Pubs for the public – abolish intrusive licensing laws

Legal limits on drinking hours were introduced in Britain and several other countries during the First World War, bringing a measure of military discipline to civilian life. The subsequent, disastrous experiment with complete prohibition of alcohol in the US between 1920 and 1933 was also born of a desire for social control, albeit justified in moralistic rather than militaristic terms. Even today, licensing laws constrain the public’s freedom. The one sensible restriction on the supply of alcohol – preventing its direct sale to minors – is a clue to the problem. Licensing laws treat us all like irresponsible children.

Any self-respecting citizenry should insist on the right to decide for ourselves how late we can stay out drinking. In those cities around the world where bars are allowed to open into the early hours, there is none of the chaos whose threat is implied by restrictions placed on drinkers in London, Glasgow or other cities where late licences are the exception, grudgingly granted by the authorities. In principle, there is no reason why landlords should not be free to decide on a night-by-night basis how late to stay open, depending on the wishes of customers and the willingness of staff to stay on. The simple principle of supply and demand would then apply, and no doubt some bars would become regular late-drinking venues, while others would keep the old hours, or even close earlier.

Of course, drinkers are citizens as well as consumers, and might sometimes want to take deliberate control of the process rather than simply leaving it to the market, so that other factors such as disturbance to neighbours can be taken into account, and bars in particular areas asked to close at particular times. In theory, the public already controls licensing in the UK through local authorities, but, as is widely recognised, local democracy is far from healthy, and most of us experience local authorities as an anonymous ‘they’. This is a much wider problem than licensing, of course, but in fact a presumption in favour of public houses being governed by the people who drink in them might go some way to reminding us what ‘public’ actually means. A meeting in the pub, of regulars and interested local residents, would enjoy rather more legitimacy than any high-handed committee.

All this is in stark contrast to the approach currently taken by the New Labour government (and the current London mayor), even in its notorious attempt to ‘liberalise’ drinking hours. The Licensing Act 2003 was in fact promoted not as an expansion of freedom for its own sake, but as an attempt to transform Britain’s ‘drinking culture’ in the midst of a moral panic about alcoholic excess. The idea was that more relaxed pub hours would encourage Britons to adopt a ‘continental-style’ drinking culture – instead of knocking back several pints before last orders, we would linger over un demi, perhaps discussing theatre and the like. Unsurprisingly this did not happen. But for all the hysterical headlines about ’24-hour drinking’ and ‘binge-drinking Britain’, our cities did not descend into chaos either. In fact, what is perhaps surprising is that so few pubs have gone through the bureaucratic hassle required to take advantage of the change to the law: most continue to shut at 11pm, or sometimes midnight at weekends.

The reason for this is surely that a ‘drinking culture’ is not something that can be altered by government dictat; nor is it the business of government to mould the public in its own favoured image. Lots of drinkers in London and other British cities do enjoy sipping wine in pavement cafés and theatre bars, and would appreciate being able to do so without worrying about ‘chucking out time’. But if others (or those same people in a different mood) want to down a few pints between 9 and 11, and then guzzle a kebab on the way home, good for them. It is sheer snobbery to suggest traditional British drinkers, even of the youthful provincial variety, are by definition ‘antisocial’.

Rather than the government using licensing laws to shape our behaviour, any rules or regulations concerning drinking should reflect the wishes of the drinking public itself. Similarly then, it should be up to drinkers in a particular pub to decide whether to allow smoking in that pub. Or indeed children: again, it’s an attractive idea to adopt a more relaxed attitude to kids in pubs, and inculcate them into grown-up culture, but if drinkers sometimes want to escape to an adult-only environment, that’s fair enough too. Live music in pubs and other venues is another thing that's currently over-regulated, and ought to be left to the public as drinkers and music lovers.

A city is made by its people, not by bureaucratic dictat. Pubs and bars ought to be hubs of conviviality where we come together as a public rather than mere consumers to be shepherded in and out according to a set of rules inherited from the First World War. Abolishing intrusive licensing laws would not only make drinking more enjoyable, but would be a vital assertion of adulthood on the part of a public that has been patronised for too long.

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