 | | | | by Neil Davenport |
Traditionally, the Christmas and New Year period was seen as 'the season to get jolly' (a.k.a steaming drunk).
| For the UK authorities, it's now the season to land an £80 fine. Drunken revellers caught fighting, urinating or being sick in the street face on-the-spot fines during a nationwide festive crackdown. According to Home Office minister Hazel Blears, 'there should not be an excuse for violent and anti-social behaviour by a minority, spoiling enjoyment for everyone else' (1). She's right - there shouldn't be any excuse for the police to ruin a top night out.
| In recent months, excuses are one thing the authorities haven't been short of. Rarely a day goes by without some inflated panic about 'binge drinking' (that's a few pints to you and I) and its supposed costs to the economy and the National Health Service. Everyone from top police chiefs to the broadsheet press to the Trades Union Congress (TUC) have warned us that drinking alcohol can - hey - get you drunk. Well millions of us know that already and, believe it or not, that's why we do it.
| For prime minister Tony Blair, such behaviour constitutes 'the new British disease'. Who is he kidding? The enjoyment of drink is neither 'new' nor a 'disease'. Sure, more women are out drinking than in the past (that alone is something to celebrate), and town centre super-pubs have created a busier drinking experience. But for all the whinge-drinking, we are not guzzling ourselves into an early grave. Happy hours or no happy hours, more people are living longer and healthier lives than ever before. So why are we expected to purge ourselves, and our sins, from the 'demon' drink?
| On one level, the attack on alcohol fits New Labour's rogue's gallery of vices, alongside chips, burgers and sugary drinks. As spiked contributors have identified before, there's very little in these discussions about 'health' (2). Instead, New Labour's petty preoccupations are a vehicle to proscribe what lifestyles are deemed acceptable and unacceptable today. Bemoaning the consumption habits of 'ordinary people' is one arena where venting moral judgements is still allowed. And at this time of year, nowhere fits the bill quite as effectively as booze-related horror stories.
| This year, everyone from the business class to the TUC has spelt out the apparent perils of the drunken office party. According to Frances O'Grady, the TUC's deputy general secretary: 'There won't be much Christmas cheer in your workplace if your winter wonderland turns out to be a danger zone.' (3) The TUC advises office workers not to photocopy bodily parts or bring out the mistletoe ('and not just because the berries are poisonous') in case it leads to 'sexual harassment' (4).
| Some newspapers have printed similar 'do's and don'ts' regarding personal conduct at office parties, while others reckon we should consider banning them altogether (5). It seems a similar pattern has emerged to the justifications for banning smoking in pubs - namely that drinking doesn't only harm you; the effects of it harms others too. How long before pubs are banned from serving alcohol?
| A closer reading on Britain's supposed 'drinking crisis' shows that what the authorities and liberal commentators really object to is the availability of public drinking space. For example, some cite the expansion of licensed bars in the Manchester area as hugely problematic (6), while one commentator despaired at how, within a 100-metre stretch in Guildford, drinkers had numerous bars to choose from (7). Predictably there are calls for local councils to further restrict the granting of drinking licenses. Nobody is prepared to argue that Britain's licensing laws - still the most stringent in Europe - are not remotely liberal enough. The idea that on a Friday or a Saturday night we should all be home by 11pm has always smacked of infantilising adults.
| | | Pubs are a space where adults can talk and act like free-willing individuals |
| The government may have pledged to liberalise licensing laws in the 2001 election, but its controlling instincts have inevitably won through. Three years ago the Criminal and Justice Police Act gave the police greater arbitrary powers to shut down pubs and clubs. Now the Home Office is strong-arming the brewery industry into accepting 'new voluntary codes' on a whole range of bans. Some in the brewery industry have correctly seen through the 'relaxed' guidelines. As Mark Hastings of the British Beer & Pub Association points out: 'It may say it is voluntary but most operators will see it as a new regulatory body overseeing production and retailing of alcohol in the UK.' (9)
| Even without further restrictions, pubs and bars are already heavily proscribed. Despite the expansion of bars in places like Manchester, nearly all of these feature anxious-looking bouncers and CCTV cameras in every corner. To add further insult, patronising reminders to 'drink safely' decorate the toilet walls. For all the titillating stories about Bacchanalian antics, these days drinking in Britain is a comparatively sanitised affair. So why do the authorities want to go even further?
| For all the doom-saying facts on alcohol consumption, most of us don't drink for the sake of it. If we did, we'd save a ton of money by drinking at home alone. We choose pubs because there's an emphasis on being with people you know and people you'd like to know. Pubs have primarily been a space where adults can talk and act like free-willing individuals. And in today's misanthropic mindset, an individual's behaviour either becomes a 'social problem' or a 'disease'. According to Kate Fox at the Social Issues Research Centre in Oxford, we are all 'suffering from a "congenital sociability disorder", a disease whose symptoms are akin to a kind of autism combined with agoraphobia' (10).
| Strangely enough, at a time when the government and cultural institutions desperately want us to engage, when it comes to public drinking and talking they wish we'd shut up. No doubt groups of friends and strangers combined with alcohol can be unpredictable (though more joyous than miserabilists will dare admit). But the authorities' real problem is of social exclusion - that is, they themselves feel excluded. For a government driven by expanding intrusion, this will simply not do.
| Having won the arguments on smoking bans in pubs, the government's 'binge drinking' panics are softening up attitudes to further restrictions on public drinking. As the licensing minister Richard Caborn starkly warned drinkers and retailers: 'we're not messing about.' He's not kidding. Moralistic judgements on and actions against 'unacceptable' lifestyles is one area where the government can appear politically potent and popular. Unlike unwanted puppies, on-the-spot fines, pub closures and boozing restrictions won't just be for Christmas.
| Neil Davenport is a sociology lecturer, freelance writer and pub drinker.
| Read on:
spiked-issue: Drink and drugs
(1) Drunken revellers face £80 fines, BBC News, 17 December 2004
(2) Health in a sick society, by Stephen Bowler
(3) Office alarm bells ring out for Christmas, Trades Union Congress, 9 December 2004
(4) Office alarm bells ring out for Christmas, Trades Union Congress, 9 December 2004
(5) Bosses bash Christmas parties, George Wright, Guardian, 3 December 2004
(6) Under the influence, Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark, Guardian, 20 November 2004
(7) On the streets of binge Britain, Jay Rayner, Observer, 5 September 2004
(8) On the streets of binge Britain, Jay Rayner, Observer, 5 September 2004
(9) Labour call for drinks watchdog, Simon Bowers, Guardian, 9 December 2004
(10) Labour call for drinks watchdog, Simon Bowers, Guardian, 9 December 2004
|
|
|
| | |
