Sport and Politics: Ideology and Recruitment

Abstract

Advocates of competitive exercise, particularly before 1914, were fond of remarking that sport and politics were opposites and should not be mixed. The view that sport represented a pure and uncorrupted form of activity and an end in itself came to be an article of faith amongst the athletic fraternity. Yet could it be that the sportsman doth protest too much? Perhaps the very vehemence of the denial of political motivation should encourage the social historian to look more closely into the matter. If sport had really been as detached from political life as its protagonists claimed would it have been necessary to make the point over and over again? Predictably, the real state of affairs was rather different from this idealised posture of neutrality and non-involvement in the more contentious areas of national life.