The People's Pub:A Critical Conversation With the Communities Reclaiming and Reimagining Their Local

THE PEOPLE’S PUB: A CRITICAL CONVERSATION WITH THE COMMUNITIES RECLAIMING AND REIMAGINING THEIR LOCAL.

Joseph Ridealgh St. Edmund’s College Design Thesis

submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the M.Phil. in Architectural and Urban Design

14,967 words

This dissertation is the result of my own work and includes nothing which is the outcome of work done in collaboration except where specifically indicated in the text. All drawings and photographs shown are my own unless otherwise stated.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

With thanks to my supervisor Minna Sunikka-Blank, design tutor Conrad Koslowsky, data kindly provided by the Campaign for Real Ale and the Plunkett Foundation and the many inspiring interviewees in COPs across the country.

2B.1

INTRODUCTION

It is certainly not enough for campaigners in the village of Bamford, who have recently taken their local pub, the Anglers Rest, into community ownership. Increasingly, communities such as theirs are seizing the unique opportunity to rethink the role of the pub and reassert its place at the heart of their community.

Sitting with Phillipa and Charlie on the new cafe terrace, they discuss the pub’s recent accomplishments and the arduous 2-year campaign that got them there. Formerly under the private ownership of a PubCo2, the Anglers Rest was in a cycle of closure and reopening and was slated to be sold for conversion into housing. In response to this, and to the closure of the village post office, a group of locals campaigned to ‘wrestle (the pub) back off the property developer’3, obtaining the backing of around 300 local residents. Now under community control, with financial support and an army of shareholders, the pub has been able to completely rethink its program and spaces. As such, the Anglers Rest now hosts new facilities - a post office, cafe and community shop, and what was once the domain of a small group of ardent drinkers has been transformed into a vibrant village hub. In the late morning, where the pub would have once been closed, the cafe is busy with mums meeting for coffee and elderly locals queuing to use the post office.

‘It’s been and it continues to be a lot of hard work. But (...) I think about Bamford without it, it’s worth the effort.’ 4

1 Charlie (campaigner), The Anglers Rest, Bamford.

2 Pub Companies (PubCos) are large private companies, sometimes breweries, with a variety of pub holdings over large areas (such as Admiral Taverns, Wetherspoons etc.)

3 Charlie (campaigner).

4 Phillipa (campaigner), The Anglers Rest, Bamford.

‘A few pints and a microwaved kebab is not for everyone is it?’ 1

The rise of the community-owned pub comes at a time when England’s archetypal social space is under threat. Once, the public house formed the core of every English neighbourhood and was synonymous with English social life. At their most prevalent, Robert Sinclair tells of ‘a pub to every 110 families’ 5 in Finsbury, London. Yet a wave of closures, particularly since 2006 6, has left the future of these vital social spaces at the behest of large PubCos. The rural villages and suburban estates that were built around pubs see their community assets closed and demolished by the same private forces that originally erected them. No longer deemed a profitable endeavour, volume house builders dispense with pub building on new developments, restricting any form of ‘social infrastructure’ to their planning obligations.

A typology in the stranglehold of private development, the contemporary pub has struggled to remain relevant to the people that it serves and has become choked by cultural nostalgia, understood as a monolithic and untouchable artefact.

The English pub, however, is a typology with many faces. Its popular image belies a rich history of transformations, with both the State

and the market adapting the public house to a changing socio-political environment and affecting wider societal changes. As David Knight notes:

‘Pub types have merged, disappeared, hybridised, evolved, rebooted and generally got incredibly and delightfully confused over the centuries. What is now known as ‘the pub’ developed out of various distinct types which would not have fallen under a single banner in their time: the Alehouse, the Coaching Inn, the Tavern and the Coffee House.’ 7

Where our definition has narrowed, we must once again expand our conception of what a pub can be, and the numerous roles that it can fulfil within a community. Beyond the stereotypical ‘pub’, this paper explores this potential through the lens of the communityowned pub (COP). Over the past decade, once-rare community ownership has become increasingly widespread, with the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) estimating that there are now nearly 200 community-owned or run pubs in England 8. These projects, however, are largely under researched 9 .

This paper seeks to understand the COP on the following terms:

5 Sinclair, Metropolitan Man : The Future of the English

6 Snowdon, CLOSING TIME: Who’s Killing the British Pub?

7 Knight and Monteiro, Public House

8 CAMRA, ‘Community Owned Pubs’.

9 Sforzi and Bianchi, ‘Fostering Social Capital’.

(Ownership) Does community ownership affect the way shareholders and other pub users interact with the space, and what other ways can ownership be established?

