Coexistence on the Turf

Warm in the April sunshine, London's upper-crust horseplayers crowded the club enclosure at Kempton Park Race Track. Peeresses in Dior tweeds appraised each other when they were done appraising the ponies. Their husbands, in Saville Row suits, lifted black bowlers when they passed near their Queen. But there was one extraordinary note in the picture, more jarring than a peer in jeans: the ladies and gentlemen were all clutching the Daily Worker. Deprived by the newspaper strike (TIME, April 18) of Sporting Life and all the London dailies, British racing fans were taking their tips from the columns of London's Communist daily (circ. 83,376). The paper was so in demand that on the black market it fetched 1 shilling (six times the regular price). Even Bernard Marmaduke Fitzalan-Howard, 16th Duke of Norfolk, Earl Marshal of England and a steward of the Jockey Club, bought a copy. (He held it as if it were a week-old fish.) Workers' Weakness. Strike or no, the race-track elite could have done worse. Alf Rubin, 38, the Worker's wide-eyed little cockney handicapper, who prints his picks under the name of "Cayton," is the best in the business. Last year, a $2 bet on every one of his choices would have brought a profit of better than $160--a remarkable performance. Alf and his paper make a strange combination. Politics, to him, is a vast irrelevance; horse racing, to the Worker, is a questionable capitalist diversion.* But back in 1935, the paper needed to boost circulation, and the Worker decided to cater to a weakness of the workers. The editors looked around for a horse handicapper, and there was Alf. Then unemployed, he had been picking winners ever since he was nine (when he selected Coronach, 11 to 2, in the 1926 Derby). He was no Communist, he told the Worker people; he didn't even vote. Still, the end seemed to justify the means. Proper Fun. Alf never finds time to go to the track. ("I'm too busy working out the form and collecting information around town.") But he admits he has done pretty well. Says he: "Nothing else interests me. Stick with me, bet within your means, and you'll have fun." One afternoon last week, Alf gave the clubhouse punters three successive winners: Elladora, a 6-to-1 shot; Grand Statute, a 10-to-1 surprise; and Running Water, a 3-to-1 stake racer that survived a tough stretch battle and a foul claim to take the purse. A -L-1 ($2.80) parlay on the three paid $862.40. It was almost too much for one conservative gentleman. "From now on," said he, as he tried to revive himself in the bar, "I'm in favor of coexistence."

* Even though it is still popular in Russia.

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