The FishTank

The Great British Pub is dying, so they say. But is it? And if so is that death something to mourn, a positive sign of a citizenry less obsessed with drink than the tabloids would have us believe, or just more evidence of the pernicious rise of the supermarkets?
Britain is a country very much in love with its myths, and the myth of the pub as social hub is one such treasured falsehood, created by nostalgic stories of wartime Britain and perpetuated in the post-war soap operas like Coronation Street and Eastenders, which almost invariably focus on the pub as the centre of local life. The implication is that, without the pub, there would be no social cohesion and the Blitz community spirit would die. The truth, not unnaturally, is somewhat different. The war was, after all, a period in which the pub was in decline, a decline that had been going on since the turn of the nineteenth century. The war gave pubs a boost, particularly when they served as rallying points for volunteer groups or places for blitzed refugees to hide out, but this was not how pubs were seen before the war. In fact, if you look at the nineteenth century they were frequently seen as hotbeds of sedition, places where Marxists and Trotskyites would gather to plot the end of polite society. With the war giving pubs a relaunch, and the soaps popularising them, pub culture has been both rebranded and reinvigorated in the late twentieth century, but that’s not to say that their role is any more significant to society than it ever was.
Because people don’t, as the myth suggests, tend to create social circles at the pub. They go to the pub with an existing social circle (such as families, work colleagues or fellow students). Where social groups centre on a pub (as with rotary clubs and other charitable groups, for example) it is more often that the pub serves as a convenient venue than as a catalyst. The reason pubs work so well in this regard is not simply the presence of alcohol, but because historically pubs are more tolerant of customers who spend a significant amount of time on the premises without spending a great deal of money. The average fast food chain would undoubtedly try to eject people who were still ensconced an hour after their burger was consumed. In fact, in the eighteenth century, our coffee shops had a similar tolerance to those who lingered, creating a refuge for the great figures of the Enlightenment, people like Samuel Johnson. They gave us, for perhaps the only time in our history, something that approached continental cafe culture.
The lack of this ‘cafe culture’ is often decried as a sign of Britain’s unhealthy obsession with alcohol. It’s not even a recent accusation: Roman writers characterised the British as a people with an unhealthy obsession with beer. But whilst there always have been particularly British problems with what we now call binge drinkers – people who in Hogarth’s time might have peopled Gin Lane – the truth is that the Brits are not particularly heavy drinkers. Research suggests that Germany and Ireland consume vastly more beer per capita than Britain. And whilst France may prefer wine, in terms of units of alcohol, they consume about 50% more than we do. Even within Britain there are ‘wet’ and ‘dry’ areas, Scotland and Northern Ireland consume more per capita than London and the North East, which in turn consume vastly more than rural districts. The universal beer-fuelled collapse of society is little more than media invention.
The picture in regard to the decline of pubs is equally distorted. It’s easy to forget that it was less than ten years ago that people were complaining not of pubs closing, but of banks closing to become pubs and wine bars. Look around many of our urban centres and you will find a former bank that is now a Wetherspoons, a Yates or one of the other rising pub chains of the twenty-first century. The truth is that pub numbers hit a peak in the heady optimistic days of the early 2000’s and a decline is probably to be expected. That the pubs closing are not the ones that were opening is due to shifting trends. Heavily urban centres like the Medway Towns, for example, used to have a great many pubs that were basically terraced houses. These were extremely popular when a pub was a refuge for the working man to escape the family for a private drink, but they are too small for groups of social drinkers or dining families and have been declining for decades. In rural areas, by contrast, larger pubs which started as coaching inns have prospered by becoming, in effect, budget restaurants. In fact, some of the pub closures will be accounted for by those rural pubs which have gone all the way and now operate entirely as restaurants. People still go there, staff are still employed, but they have changed from a place to drink with some food to a place to eat with some drink. It’s hard to see why this should be a problem.
That’s not to say there aren’t some pubs which have less obvious reasons for their decline. Changes in population demographics mean that, whilst the population of the country has risen, some rural villages have depopulated; better communications mean that people may be given to travel rather than stick with a poorly-run or presented local; and changes in behaviour and technology mean that people don’t feel they have to go to the pub just because they want a cold drink. The availability of alcohol in supermarkets is not a cause of this but a symptom. The fact that you can get a can of beer with a widget that makes it similar to draught from your local and then keep it in your fridge creates a demand and the lower overheads of selling in this manner means that people can enjoy a drink at home for less. Should we baulk at this? Would you complain that supermarkets sold cheap food because restaurants were closing? At the end of the day, it is not the duty of government to prop up businesses that are dying due to lack of public support, it is for those businesses to adapt in order to attract more custom. These are not public services.
That hasn’t stopped the pubs angling for change. Go into your local and you will no doubt find beer mats emblazoned with ‘axe the tax.’ Because this is what the pubs see as their panacea – the 33% that goes to the Exchequer with each pint sold. Would it help? Well, if you mean would it bring people back to failing pubs, probably not. The tax on beer may be levied on the consumer, but it’s unlikely that any pub would pass on the full cut. Their margins would increase, making them more profitable, but in terms of customer numbers the effects would be marginal. People who are attracted to cheap drink will still opt for the pub chains who discount heavily, those who are food oriented will not change their habits based on the price of a drink. There is a case for arguing that some people stay away from the pub because they can’t afford it, but that’s an issue about overall taxation. Cutting beer tax in preference to, say, income tax would hardly send a positive message.
And what about supermarket loss-leading? Should supermarkets be bound by legislation to prevent them selling at below cost? If so, why shouldn’t the bigger pub chains be similarly bound? There is a myth operating here: supermarkets do not sell loss leaders out of the goodness of their hearts or because they want people to buy lots of a particular product. They don’t even do so to buy loyalty – customers are notoriously fickle and just as likely to shift their custom as the stores shift their prices. Supermarket loss-leaders are an economic decision based on the idea that most people buying a loss-leader will go on to buy other, more expensive items at the same time. Yes, some people will just buy the alcohol, but with the loyalty card data they collect supermarkets know this is not generally what happens. Most people who buy cheap alcohol from supermarkets do so as part of a larger shop. The alcohol might draw them in or it might be something they pick up anyway (hard to work that out purely from sales data) but the end result is they were there for more than just the drinks. This means that unless pubs start selling barbeque equipment or groceries the supermarket will remain more convenient and price rises are more likely to lead to a decrease in overhaul alcohol purchasing than an ancilliary trip to the pub.
Alcohol purchased in supermarkets is symptomatic of that behavioural shift again. People do not, for the most, drink simply for its own sake. They want to drink with a meal or whilst they watch the match. Those pubs which have identified these elements, the gastro-pubs or the sporting pubs with the big-screen televisions, are doing well. Family-friendly venues with children’s play facilities are also enduringly popular. There may be other markets to explore – perhaps twenty-four hour drinking could allow for a general election night special where people gather to have a few drinks and snacks and watch the Government get a drubbing – but doing nothing and expecting government action to prop up the local is not the answer. The ideas are there for innovative businesses to find.
In the end, pubs are neither the lifeblood of our society or our economy. That they employ a great many people is because there are a great many of them, but that doesn’t mean government should act to keep them viable. In a recession there are always interest groups talking up their importance to garner government patronage. Some of them rightly get help, others wrongly so, but for pubs either individually or collectively to expect a bailout would be no more right than for Woolworths to have expected to be nationalised. Those who feel strongly that individual pubs should survive would do best to encourage custom themselves. If making the pub busier or more family-friendly makes it less attractive to the concerned individual perhaps they should ask themselves for which society they are hoping to save it.