There was just a single day of racing in Britain between 22 December and 9 March during the famously bitter winter in 1962-63 and dozens of blank days during the foot-and-mouth outbreaks in 1967 and 2001. Even in the era of racing on Polytrack and Tapeta, which dates back almost 40 years, there are occasional days when, to the delight of headline-writers, the so-called “all-weather” surfaces cannot cope.

But there has never been a day throughout those decades when a scheduled programme of racing has been called off voluntarily, so the decision to “strike” on Wednesday, when meetings were due to be staged at Lingfield, Carlisle, Uttoxeter and Kempton, is a sign of how seriously racing’s administrators and stakeholders view the threat to the sport’s finances from a government proposal to “harmonise” the rate of duty charged on profits from betting on sport and other uncertain events, and fixed-margin casino products such as online slots where the operator takes a guaranteed percentage of turnover.

Martin Cruddace, the chief executive of Arena Racing Company, one of Britain’s two major racecourse operators alongside Jockey Club Racecourses, has described the proposal as representing an “existential threat” to Britain’s second-biggest spectator sport.

That might seem a little overwrought given that the current rate of betting duty is 15% of an operator’s gross profits, while the rate for gaming products is 21%. Could an extra 6%, or even 10% alongside a 4% rise in gaming duty to “harmonise” at 25%, really make that much difference to an industry that generates billions of pounds in online turnover annually?

The answer is yes, it could, and Wednesday’s strike, as well as an event at the Queen Elizabeth II Centre in London, not far from the Houses of Parliament, is the sport’s chance to get its message across before Rachel Reeves delivers her budget on 26 November.

The fundamental problem with the harmonisation idea from racing’s point of view is that it would end the distinction between games of skill and games of pure chance in the legal and regulatory frameworks around gambling.

It is a distinction that dates back to the late 1700s, which saw the emergence of both over-round bookmaking – which allows a bookie to offer odds on all the runners in a race – and the roulette wheel. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, betting involved bookmakers and gaming was restricted to casinos, a separation that remained after off-course betting in high-street shops was legalised in the early 1960s.

Two significant developments started to break down the barriers in the early years of the 21st century. The internet brought casino gaming to every computer desktop and mobile phone, giving online operators the ability to cross-promote gaming to betting customers, while the 2005 Gambling Act legitimised high-stakes casino-gaming in every high-street shop in the country on so-called fixed-odds betting terminals (FOBT).

But the distinction has – so far – endured in gambling’s taxation regime, and not simply because casino gaming and slots have a much higher correlation with problem gambling and addiction (although that link has been shown beyond any meaningful doubt).

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It is also because gaming generates guaranteed profits, as a simple function of turnover. The profits from betting are far less certain, and demand much more effort and investment from the operators. The lower rate of duty on betting is an incentive to make that effort.

Without it, there is no incentive to even maintain the betting side of an operator’s business, never mind grow it over time. Racing, the only major sport that derives an essential part of its income from a share of betting revenue, would be trapped in a slow, and inevitable, spiral of decline.

There is still a debate to be had over whether racing’s “one voice” calling for the government to “axe the racing tax” should be more stridently anti-harmonisation, and less focused on opposing any rise in betting duty. My view would be that a small rise is inevitable in the current climate, but also that it could be a positive for racing if it comes alongside a much bigger hike in gaming duty. The National Trainers’ Federation is still the only industry body to have offered public support for a resolution along those lines.

The strike on Wednesday is still an impressive show of unity in an entertainment industry that so often fractures into its constituent parts when times are hard, pitting the racecourses against the 10s of thousands of people who ensure that the show always goes on, on all but two or three days each year.

Racing directly or indirectly supports 85,000 jobs around the country, while about 50 Labour MPs are sitting uneasily on a majority of 2,000 or below. If this week’s strike can introduce at least a few of the latter group to the urgent concerns of the former, it will be worth every penny of the £200k it is expected to cost the sport.