The Decline of The Public House – Part Two

In the previous part, I looked at the current trend in pub closures and discussed a little about the importance of the public house in building our communities.

In this concluding, part I shall attempt to discover some of the key reasons that this situation has arisen in the first place and to examine what social implications may result.

Reasons For Decline.

One of the first reasons unearthed by even a casual amount of research on the topic of pub closures is the issue of taxation. In the UK, alcohol (and other ‘luxury’ products) have an added duty placed on them. What this means is the price of a pint (in the same way as a litre of petrol) is heavily influenced by the amount of tax the vendor has to pay.

Now, this may be basic economics but, where the sale of alcohol in particular differs is it is subject to things like the beer tax escalator. This (and others like it) is a special tax that practically guarantees that taxation will increase each year for the foreseeable future (possibly indefinitely). According to an e-petition created by Chris Schofield and posted on direct.gov.uk (which at time of writing has been signed by just shy of 40,000 people):

“Every year, the beer tax escalator increases the tax on beer by 2% above the rate of inflation…”
– Chris Schofield’s “e-petition – Stop the beer duty escalator”  on  direct.gov.uk
(Closing Date: 15/02/2013 09:00)

But this is not a new phenomena and we have already seen sharp increases in taxation over the last few years. In fact, according to Jon Howard of the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA):

“… pubs [were] hit by an inflation-busting 42% increase in beer duty since 2008 …”
– “CAMRA releases new national pub closure research” by Jon Howard
(30th April 2012)

This increase in tax, and ultimately price, makes it difficult for businessmen (in this case publicans) to plan a sure course for the future. Faced with the prospect of a business that is likely to haemorrhage money over the next five years and beyond, many are taking the understandable decision to cut their losses and shut up shop. As a consequence, new people looking to invest are less likely to see the pub as a viable investment, particularly if they are looking for a safe, bankable return. Therefore, it has become increasingly more likely that, once a pub has closed, it will remain closed.

In another case, if the publican does decide to remain open for business, the only option available to them is to put their prices up in order to squeeze their margins and compensate the tax. This has an unavoidable effect on demand and it is this drop in demand, or the willingness of people to pay the higher price, that has affected the pub trade more than some of the other areas of the drinks industry.

Increase in Home Drinking.

There are many different types of pubs to tempt you out of an evening. From the quiet, ghost-town pubs, haunted by fading flock wallpaper and heavy oak furniture; to lively, sports-bar pubs decked in neon and chrome, dressed with funky, lightweight barstools and a resident DJ. There are family pubs where you can get a plate of steak and chips and a small coke for the kids, and there are drinking pubs where eating-is-cheating and the most nutritious thing available is a packet of dry roasted.

Whatever the style or patronage of the place, each publican / landlord / manager etc relies on the same thing – measurable returns and repeat business. If the proprietor of a dark and dingy dive on the edge of town knows that the same six guys are going to come along every Saturday and drink the place dry, then (assuming they drink enough to cover his bills) he knows he can remain open, even with little to no mid-week trade. By the same token, if the bar manager of a sleek and shinny trendsetter in the high street knows that his is the favourite spot for young people to meet before heading on to the club then, even at one of two drinks a pop, the sheer numbers will keep him afloat for as long as it remains the place to go.

The problem is, what with the increases in price and a general decrease in expendable income, people are less inclined to go out of a weekend- reserving it as an occasional treat or for a special occasion. Those six guys find it kinder on their wallets to take a trip to the supermarket and buy a create of cheap beers to drink at home (where they can also smoke indoors) leaving the proprietor struggling to balance his books. The young people find it more economically viable to ‘pre-load’ – drinking a bottle of cheap wine etc before going out – rather than pay by the glass at the pub, leaving the bar manager to contemplate ways of serving food in the evenings in an effort to try and drum-up some mid-week trade (which could throw him into an unwinnable competition with another restaurant or fast food place on the high street).

Now this is not purely speculation on my part, I do have some evidence to back this theory up. James Morgan over at  Scienceomega.com writes this:

“According to 2006 figures from the British Beer & Pub Association, 83 per cent of all wine drunk is consumed at home, and most of this alcohol is purchased from large supermarkets.”
-“Lack of research concerning home drinking” by James Morgan Scienceomega.com
(15 March 2012)

So there is a trend for people rejecting the pub in favour of cheaper supermarket prices. But how come supermarkets and other off-licences can charge less in the first place?

