Discourses of social exclusion in British tennis: Historical changes and continuities

Contemporary broader government policy surrounding "social exclusion" has tended to characterise it in largely negative terms. Contemporary sport policy in British tennis is no different. Every player excluded from grassroots participation represents a wasted opportunity to develop talent. Thus, "inclusion" and "accessibility" feature today, and have for some time, at the core of contemporary policy from the Lawn Tennis Association, which as an organisation has come to judge itself based on broad participation figures and elite level success, which are often considered incompatible. Such measurements of an association's performance reflect broader political concerns and objectives, and also ignore the sport's elitist past, which actually celebrated the exclusion of particular societal groups as a major positive factor in its rapidly growing popularity among the socially aspirational British middle classes. This paper will take a historical perspective with regard to discourses of social exclusion in British tennis, and consider the ways in which exclusive features of the sport have been both celebrated as a means of enhancing its prestige and criticised for contributing to declining British performances. Such discourses will be positioned within broader historical contexts of shifting class relations, Empire decline, burgeoning commercialism in sport, and the increasing accountability among sport governing bodies.