We drink when the government permits us

It’s time we stood up to unnecessary paternalism and timid local appeasment

When the First World War started, the establishment, getting ready to send millions of men off to their senseless slaughter, decided to curb any enjoyment that remained. Troops and workers must be fresh and clear headed. Alcohol became an evil to curb and it was cracked down upon.

Before this you could start your sessions at 5am — which I admit might have been a little early. But a few laws, and a barrage of taxes later, one could barely drink on a Sunday and got sixth months in prison for buying someone else a pint — if you could afford it. I am not making that last bit up. This was called the Treating Order.

The Licensing Act of 1963 was another spectacular example of the power of the church and establishment to herd the masses. This decided Sundays, Christmas Day and Good Friday must be for God. Enjoyment would be wrong, one needed time to contemplate the pleasures of living in a Christian country — much as your prime minister still does. In their words, pubs would only open:

“on Sundays, Christmas Day and Good Friday, the
hours from twelve noon to half past ten in the evening,
with a break of five hours beginning at two in the
afternoon”

They were not total killjoys: providing it was not Maundy Thursday or Easter Evening (heaven forbid) you could apply for a music and dancing licence which meant you could serve drinks between midnight and two in the morning, but only if the music kept playing. Those lucky enough to live in London had until three, but not in the City of London (naturally).

For some unknown reason the district of Carlisle had its own entirely different licensing law.

Then in 1988 Thatcher let us drink all day, her only redeeming feature, but even she dared not take on God and let us drink until 11 on a Sunday. More recent New Labour changes to try and let adult voters choose for themselves when to drink descended into Nimby chaos.

Britain now has the totally unacceptable mess that the commentariat stoke through an inability to understand cause and effect, or the time it takes to change a deeply embedded (and moronic) culture of binge drinking.

It’s a neat outcome for ministers: Central Government will say they handed this power on to your more representative Local Government. They in turn will look at one complaint with more fear than the Poll Tax. No, adults must not be trusted, we cannot possibly trade off the risk of a slight reallocation of noise for the sake of hundreds and hundreds of more content and less liver poisoned voters.

And no one can be bothered to raise the medieval fear that perhaps there is no God to which all pubs must show their respect. That would just be going too far.