Well, unlike the pub trade, shops are not reliant on repeat business of alcohol alone as they sell many other products besides. This means they can (and often do) sell alcohol at a loss and recoup that loss by inflating the price on other products. If the rate of tax increases on alcohol and you wish to keep charging at a low price then you can just increase the price on other products by a few pennies until your tax bill is covered.

Aside from the aforementioned dry roasted peanuts and the occasional rizla packet, the publican doesn’t have this option as their primary trade is in the sale of alcohol, which they must sell at the inflated price in order to cover their bill.

As this tax increase has gone on year after year, the gap has gotten ever wider between the price that the supermarkets can get away with charging and what the publicans must charge at the pump. It is this gulf that has given rise to the drastic change in market trends and, as we shall explore next, this change could have unseen ramifications on our society.

Social Implications.

Trends change. We don’t carry on doing things the same way all the time because tastes, priorities and opportunities shift and we adapt to whatever comes along next.

I mean, it wasn’t so long ago that we all sent letters to one another at regular intervals to keep in touch. Then someone [either an Italian or a Scot ] invented the telephone and it became easier to call home instead. Now, as developments in technology continue, we have e-mail and skype with next big thing just around the corner ready to be embraced.

So a change in trends is perfectly natural, and indeed healthy, when it is in the service of pushing the boundaries forward. It can also be painful however, as grand-parents lament the abandonment of a certain skill set needed to compose a ‘proper’ letter and parents bemoan their children for texting each other rather than just picking up the phone.

So how then, when we are talking about the decline in the public house, do we differentiate between rose-tinted moaning over the loss of a much loved institution and a genuine argument that we have lost something important? Well I feel the answer to that lays in whether or not the change in question is better for us overall.

Now, had the decline of pubs put an end to this nation’s drinking culture – which is responsible for a lot of problems in our society – then you would have to admit (possibly somewhat begrudgingly) that it was a change for the better. But I don’t think it has and so I don’t think it is.

We are a nation of drinkers. Not universally I know but, as a cultural stereotype and a national pastime, it still ranks pretty high. The closure of pubs and the shift to home drinking hasn’t changed that. It is still Saturday night out there – only now it is Saturday night in your living room – where you can’t run out of money before you run out of booze, you can’t get barred and it is always a late licence. What exactly is there to stop all of those problems that plague(d) our town centres after kick out – the fights, the arguments, the impulsive stupidity and uncontrolled evacuations – from following us in to our homes? And could there be worse besides?

“Home drinking is invisible and individuals have to set their own boundaries about acceptable levels of consumption and behaviour.”
– From  “Lack of research concerning home drinking” by James Morgan on Scienceomega.com quoting Dr John Foster from University of Greenwich School of Health & Social Care.
(15 March 2012)

When you are at a pub, there are certain checks and balances that, while they will not ensure your safety, will at least curb some of the more destructive behaviours.

If, for example, you have had a heavy session and are struggling to stay upright on the barstool then any landlord worth their salt will pull the “refusal of service” card and force you to grumble off home to sleep it off. Failing that, there is a certain social pressure that, even with alcohol’s legendary power to diminish a person’s inhibitions, should keep you from making a complete tit of yourself. If you get too rowdy and start a fight then the bar staff will throw you out and / or phone the police (it‘s faster than a letter) and even if you do get beaten up, you are in a public place so someone will find you sooner rather than later.

Now, if you are drinking in your living room and, lets say, you went a little overboard at the off-licence – coming home with a crate of beers, a couple bottles of wine and some spirits to boot – who is there to stop you from ploughing through the lot and getting yourself dangerously drunk? Who is there, other than your friends who are likely just as drunk as you are, to tut you into behaving yourself? And, should the worse happen and a fight breaks out, who is there to stop it? And where can you go to cool off? You can’t go home, you are already there. And if you was to get hurt, how long could you lay on your living room floor before help comes?

So no, I don’t think an increase in habitual home drinking – which was once the reserve of the bona fide alcoholic – is a change for the better. I feel that drinking, or at least drinking with the sole intention of getting drunk, is best done in public where at least there is someone around who is sober and detached enough to deal with things if they go wrong.

There is, however, a greater danger present than these problems. It comes from this: In order to be a society, we must socialise. In this country, the pub is the venue of choice for this. It’s is where friendships and communities grow. It’s where news is shared and plans are formed. It’s where teams are put together for quizzes, for darts, for football, for pool. It’s where people from different walks of life mingle and exchange opinions. In short, it’s where the heart is and, if we are not prudent, it may stop beating for good.

In Summery.