(Amenities) What kinds of novel amenities have been introduced to the COP, and how successful are they?

(Governance) What can be learnt from the formative campaigns and the ongoing governance and labour practices of these spaces?

(Impact) How can we create new frameworks through which to assess the impact of the COP?

The objective of this research is to extract information with practical implications that can inform the design of future communityowned social spaces. Thus far socioeconomically focused, papers such as Sforzi and Bianchi (2020)10 and McCusker (2021)11 use interviews at COPs to discuss social cohesion and economic resilience, building on foundational work by Cabras (2011)12. These studies deal with 3 case studies at a time and are yet to form a strategy to understand the diversity of projects under the umbrella term community-owned pub. In lieu of substantial publication on the topic, this paper will frame community ownership through the extensive literature on the Commons, particularly

10 Sforzi and Bianchi.

utilising the seminal work of Elinor Ostrom on commons governance.

Where there are few scholarly articles, the COP has received significant coverage in the popular press13, with the primary goal of promoting community ownership to a wider audience. Likewise, there has been a notable campaign of COP awareness in the world of architecture14 but never a thorough architectural analysis. Indeed, studies are yet to include any drawn analysis of the spatial implications of community ownership. This architectural research is therefore the first of its kind.

Supported by plans and primary evidence from interviews at COPs, this thesis aims to provide a framework by which to navigate the many possible trajectories of the contemporary pub. We will see the pub act as a food bank, a radio station, a workshop and a post office, with many communities taking the provision of public services into their own hands.

Campaigners, publicans and regulars will guide us through these examples in their own words, discussing the challenges they face and the success stories that drive them forward. By understanding these experiences, we may begin to create a political and financial environment which will nurture these nascent social hubs, where the private market has fallen short.

11 Stephen McCusker, ‘Community-Owned Pubs in Great Britain’, in Walzer, Community Owned Businesses

12 Cabras, ‘Industrial and Provident Societies and Village Pubs’.

13 Jones, ‘Community Groups Call Time on the Demise of the British Pub’.

14 British Council, ‘Explore the Exhibition Room “Publicani” by The Decorators’.

METHODOLOGY

This study was undertaken as pubs re-emerged from the large-scale lockdowns due to the COVID-19 pandemic, between May and July 2021. This unique situation has brought to the fore the many valuable services that COPs are providing communities across England. I am indebted to CAMRA for compiling a database of COPs that was used to locate suitable sites of study for this research. Some of the pubs listed in their database are not actually community-owned, but visiting these pubs provided a valuable reference point to understand what community ownership can offer in this context. Fieldwork consisted of visits to 18 community (owned) pubs with interviews with founders, shareholders, publicans and regulars in 16 of these (Table A). Interviews were semi-structured but labelled as ‘informal’ and took place on site in pubs across England. A typical interview with founders and committee members discussed how and when the pub came into community ownership, the activities that take place in their pub, the buoyancy of the business, and the role of shareholders in its governance. Interspersed with personal anecdotes, interviews lasted around 40 minutes, followed by a tour of the premises. More minor interviews with staff and regulars were closer to 10 minutes in length and focused more on personal experiences and community spirit. Although some were noted live, most interviews cited (and all directly quoted) were audio recorded and all names of quoted interviewees have been changed to preserve their identities.

KEY VOICES

The Old Abbey Taphouse (Julia)

The Anglers Rest (Phillipa, Charlie)

The Bevy (Mike, Andy)

The Great Bromley Cross (Helen)

The Swan (Kate, Peter)

The Farmers Arms (Mel)

Never Say Die (Carol)

COMMONING THE PUBLIC HOUSE

01Framed through the two main actors who finance and build pubs in Britain - the Speculative Developer and the State, the aim of this chapter is to understand the sociocultural history of pub development and how it intertwines with the development of housing. It will demonstrate the social potential that pub reformation can offer, despite the industry’s dependence on commerce, and position the emerging commonly held public house as a reformation of its own.

