The Sporting Paper and the Culture of Popular Conservatism in Edwardian Britain*

Late‐Victorian and Edwardian Popular Conservatism is now mainly seen as a cultural‐ideological form, and this article aims to reconstruct one aspect of this ethos by focusing on the use of sport, especially horse racing, as a means of political differentiation and a method of attracting a new mass electorate to the Tory cause. The sporting paper focusing on horse racing was one way of doing this. Weeklies like the Sporting Times and the Winning Post tried to sell high Tory ideals to a mass electorate and thereby to knit together an older aristocratic party with newer urban, white‐collar, and working‐class voters. The political outgrowth of this element of popular conservatism was the Sporting League (established 1894) and also the later National Sporting League (1905). Both of these organisations took aim at Radical Liberals, and especially their attempt to restrict betting, and did so by exerting pressure at national and local elections from 1895 to 1914. Some of those involved with the Sporting Leagues and the racing paper became Conservative candidates. Although it is difficult to estimate the actual electoral impact of both Sporting Leagues, they nevertheless created a political style that might have a broad appeal, especially to a white‐collar class and working people.