So all that is left to say really is, don’t give up on your local – it’s every bit as important as the library or the schools. I know it’s difficult to spare the money to pay a visit these days, but you should at least try and make the effort once and a while. At the end of the day, when last orders have been called and the chairs are being stacked on the tables, if you love your pub the way it is and don’t want to see it join the growing list of the fallen, then they need your custom. You’ll miss it once it’s gone – trust me on that.

References:

• “A dozen pubs close each week” By James Hall – The Telegraph (30th April 2012)
• “CAMRA releases new national pub closure research” by Jon Howard – Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) (30th April 2012)
• “Men give up on the pub! Beer drinking drops by a quarter in just five years as men stay at home” By Sean Poulter – The Daily Mail (21st December 2011)
• CAMRA Pub Closure research- 6 month breakdown – (September 2011 – March 2012)
• “The Great British Pub” – HistoricUK.com
• “British village life ‘dying out’ after pub closures” By BBC News Uk – (18th September 2010)
• Chris Schofield’s “e-petition – Stop the beer duty escalator”  on  direct.gov.uk
  (Closing Date: 15/02/2013 09:00)
• “Lack of research concerning home drinking” by James Morgan on Scienceomega.com (15 March 2012)

See Also:

• That caps it off!!! – For more of my thoughts on how governmental interferance may be making the recession worse, not better. (January 23, 2012)

External Links:

• To see how much you could be paying in tax for life’s little luxuries see “Vice-ometer calculator: Your tax” By Richard Browning on ThisIsMoney.co.uk (21 March 2012)
• For a podcast on the outlook for the pub industry see “The state and future of the pub” Rick Muir talks to Claire Cain on Pod Academy (March 9, 2012)
• For more reason why the pub is important to our way of life see “Pubs and places: The social value of community pubs” By Rick Muir on IPPR.org (24 Jan 2012)
• For more thoughts by Dr. John Foster see “Minimum alcohol pricing is to be welcomed – University Greenwich expert” By The University of Greenwich on alphagalileo.org (23 March 2012)
• And for a general history, role and categorisation of pubs see  “Public House” on good ‘ol Wikipedia

The Decline of the Public House – Part One

“…300 pubs closed between September 2011 and March 2012…”
– The Telegraph (30th April 2012)

“…12 pubs now close across Britain every week…”
– Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) (30th April 2012)

“Men give up on the pub!”
– The Daily Mail (21st December 2011)

Pubs Are Closing Down!

This is a topic that rolls up every now and again, and one that deserves more than a cursory glance : Pubs in Britain seem to be closing at an alarming rate.

Now, you may be thinking “Yeah, so? The recession has been tough on a lot of businesses, why should the drinks industry pull special focus?” and you would be perfectly justified in that.

But the ’ol boozer does deserve special attention, for reasons I plan to go into shortly, but for now I’ll just say that it is ‘special’ because, firstly, publicans have had different obstacles and legislations to deal with in the economic downturn and, secondly, the pub stands for something a little different from your local bike shop or drainage company.

But before we get into that, I want to ask this…

Where is the Evidence?

Apart from anecdotal evidence, or the evidence of your own eyes after seeing your favourite pub close it’s doors for the last time, is there any solid proof that this is the case [well, let‘s hope so, otherwise this is going to be a short article].

Well, let’s address those headlines above: The top two both quote numbers from the same study – which you can look at yourself . These pub closure figures were commissioned by CAMRA and undertaken by CGA Strategy, over a 6 month period- September 2011 – March 2012.

From these numbers CAMRA summarised:

“…12 pubs now close across Britain every week – 8 in suburban areas, and 4 in rural areas, with the nation’s high streets showing resistance in the current economic climate.”
– “CAMRA releases new national pub closure research” by Jon Howard (30th April 2012)

The third, slightly older, headline taken from an article  by Sean Poulter in The Daily Mail  also looks at some hard numbers that seem to show a decline in pub drinking, particularly when it comes to our nations favourite, good old fashioned beer.
In it Jonny Forsyth, an analyst for Mintel [A Market research group], is quoted as saying:

“The economic downturn and rising differential between on and off trade beer and alcohol prices has hit the pub trade heavily and led to more UK consumers migrating to in home drinking.”
-Jonny Forsyth  in The Daily Mail
(21 December 2011)

So, yes, there is some hard evidence out there to support the idea that this is more than just doom-saying from a fed-up public or panic-crying from a struggling industry. Maybe not enough to say that pubs-as-we-know-them are on the brink of extinction, but enough to begin worrying.

