The Condition of England

"This book is interesting for lots of reasons. It’s written by this concerned liberal politician trying to get to grips with his country, which, in lots of ways, frightens him. He tries to be hopeful for it but there are aspects of the modernisation of Britain he finds very alarming, and that is what gives this book a contemporary feel. Again, it’s very poignant because it’s pre-World War I, so a lot of its anxiety is about whether the British people have the qualities and the political institutions they’re going to need to survive and prosper in the 20th century. I read it in the context of studying attitudes to sport and the Olympics. He doesn’t really say much about the Olympics as such, but he is really obsessed with sport. He’s obsessed with this fear about its professionalisation and the fact that sport had become this opium of the working classes, this escape from everyday life. One of the things that he’s worried about is spectators and particularly crowds – it was a period in which people were terrified by crowds, these unthinking masses that were beyond political control. There’s fear of the mob that is fear of revolution and riot. But the fear of the crowd in the early 20th century was different because what people were frightened of was their passivity. Sport was perceived to be creating passive crowds of gawping spectators getting cheap thrills who weren’t really engaged politically. Masterman is concerned that spectator sport was going to squeeze out democracy, as people would lose interest in it because they were too busy watching football. In some ways his fears were really overblown, but that’s what makes it such an interesting book. So the 1908 Olympics in that context – its politicisation and the ways in which the British were really distrustful of the American professionalisation of sport – are Masterman’s fears too. He spoke for a certain British view of this, which is that if Britain went the way of America, it was going the way of these big sporting crowds and that’s not the Olympics way – the Olympic way is meant to be participation."