1.1 THE PUB AS TOOL OF PRIVATE BUSINESS

In order to examine the current failure of the market to produce housing developments that consciously foster community spaces, we must first understand the central role that pubs historically played in the production of housing. Once, the pub was seen not as a developer obligation, but as an essential vehicle for housing development. At their most prolific in the mid-20th century, private pub builders, in accordance with State plans, positioned public houses as strategic social cores of inter- and post-war residential developments.15 Pub building was not an altruistic gesture, but was rather an effective tool for developers to increase the value of the housing in the newly constructed

neighbourhood. In the mid-to-late Victorian period, speculative builders would often build pubs before anything else, to seed future residential developments. This mode of pub development was described in an 1854 trade magazine:

On the pastures lately set out for building you may see a double line of trenches with excavation either side…and a tavern of imposing elevation standing alone and quite complete, waiting the approaching rows of houses.’ (…) ‘At a distance of 200 paces in every direction they glitter in sham splendour…. the object of erecting them is to obtain a larger sum than the builder can acquire for any other species of property.16

These highly profitable pubs temporarily acted as a ‘combined site office and canteen’ 17 for construction workers whilst the surrounding housing was built. Developers cared little for the pub on social grounds, and often closed pubs if profit could be made by other means. This profit-first mentality continues as contemporary property developers close and redevelop unprofitable pubs in the pursuit of the ‘highest and best use’ 18 for sites. Generously proportioned inter- and post-war public houses are thus considered prime real estate for conversion into flats or

15 Whitney, ‘“Never Drink in a Flat-Roofed Pub”: How the Old Joke Became a Reality’. 16 Girouard, Victorian Pubs

17 Girouard.

18 popular term in real estate appraisal referring to the idea of maximum productivity

supermarkets, by what Tom Lamont terms the ‘Grim Reaper(s) of pubs’ 19. Many COPs have emerged as a consequence of this practice, with communities frantically attempting to resist imminent redevelopment by listing their pubs as an ‘Asset of Community Value’20

1.2 THE PUB AS STATE-OWNED INSTRUMENT

Whilst the rising tide of community ownership may seem to be the first step away from a sector dominated by private development, it is not the first time a change of ownership has led to a complete rethinking of the pub. The interwar experiment of pub nationalisation illustrates the wide reaching and radical social consequences of pub reform.

In 1918, in tandem with the construction of two temporary ‘wooden township’21 (Figure 1), developments to house 12,000 new munitions factory workers, all of the pubs in Carlisle and the surrounding area were nationalised. Dubbed the ‘Carlisle Experiment’, what began as an intervention to control unruly drinking around these factories became a more extensive Progressive campaign to transform England’s social spaces. The project, initially driven by the Temperance movement 22, set about reforming the public house from the Victorian ‘gin palaces’ that glamourised drinking towards a more inclusive and proper venue of leisure. This model was later copied by breweries across the country, creating extensive (and profitable) social infrastructure. In parallel, Raymond Unwin (of the Garden City movement) was replacing the temporary townships with new kinds of permanent and generous workers housing

which ‘were seen as potential prototypes for any future state housing.23 Thus, the Carlisle experiment became an experiment in State provision of both housing and social space.

Under the State Management Scheme, pubs experienced substantial spatial reformation into ‘Improved pubs’ and ‘New Model Inns’24 (Figure 2). Such improvements included the removal of snugs and back alley entrances to create an open plan, surveyable, public bar. The introduction of more sober ‘counterattractions’ such as cafes, games rooms, dance halls and bowling greens aimed to introduce a new clientele to the pub who previously found it to be too intimidating or disreputable 25. The first of these ‘New Model Inns’ was Gracie’s Banking in Annan (Figure 3), a new timber pub built to host the influx of Gretna munitions workers. In addition to its beer hall and restaurant, Gracie’s Banking featured a cinema, a bowling green, putting greens and a quoits pitch.26

These extensive amenity offerings meant that pubs and their gardens were open and busy all through the day, inviting women, children and the middle classes27 to claim their piece of the pub.

The physical alterations of the State Management Scheme fundamentally changed how the space was used and by who. This detachment from a previously commercialised world not only resulted in spatial reconfigurations, but also saw the large advertisements and elaborate light-up facades of brewery-owned establishments made austere (Figure 4, 5). This prompted one Times journalist’s claim that ‘if architecture

19 Lamont, ‘The Death and Life of the Great British Pub’.

20 listing a building as an ACV triggers a moratorium period that gives communities 6 months to find the funds to buy the premis es before the developer.

21 Swenarton, Homes Fit for Heroes

22 a social movement against the consumption of alcoholic beverages.

