Illtyd in 1967

THE government has been bashing around trying to think of some policies to tackle our country’s gambling epidemic, which is only worsening with the cost-of-living crisis.

Stuck between a powerful industry lobby and the people who have seen the horrors of addiction, any legislation is often kicked down the road and we have seen only nibbles around the edges. Successive culture ministers have appeared short of an answer to a basic problem, that if somebody wants to gamble they will always find a way.

Neither have they been bold enough in getting addicts seen by the specialists and therapists who can positively change their lives.

Maybe it makes older readers think of a chap who was rather laughed out of the house when he saw the beginnings of a sweeping evil and tried to think of a radical salve.

Illtyd Harrington – who this column is affectionately named after – was a councillor and the chairman of the North Paddington Labour Party in 1967 and had much more of his political career still ahead of him.

But he nonetheless ended up on television talk shows when he suggested there should be state-run casinos, or “municipal gambling”.

In a letter to the then Labour home secretary, James Callaghan, he suggested they could get the (roulette) balls rolling in his own constituency.

With control and regulation, Illtyd figured it would be easier to spot and help troubled gamblers. Rogue bookies would also find it harder to scam the vulnerable or ruthlessly keep taking bets from somebody with a glaring problem.

The money that came in, meanwhile, would go to better things than the pockets of the emerging big gambling firms.

That may sound silly, if you discount good causes funded by the National Lottery in recent years.

I’m not really sure if Illtyd actually envisaged each council having a betting counter and a blackjack table – our old literary editor is sadly no longer here to ask him to recall the splash he made with the suggestion.

It wouldn’t be surprising if he had said it simply to get a national debate started, and for people to recognise a growing harm. Politicians still don’t seem to.

Illtyd went on to become the deputy leader of the Greater London Council. He was not a crank, just imaginative.

Pensioners who use the Freedom Pass on public transport have him to thank, as do those who appreciate canal routes still being open and loved in the capital.

But the council-run bookies never happened. Callaghan wrote back insisting that the idea had been considered, but some local authorities were firmly against it and didn’t want to get involved.

In these areas, Callaghan suggested, illegal and even more dangerous gambling would grow.

The idea disappeared.

Illtyd told those TV interviews in the 1960s that the compulsion to bet had never gripped him adding: “I’ve taken certain risks in my life – some of them would shock you – but never felt the urge.”

But he could see where it was going for others.

And half a century later, look, we are still in a mess, and nobody in government has found a winning ticket solution.