ABSTRACT
This chapter will explore the changes and continuities in official and unofficial attitudes towards the role of sport in times of total war. Aware that the Home Front would inevitably play a much more prominent part in the nation’s war effort than it had between 1914 and 1918, the government entered the Second World War with a greater understanding of the importance of sport in sustaining public morale. Yet, as will be shown, as British forces faced a series of reverses in the first few years of the conflict, old debates about the appropriateness of sport in wartime resurfaced. A close examination of this public discourse, which focused disproportionately on what were perceived to be working-class sports – professional football, boxing, greyhound racing – adds to our understanding of the shifting cultural landscape during what was dubbed ‘the people’s war’. The chapter concludes with an investigation of the extent to which army authorities and military commentators, notwithstanding the experience of the First World War, continued to cling to the belief that sport generally, and amateur sport specifically, fulfilled a moral as well as a practical function.
