Some years ago, I had settled into a fine meal at the members’ restaurant in Bangalore, the panoramic view of the track promising an afternoon to remember. Anticipation ran high—after all, it was Derby Day. But the theatre had no actors. The syces, custodians of the horses, had called a strike and refused to bring their charges out of the stables. With that, there was to be no racing until their demands were met.

We trooped back to the Windsor, disconsolate.

On September 10 British racing, having abandoned the four meetings that day, trooped up to London to protest against the Government’s proposed ‘harmonization’ of taxes. Racing is taxed at 15 per cent; the rest of gaming at 21 per cent. This almost bankrupt Government needs every penny it can get and upping racing’s indulgence would, they wrongly conclude, bring in desperately needed millions: racing would lose millions – the figures vary but what is certain is that the money that filters into the sport through the Levy on bookmakers would fall dramatically as betting went even further underground. Jobs would obviously be lost and there are doomsday warnings that the whole sport is under threat. There are obvious parallels with the Indian experience of Government ignorance of what makes racing tick and indeed of its importance.

The unprecedented London demonstration, orchestrated by racing’s bosses, the British Horseracing Authority and Jockey Club, was however trumped by three unforeseen events.

London was paralysed by the strike of the capital’s Tube (Metro) drivers, making movement around the city next to impossible. Another altogether more menacing strike grabbed the headlines – news that Russian drones had trespassed Poland’s air space causing a ruffle of NATO’S (the European defence alliance) feathers. And last but not least, it was the day of the funeral of respected former jockey Bruce Raymond, 82, who after nearly two thousand winners became bloodstock manager to Rabbah, a group of UAE businessmen. They had great success together. Raymond was universally respected in the sport.

These distractions left racing’s vanguard unabashed. The trade paper, the Racing Post blacked out its front page and with no domestic racing gave industry voices the chance to air their opposition to the tax increase. Another parallel: the Indian High Court ruled years ago that betting on horses was an exercise in skill, and so it is the world over. But cash strapped governments and individuals who assume the role of the nation’s ‘conscience’ have different goals – with what will be an identical result, the death of horseracing.

The sport here could lose as much as £66m – the revenue lost when punters desert the game – and that is just for starters: job losses, directly in stables and support industries will be in tens of thousands. And still we have constant requests from India from stable staff who see Indian racing in deep crisis and don’t appreciate that British racing has precisely the same daggers aimed at its heart. We are following the Indian precedent of crippling a popular national sport, supposedly in the interests of the poor with their inability to resist gambling – a hypocritical argument: the real is need for public coffers to be replenished to increase welfare for an ageing population and a creaking economy. An ex-chancellor of the Exchequer who once advocated a dozen super-casinos throughout the country, now advocates increasing tax on betting on horseracing.

If the tax increase comes to pass the gaping hole in government finances will not be filled by the measure proposed. For a start the gap is unbridgeable. Betting will disappear underground – how ironic that simultaneous strike of London’s major transport system – known as the Underground. The public did its best to get to work in the capital – the nation’s hub; stable staff rode out and mucked out as normal while racecourses stayed empty; and racing’s great and good turned out at the Newmarket crematorium for Raymond’s funeral.

The rest of the world got on with its business – overshadowed by impending, and current, catastrophe in seemingly every quarter of the globe. In baseball in America if you fail to connect with the baseball three times you are three strikes and out. Our racing strike was all-consuming to its proponents and followers: to the world at large it was a total irrelevance.