The Floating Casino

This precious stone set in the silver sea, this realm, this England, is nothing more than a floating casino.

So said British Actor Wilfrid Hyde White recently, with a bow to the Bard and an eye to the gaming tables and betting shops that stretch the length and breadth of the sceptered isle. Britain is Europe's gamblingest nation, and legalized betting may be the country's largest industry. Britain's 16,000 betting shops, 1,200 casinos and 2,000 bingo clubs employ 100,000 people and account for an estimated yearly turnover of $5 billion. The government's slice is nearly $250 million.

Offshore Las Vegas. Leaner times are ahead for some of Britain's gambling establishments. A year ago, the industry was placed under the jurisdiction of a 5-member national gaming board, which has moved steadily toward tougher enforcement of the law. Last week, in its first annual report, the board acknowledged a widespread feeling that "Britain was becoming Europe's offshore Las Vegas" and declared that Nevada-style gaming "would be unlikely to be tolerated." Its own policy, the board added, will be to enforce the law "with the utmost vigor and determination."

That policy has already caused some notable casualties. Last month the dust sheets went over the chemin de fer tables at Crockford's, which ranked as one of London's oldest and plushest gambling clubs. Founded in 1827, Crockford's was forced to close because its owners' backgrounds did not meet the rigid standards of the new gambling code. George Raft's Colony Sporting Club on Berkeley Square is also shuttered, and Raft himself has been declared persona non grata by the Home Office. Other closings will certainly follow; by year's end Britain's casinos may be reduced in number to only 200.

Turf Accountants. Trying to regulate gambling is a centuries-old story in Britain. Henry III ordered his clergy to forgo dicing and chess playing "on pain of durance vile," but he lost so often to his barons at those very games that he was unable to come through with all the money he had pledged for the completion of Westminster Abbey. In feudal times, incorrigible gamblers had their hands whacked off. Henry VIII, who diced for the chapel bells of old St. Paul's--and lost--decreed the less painful punishment of fines in the Unlawful Games Act of 1541.

That measure was still on the books when Parliament in 1960 enacted a law legalizing all gaming and making it subject to government control. Street bookies were replaced by "turf accountants" licensed to handle horse and greyhound betting, which now accounts for more than half of the total action. Britain's biggest bookmaker is Ladbroke's. At its five-story London headquarters and 450 betting shops throughout the country, Britons can gamble on almost anything from elections to the date when an escaped prisoner will be recaptured.

Enter the Mafia. For the 9,000,000 Britons who play the football pools each week, the dominant force is Liverpool-based Littlewoods, which employs 8,000 persons. Since bettors have been known to reap as much as $720,000 on a one-shilling (12-c-) wager, Littlewoods even has a financial service to help winners invest their new riches. Other forms of gambling also flourish: hundreds of movie theaters have been converted to bingo parlors, and some 40,000 slot machines have sprouted in pubs, golf clubs and country inns.

Inevitably, Mafia-tinged operators started moving in. Investing in Britain's legalized gambling was an attractive way of laundering dirty money earned from illicit drugs and illegal "skimming" of U.S. gambling operations (see BUSINESS). To bring in more big rollers, the Mob began running gambling junkets from New York to London. Despite some new government regulations, the situation, according to Gaming Board Chairman Sir Stanley Raymond, was getting "out of hand." The new Gaming Act, passed in 1968 but not fully effective until this July, tightens the screws on British gambling as never before. It standardizes house rules, forbids advertising, regulates profit margins and closely scrutinizes club operators' backgrounds.

Urge to Bet. Still, it remains to be seen whether the government's crusade will be matched by a dampening of the British urge to bet on anything and everything. Some officials fear that the crackdown will have the same effect that Prohibition did in the U.S.--not only because the British like to gamble but also because betting offers one of the few ways to beat the revenue collectors. As British Anthropologist Geoffrey Gorer notes: "By the current system of taxation in Britain, quite literally the only way a person without capital can acquire a substantial sum is in a gambling win."

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