Gladstonian Ghosts

by Cecil Chesterton

Now if we could only get these two contradictory conceptions of temperance reform clearly defined and separated, the drink question would be a much easier thing to discuss than it is. Unfortunately they have got almost indissolubly tangled by reason of the fact that so many who secretly hold the dogmatic teetotal view will not avow it frankly, while many others (practically the whole Liberal and Progressive parties for example) hastily adopt measures which have no raison d’etre save in this view without thinking seriously about their nature. If the teetotal enthusiasts would say frankly (as some but by no means all of them do) that they want absolute and unqualified Prohibition and only support Local Veto and the much-vaunted Temperance Policy of the London County Council as steps towards Prohibition—then at least we should know where we were. But when the Daily News itself was plainly and publicly challenged by the Rev. Stewart Headlam to say whether it meant that or not, it pointedly evaded the question. The fact is, of course that if this policy were frankly explained its supporters would be snowed under at the next election even more finally than the supporters of Local Veto were in 1895. So they do not avow it, but try to get essentially prohibitionist legislation through under cover of vague phrases like “temperance reform” to which we are all urged to rally.

Take Local Veto for example. What was the main proposal involved in Sir William Harcourt’s famous measure. It proposed that every ward (the smallest area known to English local government) should have the right by a two-thirds majority to veto all licenses within its area or by a bare majority to reduce them by one fourth. Now was this measure intended to lead to Prohibition or was it not? If it was, then the English people who did not want Prohibition did well to reject it; but if it was not, and its supporters generally insist that it was not, whither was it intended to lead. Its obvious effect in practice, as Mr. Pease has justly pointed out, would be that the rich districts, where public houses are few and cannot in any sense be regarded as a social evil, would probably expel them as derogatory to the interests of property and the “character of the neighbourhood,” while all the drinking would be concentrated in the worst slum areas, where public houses, not of the best type, are already dangerously numerous and crowded, and where prohibition would have no chance whatever. This is clearly not a temperance reform in any sense of the word. It could have been framed only in the interests of men who regard alcohol as so positively a devilish thing that they rejoice at the destruction of any place defiled by its presence regardless of the ulterior consequences to temperance itself.

The Temperance Policy of the London County Council is at least as strong a case in point. What is this much-trumpetted policy? It is this; that when the County Council has to acquire the license of a public house in the course of making some street improvement, it first pays huge compensation to the publican and then abandons the license, thus practically throwing the ratepayer’s money into the sea. That is all. In the course of its distinguished career the L.C.C. has spent more than £300,000 in this wise and beneficent manner.

Now what does the County Council suppose that it is doing? For a systematic reduction of drink licenses in certain districts there is doubtless much to be said, though I am inclined to think that the importance of this as a factor in the temperance problem is grossly exaggerated. But, if that is to be effected, the whole licensing system must be brought under review and houses suppressed according to a well-considered plan. Care would for example be taken that the worse kind of houses were suppressed and the better retained. The Council suppresses them on no plan whatever—simply where it happens to be making a street improvement. The result is, of course, that the gain to temperance is absolutely nil. A street is to be widened; the public houses on one side of the street are pulled down, their licenses purchased and abandoned; those on the other side remain. The people who used to drink on the one side go over and drink on the other. The suppressed publican (or the brewer he represents) gets ample compensation; the unsuppressed publican gets his neighbour’s trade in addition to his own without paying one farthing for it. And the public? What does the public get? The satisfaction of knowing that the workman may have to cross the road in order to refresh himself.

The fact is that the Progressive party, dangerously subject to intimidation by the Nonconformist chapels, has adopted a policy entirely meaningless from the standpoint of enlightened temperance, in obedience to the irrational demands of those who think that the destruction of any public house must be a righteous act.

Now the same spirit which revealed in the Local Veto Bill and still shows itself in the County Council policy has been to a great extent responsible for the opposition encountered by the government’s Licensing Act. I do not say that this Act could not be fairly criticised upon other grounds. The terms accorded to the Trade are certainly high—in my view too high—and of the compensation granted too much seems likely (in the case of a tied house) to go to the brewer and too little to the publican. But that is not the ground chosen by the most vehement enemies of the measure. The ground explicitly chosen by them is that the publican is an enemy, a wicked man, whom we ought to punish for his misdeeds. If it were the case of any other trade, would anybody venture to deny that a man whose livelihood is taken away by the arbitrary act of the governing powers through no fault of his own is entitled, whatever be his strict legal position, to some measure of relief. To which the only answer vouchsafed by the teetotal faction consists in windy abuse of the publican as a “vampire.” I think that private monopoly in the Drink Trade is a great evil; so is private monopoly everywhere else. But to abuse the man who merely sells what the public demands and the community instructs him to supply is fanaticism and not statesmanship.

Now if, leaving this foolish cult, whose voting power is by no means in proportion to the noise it makes, we ask ourselves what kind of temperance reform sensible reformers really want, we shall not find it difficult to answer.

First and foremost then we want good liquour and especially good beer. Everyone who frequents public houses knows how hard this often is to obtain. Yet beer is our national drink, of which we ought to be proud. Properly manufactured it does no one any harm, though when made of chemical “substitutes” instead of sound malt and hops it is as noxious as any other adulterated concoction. Beer-drinking, within reasonable limits, and provided the beer be sound liquour, is a national habit which no wise ruler would attempt to suppress. For it is the best prophylactic against the inordinate consumption of cheap and bad spirits which really is a national curse in Scotland and elsewhere.

Secondly we want decent surroundings. It is a most unfortunate thing that few temperance reformers have any personal acquaintance with public houses or with alcoholic drinking. For if they had they would know that a man is much more likely to brutalise himself if he is compelled to drink “perpendicularly” in a dirty, ugly, and gloomy bar than if he can sit down comfortably, talk to his friends, play cards and listen, perhaps, to a little music. That is why another phase of the L.C.C. “temperance” policy, the refusal of drink licenses to music halls, is so manifestly absurd. A man who drinks at a music hall, where he is being amused in other ways, is much less likely to get drunk than one who drinks in a public house bar (as such bars are now conducted) where there is nothing to do but to go on drinking. As Mr. Headlam has excellently expressed it, it would be a great deal better policy to turn every public house into a music hall than to turn every music hall into a teetotal institution. The second thing we want then is a humanised public house.

Thirdly we want to get rid of the private commercial monopoly which exploits the drink trade, whereby vast fortunes are made at the expense of the community. These immense profits are the direct result of the monopoly granted by the community to private traders in return for a nominal fee. To grant away what is practically public money in this way is monstrous. It is satisfactory to find that something like High License is foreshadowed in this year’s Licensing Act. But High License is not enough.