23 Swenarton, Homes Fit for Heroes

24 Cole, ‘The Urban and Suburban Public House in Inter-War England, 1918-1939’.

25 Gutzke, Pubs and Progressives

26 Oliver, The Renaissance of the English Public House.

27 Gutzke, Pubs and Progressives

A B C D E F G H

H

BCD

Picture house Restaurant Beerhall Billiards Room Kitchen

Figure 3 Plan of Gracie’s Banking, Annan.

E F G 1 2 5 10 metres

A

can lift the public house out of debased associations it is done here’. 28

Although these changes were welcomed by the majority, there was vocal resistance to the changes from pub-goers who believed the State had overstepped in exerting its will over previously private social space. Indeed, the State’s presence in this realm of society could be seen as what Foucault might call ‘biopolitical control’29, with new measures such as a reduction in alcohol percentage and a new ‘disinterested management’ style to discourage drunkenness.

1.3 THE COMMONLY OWNED PUB

Community ownership seeks an alternative to the pub as a privately-owned public space and uses organisational structures such as Community Benefit Societies (CBS), Community Interest Companies (CIC) and Cooperatives to give rights to large numbers of local shareholders. These models put the local community in varying degrees of control of their common social space whilst securing the pub against closure and redevelopment. As the body of work on COPs is narrow, we may look to literature on the commons to explore the new opportunities that arise in this place between public and private ownership. In doing so, we may begin to advance our understanding of their potential as new social institutions. As such, we define commons here as a resource or land that is owned, managed and used collectively by a defined community.

Modern Commons theorists understand property as a ‘bundle of rights’30, rather than a monolith. Through this lens, the individual has a collection of rights to a space (such as right of access, right to light, the right to graze cattle etc.). This perception allows Commons theorists to reconsider who has the right to do what in order to develop new ways of allowing communities to use spaces and resources together. It builds on a rich history of common land in England that predates inclosures31 .

As Ostrom explains32, sharing common resources necessitates the creation of ‘commons institutions’ i.e. structures of self-governance to ensure that community members have equal decision-making powers. This framing can illuminate the potential of community-owned spaces, and aid in diagnosing the problems that arise when they are exclusively understood as a business.

Bezdek notes this necessity when framing the Community Land Trust (CLT) as a commons33 . While community ownership (through CLTs) plots onto Ostrom’s commons institutions framework, Bezdek asserts that ‘not all CLTs function as commons institutions’34 , because some function to preserve and deliver housing without the community selfgovernance that would make it a commons. The most successful propositions outlined in this paper approach the true definition of a commons. Such COPs will both establish collective ownership and negotiate systems of governance and labour practices.

28 Times (London), 8 August 1917.

29 Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics

30 Fennell, ‘Ostrom’s Law’.

31 The Inclosures Act marked the end of the open-fields system of common access to agricultural land in England.

32 Ostrom, ‘Neither Market Nor State: Governance of Common-Pool Resources in the Twenty-First Century’.

33 Barbara L. Bezdek, ‘To Have and To Hold? Community Land Trust as Commons’, in Foster and Swiney, The Cambridge Handbook of Commons Research Innovations. 34 Bezdek.

Figure 1 Gretna ‘wooden’ Township (Sarah Harper).

Figure 2 Studies of various types of New Model Inns.

Figure 4 The Golden Lion pre-reformation (Cumbria Image Bank).

Figure 5 The Golden Lion post-reformation (Cumbria Image Bank).

CATEGORIES

Based both on architectural analysis and primary interviews, this chapter categorises the numerous typologies hidden within the umbrella term ‘community-owned pub’. Three new categories of space are introduced to replace this general term – the Pub in Name Only (PINO), the Pub Integrating Public Services (PIPS) and the Pub Operating Mutual Aid (POMA). These categories should not be considered finite, but rather mark points on a sliding scale of what a COP can be. At one end, COPs are indistinguishable from a traditional pub, while at the other they absorb otherwise underfunded or shuttered public services (Figure 6). These categories will also explore the multiple socioeconomic demographics that exist within each group and the strategies they employ to create bespoke systems of support.

PINO

PIPS

Figure 6

The sliding scale of categories: PINO, PIPS and POMA.

PUB IN NAME ONLY (PINO)

02a

2A.1 PUB ESSENTIALS

Despite the significant number of new COPs forming, the majority of these spaces follow the conventions of a traditional pub. Primarily concerned with the survival and protection of existing pubs as public goods, I have called this foundational pub category the PINO, or the Pub in Name Only.

