Amateurism, Sport and the Left: Amateurism for All Versus Amateur Elitism

Abstract

Though some socialists regarded sport as a distraction, others embraced it with enthusiasm, believing that worker sport had revolutionary potential. This essay explores the socialist alternative to bourgeois sport as promoted by the Clarion Cycling Clubs after 1894 and the British Workers’ Sports Federation after 1923. It also examines the developing left-wing critique of amateurism that such organizations embodied. They were deeply suspicious of gentlemanly amateurism on account of its association with various forms of social exclusion, direct and indirect, which effectively restricted working-class participation in sport. The socialist commitment to internationalism also led workers’ sport organizations to turn their backs on the Olympic Games, which was organized on the basis of competition between nations. Workers’ sports organizations effectively promoted a different kind of amateurism rooted in working-class solidarity and mass participation.