This chapter addresses local government policy in Wiltshire between the early 1960s and the implementation of the Race Relations Act 1976. It charts local policy through the arrival of the first waves of post-war immigration to the county, and offers an insight into how policymakers perceived and addressed the integration, accommodation and experiences of Muslim migrants. Despite persistent claims that more rural areas in Britain shied away from devising policies and strategies due to their numerically small immigrant communities, a range of measures were introduced in Wiltshire, especially in the areas of education, the resettlement of Ugandan Asians and community relations. Furthermore, this chapter also exposes how Wiltshire’s local authority went some way towards considering the religious affiliations and needs of its Muslim communities specifically during this period.

Mechanical greyhound racing in Britain grew rapidly and was toasted in 1927 by the hit song ‘Everybody’s Going to the Dogs’. Yet from the start it became a major political battleground between the churches and the National Anti-Gambling League, on the one hand, and by the greyhound racing interests, on the other, over the legitimacy of the sport. It was further ravaged by internecine conflict between the National Greyhound Racing Society tracks, geared towards regulating the sport and making it safe for the public, and the smaller flapping tracks, whose prime interest was to survive by opening as often as possible. This internal conflict made the sport vulnerable to the broader attacks of the anti-gamblers, in the country and in Parliament. These can be seen in the political battles over municipal control of the tracks, Sunday closing, and the closure of the tote between 1932 and 1934. In the end, greyhound racing was always vulnerable, but survived, undergoing further challenges during the Second World War.

The introduction sketches out the existing historiography of the nineteenth-century animal protection movement, which evinces many conflicting approaches and shortcomings. In particular, historians have generally failed to appraise women’s key contributions to the movement, and, more generally, to analyse gendered differences in attitudes to animals. Traditions of thought on man’s responsibility to the ‘lower’ species were religiously inspired, but also strongly influenced by social and political factors, and by assumptions about the priority of human interests. They came under scrutiny for the first time when legislation was proposed in the early 1800s to make cruelty to animals, especially bull-baiting, a criminal offence. The resulting debates in the British parliament, dominated by William Windham’s speeches, threw up philosophical difficulties which would haunt animal protectionists for the rest of the century. They also revealed disproportionate female support for protection, and the ridicule that this already attracted.

This chapter focuses on local government policy in Wiltshire from the immediate aftermath of the passing of the Race Relations Act 1976 through to the late 1990s. It charts an increase and diversification in Wiltshire’s immigrant, integration and diversity policies within the national context of an ever-growing emphasis on multiculturalism, integration and positive race relations. Amidst what was a reluctance by some to devote resources to Wiltshire’s small migrant populations, a national-level mandate was often considered and adhered to, and a range of local policies and measures were introduced. These addressed community relations and racial equality, multicultural education, and equal opportunities and anti-discrimination in employment and entrepreneurship, housing and social services. This period also witnessed an increased awareness of local Muslim communities’ practices, needs and demands in the form of prayer spaces, Muslim burials and halal slaughter.

Greyhound racing in Britain declined rapidly from the late 1940s onwards from about 200 tracks and more than thirty million attendances to about twenty-five licensed Greyhound Board of Great Britain (GBGB) tracks and two million attendances by 2017. The main reason for this is the discriminatory taxes imposed upon greyhound tracks that led to betting moving to the off-course bookmakers, which were not faced with such taxes. As a result greyhound tracks closed and those that remained became increasingly drawn into the business of streaming their races into Licensed Betting Offices and into the hands of the large bookmaking organisations. These organisations have taken over the industry and faced with competition from other forms of gambling activities have, often with property companies, closed down tracks that have proved to be uneconomic and built housing where they once stood. In recent years the sport has also had to deal with the controversial issue of cruelty to greyhounds, which has resulted in the issue of the GBGB Greyhound Commitment on 14 March 2018. Faced with this situation, greyhound racing would appear to be marking time and never has this looked to be the case more than when the Wimbledon tracks closed on 25 March 2017.

Historians have studied the evolution of working-class leisure activities in Britain and debated whether or not they were enduring and resistant to change, pluralistic rather than homogenous, and the extent to which they were subject to continuing attempts at social control. These issues also relate to modern greyhound racing and raise several interlinked questions about the origins and rapid growth of the sport, the social class of its bettors, its cultural development, attempts made to subject it to social control, and the reasons for its decline from late 1940s. The main argument of this chapter is that modern greyhound racing it was essentially a niche working-class activity which was often presented as not being a rational recreation, even criminal, by the forces of anti-gambling, and ultimately fell victim to such discrimination. It did not impoverish the working classes and was, indeed, ‘a bit of a flutter’.

Greyhound racing survived the Second World War very much intact and experienced an immediate post-war boom. However, the fuel crisis of 1946–47 led to the introduction of discriminatory fuel controls and restrictions by the first Attlee Labour government followed by taxation on the greyhound tote and upon bookmakers in 1948. This affected both the large National Greyhound Racing Society tracks, that depended upon tote betting for their livelihood, and the small flapping tracks which were more dependent upon the bookmakers to attract bettors to earn them gate money. There may have been other factors at play as the post-war British economy faced austerity, and as the Labour government felt that it was protecting industrial productivity, but the continued hostility towards greyhound racing seems to have led to a tipping point where betting on the on-course tote and with the on-course bookmakers declined and was transferred to off-course betting, which was not taxed. From that period onwards crowds declined, the tote takes declined, and tracks began to close.

The RSPCA, founded in 1824, is often treated by historians as an arm of the establishment, primarily intent on reforming the disruptive behaviour of the lower orders. This chapter gives a more nuanced view of the Society’s policies. Despite its admitted social discrimination, and its failure to grapple with such moneyed-class cruelties as field sports and live cattle transit, the Society was essentially a thoughtful, idealistic and multi-vocal body, the fulcrum of the nineteenth-century animal-protection movement. It was supportive of the many new initiatives and specialised animal charities that sprang from RSPCA work – many of them led by women. However, a perceived need to keep in step with public opinion on anti-cruelty measures, and to avoid charges of ‘sentimental’ extremism, made the RSPCA itself wary of promoting women to any positions of influence, despite their record of passionate and energetic support for the cause. While women represented a significant majority of donors and grassroots workers for the Society, they were debarred from membership of its executive until 1906.

Women involved in animal protection were often victims of ancient misogynistic prejudices – notably a belief that women were themselves animalistic, or prone to irrational and excessive ‘sensibility’. Tenderness towards animals might be an attractive feminine trait, suited to acculturation of the young, but it was viewed as a foil rather than as a corrective to normative masculine behaviour. Important thinkers and writers of the late Georgian period such as Catharine Macaulay, Mary Wollstonecraft, Anna Letitia Barbauld and Joanna Baillie attempted to counter these prejudices, reflecting deeply on human–animal relationships, while Margaret Cullen embodied such reflections in the form of a novel, Mornton (1814). At a more didactic level, women were acknowledged as the prime authors of books for children about the need for kindness to animals, many of which became nursery classics reprinted throughout the Victorian period. However, one woman in particular, the anti-slavery campaigner Elizabeth Heyrick, resorted to bold practical action to prevent cruelty to animals. The obstruction and indifference she encountered typified the problems that women experienced when entering the public sphere.