Whilst some PINOs have a strong community focus, others that I visited are highly public and indistinguishable from larger high street pubs. This is particularly the case for those in urban centres with high footfall. These PINOs such as the Gardeners Rest in Sheffield (Figure 7) and the Golden Ball in York (Figure 8) are community-owned on paper but cannot clearly be said to serve a specific local community. In these cases, community ownership is often a practical device to secure the pub against developer buyout, closure, and demolition, where many PubCo owned establishments have recently been systematically targeted by developers35 .

Aside from the above examples, most PINOs do distinguish themselves as a community pub, and the patrons I interviewed are quick to use the word ‘community’ in our

conversations. The scale of these spaces is certainly more domestic than the average high street Wetherspoons, and regulars who know their landlord well can draw a clear distinction between the friendliness of their PINO and the completely sanitised consumervendor relationship that exists in PubCos. This interpersonal relationship enabled by the pub’s very typology is what characterises the most successful PINOs.

2A.2 SPACE FOR SOCIALISATION

In ‘Friends on Tap’, Robin Dunbar explores the pub’s important role in reducing social isolation. He found ‘people who go to small community pubs have more close friends and feel that their communities are better integrated, than people who habitually patronise large city-centre pubs and bars.’ 36 This integration is easily confirmed by the friendly interactions of regulars at the Old Crown (in the rural village of Hesket Newmarket) but this intimate community atmosphere has also been successfully cultivated in urban areas. One such atmosphere can be found within the Tommy Flowers Pub, on a soon-to-be-demolished housing estate in a quiet area of Canning Town, London:

35 Lamont, ‘The Death and Life of the Great British Pub’. 36 Dunbar, ‘Friends on Tap’.

Field Notes: Tommy Flowers

The Tommy Flowers isn’t community-owned, or community-run, but it is certainly a community pub. The pub was retrofitted into an old flower shop on a high street in Canning Town, in an area dominated by new high-end housing developments. Slated for demolition itself, It was built to replace the former Aberfeldy Village estate pub that was torn down earlier on in the development. The pub forms part of a high street that was spray painted in bright patterns as part of a regeneration project (Figure 9) by Jan Kattein Architects. Regulars expressed disdain at the consultation process for this ‘urban renewal’ in which residents were asked to submit a fabric pattern to inform the street’s new paint job (Figure 10). Wise to the gentrification across the city, locals saw this project as a tokenistic representation of local culture that heralded their inevitable eviction.

In the face of imminent dispersal, there is an atmosphere of resistance. The landlord tells me he refused the vibrant paint job, they like the colour of their pub. The landlord is charismatic and familiar with every local that comes in that afternoon. As I interview him in the middle of the small pub, he guarantees that we will be interrupted on several occasions, and we are. We end up sitting as a group of 6 as the regulars discuss their common enemy – the developers, and the community feel the pub has provided for them, giving one regular a reason to not be at home watching TV. It is clear that the charm of the landlord and the small scale of the pub are what gives the Tommy Flowers a ‘community feel’. The landlord has been offered tenancy of a pub on the new masterplan but claims it will be too big to manage and will serve a completely different group of people as the current regulars are inevitably rehoused further away.

As it is not community-owned, the Tommy Flowers is a good example of how psychological ownership can manifest through repeat visits and familiarity, rather than through financial shareholding. As Peck describes, ‘Intimate knowledge of a target is built up by repeated positive experiences in and with a place or target, in what Pierce, Kostova, and Dirks (2003) refer to as a “living relationship.”37 This living relationship between regular and pub can often lead to stewardship on the part of the regular (Figure 11), which is fundamental if we aim to make the COP a place where individual agency and care of common spaces can flourish. Although community ownership would have been of great benefit to the Tommy Flowers to give the pub permanency, it helps us better understand

the spatial and interpersonal dynamics that help a pub ‘feel’ communal.

The success of the PINO is thus largely defined by the personality of the landlord and their relationship with the regulars and new faces. This is certainly the case in the Old Crown, where Jim recalls new customers being invited into a room-wide dialogue across the bar with other regulars38. The charismatic landlord plays a key role in this: they ensure security, familiarity, mutual respect and hospitality. Pubs of a smaller scale, closer to that of a domestic living room (Figure 12), tend to encourage conversations amongst individuals who have arrived alone. There is a unique dynamic in these spaces which allows patrons to sit on individual tables around the perimeter, but speak across the room together,

37 Peck et al., ‘Caring for the Commons’. 38 Jim (campaigner), The Old Crown, Hesket Newmarket.

Figure 13 Plan of Tommy Flowers, Canning Town.