Some of you though, are probably not worried. Perhaps you don’t drink yourself and feel you don’t care about the fate of the public house one way or another. Well allow me this one opportunity to persuade you [you may as well, since you read this far anyway].

The Importance of Pubs in History

The reason you should care is because Public Houses, as an institution, are a part of our heritage.

If you think about it, the quintessential British village or town is one that contains a church, a grocer, a post office, a school and a pub (and later on a railway station). While it is a bit old fashioned to think of towns in these terms in the modern day; it does go to show that for centuries these five things were considered essential to any working town.

You needed a church for spiritual guidance and as an official meeting place, you needed the grocer so you could buy or sell goods, you needed the post office so you could contact the outside world, you needed the school to educate your children and you needed the pub for communal guidance and as an unofficial meeting place.

We need the pub for celebrations, for condolences (after death, mourners would bury you at the church and then they would go to the pub after), for an escape from the family and some adult humour or just as a place to unwind after our toils and catch up with our friends. The pub is a vital component, even today. Some of the others on the list are expendable. Do I need a post office? Pfft… I’ve got e-mail. Do you need a church for spiritual guidance in a post enlightenment age? Perhaps not. But the pub is still essential.

Or as HistoricUK.com puts it:

“[T]he great British pub is not just a place to drink beer, wine, cider or even something a little bit stronger, it is a unique social centre, very often the focus of community life in villages, towns and cities throughout the length and breadth of the country.”
-“The Great British Pub”
HistoricUK.com

A Personal Perspective.

One of the reasons I feel so strongly about this is because I know how it feels to have a good, solid, communal pub and then loose it.

My home town is nothing special, just a couple of main roads and a load of houses packed along the edges of it’s tangled capillaries. Not so different from a lot of other small to medium sized towns with a medium to large scale populous.

One of the arteries leads down to the shopping precinct and the railway station (so our forefathers – in their wisdom – called it Station Road) the other leading across the top of the town (so our forefathers called it the High Street – for they were wise) past the church and the post office and ending at the pub that marks the boundary of our town.

It’s not a special road, in fact it is a very long road that connects many towns and threads its way though many vistas that mirror our own small section of it almost exactly.

Neither is our town in short supply of pubs. On the relatively short stretch that we call The High Street (for we too are wise) you can count at least half a dozen, and buried within the warrens of the town itself you could probably find a half dozen more – spreading the gambit from “swanky”, Weatherspoons-esque places where you can go and get a nice plate of overpriced food to horseshoe barred, former living rooms where there is barely enough room to spit in the saw-dust. Never-the-less, this pub on the boundary was special.

It was special because, back a mere 100 years ago, when my town consisted of just those two roads and the houses were all fields and orchards – there stood the church, there stood the post office and there stood the pub, in the same spot it had since at least the 1860’s, marking the border and providing its services to the town.

Now, in this age of austerity, when the town is bursting at its seems – there stands the church, in the same spot it had since the 13th Century, all-be-it with a slightly fuller graveyard, there stands the post office, modernised for our convenience, but where is the pub? Well it was closed down in 2009 and now its an Indian restaurant.

[Now, this is not about one culture supplanting another, that’s just a coincidence. Besides, I think multi-culturalism is quite a good idea if we can get it to work. We have many other Indian restaurants in town (as well as a lot of other fast food places from around the world) and they seem to do just fine after closing time. Its just a small example of one culture shaking the others hand.]

For near enough 150 years (possibly longer) a pub stood on that site – a cornerstone of the community reduced to a footnote in history almost over night (through no fault of the last proprietors, I hasten to add). But never mind all that, more importantly, it was my pub! I said we had our pick of pubs within stumbling distance and I tried them all but this was the one that I chose.

It was the one that had the best atmosphere [quiet yet lively – that‘s how I roll], it was the one I felt most comfortable in, it was the one I met my brothers in at the end of the week, it drew in the best people from around the town, a proper community pub where everyone got along and had a laugh. In short, it was the pub I thought I would drink in forever. I was gutted went it shut down, everyone was.

Its when something like that has happened, that statements like this really hit home:

“The cornerstones of traditional village life, such as the local school, the shop and the pub, are disappearing from the rural landscape at an alarming rate.”
– David Orr chief executive of the National Housing Federation Quoted in “British village life ‘dying out’ after pub closures” BBC News Uk
(18th September 2010)

Coming Soon:

In the next part, I will be looking a little deeper into why this has happened and examining some of the knock-on effects that declining pubs is having on our society.