First published in the Yorkshire Post, 27 August 2026.

By Abbie MacGregor, GBGB Director of Corporate Affairs. 

The fine people of Yorkshire have never needed permission to enjoy themselves; they have never judged a sport by the status of its spectators or how refined it may be, but by whether it’s entertaining and rooted in the community.

That is why Yorkshire remains one of the heartlands of greyhound racing. Doncaster, Kinsley and Owlerton in Sheffield each represent something valuable: an affordable pastime, a living connection to one of Britain’s greatest sports, and a chance to see pure grace and athleticism from the world’s second fastest land mammal up close.

The sport, now over a century old, spread rapidly after its arrival in Britain in 1926 because it offered ordinary working people accessible entertainment on their own doorstep. It was fast, exciting, and inexpensive. You did not need specialist knowledge, expensive equipment or membership of a private club. As Professor Laybourn of the University of Huddersfield recently described it to me, greyhound racing quickly became Britain’s first working class leisure activity – not just for men, but for families after the war.

That popularity caused considerable anxiety among the establishment – not about the act of gambling itself, but about who was gambling.  Many politicians at the time, including Prime Ministers, were concerned that gambling on the dogs would corrupt the working class into spending money they could not afford. This was a concern never extended to the middle classes.

A century later, the language has changed, but I am not convinced the instinct has disappeared.

Andy Burnham recently announced plans to give councils greater powers to prevent new betting shops from opening. Whatever one thinks of that particular policy, the Prime Minister’s recent depiction of betting shops lumped in with other businesses he described as “dodgy” should trouble us.

It matters because these attitudes have consequences. Greyhound racing supports thousands of jobs, including many young people. It provides a genuine non-academic route into veterinary care, animal husbandry, hospitality, media and stadium management. Yorkshire’s three tracks contribute to their local economies while offering families and groups of friends an evening out that remains affordable. These are precisely the kinds of jobs, businesses and social spaces that political leaders usually claim they want to preserve.

Yorkshire is also home to more horse racing courses than any other county in England, so it would be complacent to imagine that anti-gambling snobbery will remain confined to greyhound racing. Indeed, Rt Hon William Ormsby-Gore – an MP from 1918 to 1938 – famously described greyhound racing as “Ascot for the common man”. Once we accept the principle that some people’s lawful leisure can be dismissed on the basis of who enjoys it, the prejudice can easily spread. What begins as an argument about greyhounds can therefore have implications far beyond greyhound racing.

Yorkshire understands that culture does not become less valuable because it belongs to ordinary people. Its industrial heritage, rugby league clubs, working men’s clubs and local sporting rivalries were not handed down by fashionable opinion, but built and sustained by communities themselves. Greyhound racing belongs within that tradition, and certainly not the lingering idea that some people’s leisure, be that greyhound racing in 1940 or a visit to a betting shop in 2026, is more respectable than others. Yorkshire has never had much patience for that kind of snobbery.

To learn more about the history of greyhound racing, watch our inaugural GBGB Stories interview with Professor Keith Laybourne from the University of Huddersfield here.