the event. I included the letter box in a Bill which I presented to Parliament in 1938.) The big joke is this. The original inspiring motive was to make things fairer for the Common Man, who couldn't sit in his flat all the afternoon going through the card with a telephone and a credit bookmaker. But the Common Man has now got better facilities than the rich one. The rich man can still sit by his telephone, and comfortably disperse his wealth. Some days, he can see two or three races on TV and hear the gossip and the odds. But he hasn't got the 'blower.' The Common Man has the 'blower,' every race, every day—and the results of all the races—and the coffee-shop next door as well.

The Moral, it might be said, is: "If you must appoint Royal Commissions pay some attention to them.' But then, it was on the Royal Com- mission's (Number Two) advice—to abandon the distinction between games of skill and games of chance—that Parliament innocently liberated Bingo, and other mischiefs.

It is no wonder, perhaps, that in these affairs the Home Office moves at the speed of a glacier. The Treasury is not so fast. In 1948, in his first Budget speech, Sir- Stafford Cripps said (as I had said in my 1935 election ad- dress) that a comprehensive scheme of taxation to cover all forms of betting could not be introduced without radical amendment of the betting laws; and he was considering the question of amendment with the Home Secre- tary. By 1960, when Mr. Butler and Parliament bravely played their part, the Treasury, you might have thought, would have their own plans ready. Not a bit. The startled Treasury is only now 'inquiring.' They have complicated their task by the well-meaning Peppiatt Levy—a levy on the horse-bookmaker which goes to the Wel- fare of the Horse, etc. In principle this is sound; but it is unfair to the Greyhound—and indeed to Football—whose taxes all go to the Ex- chequer. I see no reason why the Peppiatt prin- ciple, for all active sports, could not be fitted in to a general betting tax.

Meanwhile, the citizen who stands in the snow and watches the pretty greyhound pays a 10 per cent. tax on his offerings to the Tote, and the bookmaker, also in the snow, pays heavily, too. The pools public pay a monstrous tax of 33 per cent., not on winnings but stakes. But the cosy Bingo and betting shop addicts pay nothing. The Treasury, by its dallying, has lost the Revenue a lot of money.