Figure 14 Partial Plan of the Old Crown, Hesket Newmarket.

Figure 15 Partial Plan of the Ampleforth, Oxford.

with the bar as a central element. Regulars, confident in their ownership over the space, sometimes take on the role of host, inviting visitors into conversation. This is particularly enabled through the spatial configuration of the main bar room, which can be observed through comparative plans (Figure 13-15).

2A.3 RESISTING GENTRIFICATION

The Tommy Flowers is not the only PINO at the frontline of enclosing gentrification. Similarly catered to a predominantly white working-class community, the Star Inn is one of the last traditional pubs in Salford39 , protected only by its community-owned status. One regular resented the fact that he could no longer afford to live within walking distance of the pub, but nevertheless still gets a taxi over to his ‘local’40. This kind of sentimentality can often be channelled towards campaigns to list and preserve historic PINOs, although these efforts often tend towards the conservative. The White House, for example, was able to leverage their reputation as a former Churchillian drinking spot to receive large amounts of financial backing by Blenheim Palace41 . However, pubs such as the Bevy that bear reputations of antisocial behaviour, are actively dissuaded from reopening by

local police 42. These pubs with the ‘wrong’ reputation (usually in working-class neighbourhoods) are thus at far greater risk of gentrification.

In examining the pub as an instrument of resistance to gentrification, it is crucial to understand the demographics which have appropriated such spaces. Although the pub has developed a reputation for hosting predominantly white communities, texts on London’s queer pubs’ 43 assert the pub’s place in history as a social space for marginalised queer communities. Equally facing encroaching gentrification, in many cases ‘queer pubs are indistinguishable from their heterosexual counterparts,’ 44 as they inhabit the same post-war vernacular. The uniform aesthetic of the pub’s facade and structure have historically shelter diverse groups of users. In the same way, pubs such as the Atlantic in Brixton (Figure 16) were claimed as Black spaces but remain in fairly innocuous shells 45. In the case of the Joiners Arms in east London, the traditional pub environment actually led to coalitions forming ‘between the workingclass community of the East End and the local queer community’ 46. This reinforces Dunbar’s assertion that the pub allows people to ‘meet a wider range of community

39 Harrison, ‘Last Orders - The Rise and Fall of the Salford Pubs’.

40 Andy (regular), The Star Inn, Salford.

41 Richard (campaigner), The White House, Bladon.

42 Mike (founder), The Bevy, Brighton.

43 Samuel Douek, ‘The Eradication of London’s Democratic Queer Pubs’, in Brown et al., A Gendered Profession 44 Douek.

45 Eric McAlpine, ‘What’s Wrong with Brixton?’, Flamingo, February 1964, 13-15. 46 Douek.

members’ and encourages informal dialogues and friendships across ‘a greater diversity of social classes and cultures’47. For Julia, one of the founding campaigners of the Old Abbey Taphouse, Manchester, the pub was the last remnant of a housing estate that had once occupied the site and a place that bound a diverse community together: [Julia] we’re losing our traditional spaces; community hubs and community halls and we’re building more and more flats with more and more people on top of each other without anywhere for them to meet or connect with each other. The kind of ritual celebrations we used to have as communities that brought people together. And so that’s what we want to do with the pub is how can we make non-secular ritual moments that can bring the community together and help celebrate and create these organic connections.48

The pub in this case is not only a representative fragment of the previous century but exists to ensure the continuation of the social life of a longstanding community. It is painfully aware of its position in relation to the gentrification of the city. The housing estate has been gradually replaced with several university buildings and Julia was frustrated to see no place for the local community in the university’s vision for the future neighbourhood:

[Julia] when they put up the plans it had no one from the community in it, it was all young international students on Macbooks and no one from the community was involved. So the way I see the pub is a beacon of heritage that happened here, the last remaining building and with custodians of the buildings to keep it on for the future to pass it on to the next people.49

The Old Abbey Taphouse utilises its heritage as a means of protecting the pub from closure, but in doing so does not limit its offering (as we will see later).

