David Beresford
WHEN the United Kingdom’s Conservative government ann-ounced plans to launch its national lottery in 1992 – the last country to do so in Western Europe – nobody realised the extraordinary impact it would have on British society. With an estimated 65% of the population handing over their 1 every week in pursuit of the 14-million-to-one chance of hitting the jackpot, churchmen have ruefully compared lottery fever to the hysteria of religious revivalism.
As one Church of England cleric put it: “Week by week, people queue up to worship. New places of worship have sprung up on almost every street corner. The worshippers go with their collection in their hands. It is as though they have seen their God.”
But the nation as a whole is highly enthusiastic. As Prime Minister John Major put it, the lottery will “leave our legacy for the future”. It just takes a walk around some of the cultural centres of Britain and the sight of builders hard at work on sites such as Covent Garden and Sadlers Wells to appreciate what he meant.
The cash bonanza has been staggering. The latest figures show sales for the weekly draw and linked scratch-card lotteries have topped R56-billion in the first 18 months of operations. Half the money has been spent on prizes, with R15,4-billion going to the good causes. Even Inland Revenue has been singing, taking R7-billion in tax.
The lottery has not been without controversy, however, and the British experience has offered some timely lessons to South Africa.
First there have been those who have objected to the principle of the whole exercise, ranging from moralists to renowned cosmologist Stephen Hawking, who described the odds as “shabby”.
More serious controversy has arisen over the profit being taken by operating company Camelot, which – the country has belatedly realised – has been given a licence to print money which beggars comparison. The company – jointly owned by Cadbury Schweppes, De La Rue, ICL, Racal and the United States lottery operator GTECH – has a seven-year contract to run the lottery, which is expected to have earned it R5-billion by the time it expires.
Its profits, and the huge bonuses the directors have paid themselves, have inevitably resulted in demands for the nationalisation of the lottery.
Among the more bitter critics are Virgin’s Richard Branson, who had offered to run the lottery on a no-profit basis. He has also made allegations of corruption, accusing GTECH – one of the leading contenders for the South African lottery – of having offered him a bribe to stay out of the running for the contract.
Equally heated have been the arguments over the beneficiaries from the “good works” bonanza. The donation of R675-million for a rugby stadium in Wales prompted something of a class war between sports lovers and culture buffs who had wanted the money spent on a Welsh opera house. The payment of R90- million to Winston Churchill’s grandson for the war-time premier’s personal papers was the subject of national indignation.
The one-time sailor, Prince Philip, protested to Major at the failure of the lottery to pump funds into the National Maritime Museum. Prince Charles has publicly complained that lottery money is being frittered away, arguing it should be used more spiritually – to “create places of worship, to erect buildings of real quality”.
But whether the money is used in the hunt for a cancer cure, the creation of a “megamarina” in Portsmouth harbour, a virtual reality centre in Manchester, or a 10 400km path winding the length and breadth of Britain, the British lottery – and not just the jackpot – is truly the stuff of which dreams are made.