Organized Sport and Organized Labour

The Workers' Sports Movement

Bibliographic Data

ID10074929
AuthorsRobert F Wheeler (corresponding author)
Year1978
Volume13
Issue2
Pages191-210
Publication date1978-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Contemporary History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0022-0094 • E-ISSN: 1461-7250
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/002200947801300202
OpenAlexW1990273395
LanguageEN
Citations received26
References cited1

Perhaps the most important, albeit the most generally ignored and least understood, aspect of working class culture is sport. Working people, in contrast to the labour establishment and students of the labour movement, have embraced sport with a passion. Male workers in particular and female workers to a lesser extent have in the process changed what originated as a privilege and preserve of the 'upper classes'. This essay explores the reasons underlying the working class attraction to sport and considers the attempt to establish an autonomous workers' sports movement during the first part of the twentieth century. The fact that organized sport is of very recent origin is often overlooked. It developed in the elitist British public schools such as Eton and Rugby thanks to the efforts of middle class educational reformers and then spread around the world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a byproduct of British imperialism. That sport ultimately moved not only horizontally across national boundaries to the international bourgeoisie but also vertically to the international working class was - like the proletariat itself - a direct result of industrialization

Bourgeoisie · Industrialisation · Passion · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Privilege (computing · Proletariat · Sociology · Working class · Gender Studies · Law · Sport and Mega-Event Impacts · Sports, Gender, and Society

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