2A.4 LIMITS OF NOSTALGIA

With a tendency towards nostalgic conservatism, some PINO regulars have a very fixed, no-frills idea of what a pub should be, that ignores the reality of a typology subject to constant reinvention over its history. Many older men, for example, enjoy the existing pub culture as it already caters well to their needs. One shareholder 50 proudly asserted that the COP isn’t anything other than a pub, rejecting the suggestion that it could contain other functions. This echoes the concern of some interwar pub-goers that the former crop of male drinkers ‘had no place physically or psychologically in improved pubs’ 51. It is unsurprising then that some pub regulars are

47 Dunbar, ‘Friends on Tap’.

48 Julia (campaigner), Old Abbey Taphouse, Manchester.

49 Julia (campaigner).

50 Kevin (regular), The Old Crown, Hesket Newmarket.

51 Gutzke, Pubs and Progressives

highly resistant to change. This is evident in the experience of campaigners attempting to introduce new amenities to the Anglers Rest, Bamford:

[Charlie]

It stop started a few times. (…) because (a new tenant publican) would come in and try and make a go of it. And then of course, the sort of local politics is very much “stop what you’re doing”. You know, “give them a chance” kind of thing. “But we don’t support you because you’re trying to buy the pub”. There is quite a lot of negativity about it. (…) I’m surprised you haven’t heard this in other projects. But yeah, you get massive local negative: “ the pubs fine, it will all be fine. We like our building set up how it is thank you, don’t need to change anything”. But actually, it’s just certain viewpoints and a few pints and a microwaved kebab is not for everyone is it.

[Phillipa]

I think that’s the thing. I think there was negativity. And that was probably very vocal. But actually not. I mean, we ended up we’ve

got about 300 shareholders I think now. So, you know, there’s a good chunk of people that think this is a really good project, but at the start, there was definitely a sort of vocal minority that wanted to keep it as it was. But as it was, was not viable. You know, it wouldn’t be around if it stayed like that.52

The resistance to the project reached such a temperature that the campaigners were barred from the pub whilst it was being temporarily run by a tenant of the PubCo Admiral Taverns. The nostalgia of the regulars prevented the creation of a more accessible space, in a rural area which would have benefitted from an establishment that was more than a PINO.

We thus understand the PINO as the archetypal community pub (setting a standard by which to compare those spaces that go further), one which provides a baseline of ‘pub essentials’ that foster a sense of community within a publicly accessible space.

52 Charlie (campaigner), The Anglers Rest, Bamford.

Figure 7 Outdoor seating in the Gardeners Rest, Sheffield (Will Roberts)

Figure 8 Main bar in the Golden Ball, York (York Press).

Figure 12 Bar area of the Old Crown, Hesket Newmarket.

Figure 9 The high street where the Tommy Flowers is located. (Jan Kattein)

Figure 10 Fabric pattern used to inspire mural adjacent to Tommy Flowers. (Jan Kattein)

Figure 11 Regular at the Star Inn watering flowers.

Figure 16 The predominantly Black pub the Atlantic, Brixton 1964 (Eric McAlpine).

PUB INCORPORATING PUBLIC SERVICES (PIPS)

02b

2B.1 MORE THAN A PUB

The next category of pub seeks to embed community amenities and public services within the building, creating new public and common goods. What the Plunkett Foundation might call ‘More than a Pub’ 53 I have called PIPS; Pubs Incorporating Public Services. These spaces provide access to amenities and services that would not otherwise be available in the neighbourhood or contained within a traditional pub. Whilst the COP is a relatively new model, it has already resulted in a range of novel pairings of amenities with the pub. In each case the offering responds dynamically to the needs of a specific locality, with services being added and removed in due course.

For David Knight, ‘this balance of change and continuity is fundamental to the pub’s appeal, continuing today as pubs rework their offer, buildings and landscapes in response to the pandemic.’ 54 In a rural context, we see PIPS integrating lost village services, becoming a concentration of the public utility of the high street. This utility can include post offices, grocery shops and cafes that not only provide

vital amenities, but also encourage human interactions. In urban areas, these PIPS provide access to amenities that otherwise carry barriers to entry and establishing a range of community-led cultural initiatives. The capability of COPs to privilege the production of spaces based on social utility over economic profitability allows them to play host to a variety of vital functions which could not take root in a PubCo establishment.

2B.2 A MULTIFUNCTIONAL SPACE

At the Bevy, Brighton, on a suburban housing estate above the city, Mike explained how this prioritisation of social utility can create a more economically resilient business, particularly for pubs outside urban centres:

[Mike]

To survive, you need to be multifunctional. I said, you could be a pub in the middle of Brighton and just sell beer because it’s a tourist town. The further out you get in the sticks, you’ve got to have lots of different offers.55

53 Plunkett Foundation, ‘More than a Pub’. 54 Knight and Monteiro, Public House. 55 Mike (founder), The Bevy, Brighton.

The Anglers Rest in Bamford, a rural village in the Peak District, experienced this first-hand. The pub buyout was resisted by locals until saving the nearby post office became part of the offer. One of the campaigners described how the large floorplan (of the 1869 building) could accommodate a number of services that had recently closed in the village:

[Phillipa]

So the building was originally just all pub. And when you look at it inside, you’ll see that it’s, it’s massive, really, it’s not necessary. A village of this size can’t sustain an enormous pub. So we sectioned it off and kept the pub at that end of the building, and then tried to create quite a different kind of vibe which is more kind of daytime cafe and the post office, little shop and knickknacks and things as well for sale like tourists, touristy things. And just tried to kind of make it quite different.56

The campaigners tried to aesthetically distance the new amenities from the existing, traditional pub, in order to welcome villagers who had otherwise felt ostracised. The revered patterned carpets and turned timber ornament which are synonymous with the inter-war ‘improved pubs’ may instil

56 Phillipa (campaigner), The Anglers Rest, Bamford. 57 Phillipa (campaigner).

familiarity and comfort in some, (indeed they can be useful to marginalised communities as we saw earlier) but can equally reinforce images of an exclusionary space for others. In smaller settlements such as Bamford, it is critical that the needs of the entire community are considered over a minority of pub traditionalists. She continues:

[Phillipa]

So, you know, we’re very conscious that we have to appeal to the whole community. And people that will not go in the pub will sit and have a coffee in the cafe and vice versa. People that go in the pub maybe won’t particularly use the cafe or the post office. So, we try to appeal to as many groups as we can, by kind of making the different parts of the building feel like different spaces.57

Figure 17 shows the linear building with a pub section to the left (17E) completely separate from the post office (17D), café (17B) and shop (17C) to the right. Not only a means of integrating new social groups, the PIPS can also legitimise the economic viability of an oversized pub, where empty rooms and low profits are often leveraged by developers to force buyouts.

Figure 17 Plan of Anglers Rest, Bamford.

Without such creative reuse, the generous scale of historic pubs is often weaponised against communities. In my tour around the Farmers Arms in Lowick Green, the enormous ballroom on the first floor had remained empty for many years before being converted into hotel rooms. This is also the case in many enlarged pubs built under the State Management Scheme, where bowling greens, skittle alleys, ballrooms and picture houses become empty as the recreational needs of the public change and are therefore targets for private redevelopment. This is exacerbated in rural settlements with smaller populations, who see their assembly halls close where similar spaces become music venues in urban contexts.

2B.3 TEMPORARY SERVICES

Where there is demand for space, PIPS like the Anglers Rest can make the most of inheriting large buildings that can freely accommodate a variety of new amenities, but it is also possible to position these new services within a smaller shell. In the Great Bromley Cross Pub, Essex (Figure 18), Wednesday mornings see the pub transformed into a café, with a mobile library (18B) and post office (18C) set up temporarily on the tables already in the pub. When I visited at around 11am, the PIPS was full of elderly patrons who come every week for the coffee morning (Figure 19), many travelling from nearby villages for the occasion. This adaptability is an essential factor in keeping the pub light on its feet, for if the needs of the community were to change significantly, the pub would not be left with unusable space. I spoke to the clerk for the mobile post office

(Figure 20) about the service she provides at the Great Bromley Cross and in other rural settlements in Essex:

[Helen]

So, they put me up in small communities, small villages where their post offices have been shut down. We get sent in once or twice or three times a week, however much they want us really to come in and provide them with post office services, which really, really helps. Especially elderly people who don’t drive and they don’t feel comfortable getting on the bus and going into town and doing that sort of thing. So, it’s really really good for the community.58

The clerk explained that for many of her customers, the services themselves are not the primary attraction, but rather the conversation with a familiar face. For rural retirees who spend a lot of their time at home, these friendly interactions are essential moments which reduce social isolation. The coffee morning offers a more sedate, slow paced setting for elderly customers to socialise where they would otherwise be intimidated by rowdy drinking culture. My interview with committee members of the Swan, Clewer in a suburb outside Windsor, similarly reflected on the importance of these places of exchange to the elderly. Kate spoke about the impact of the closure of local garden centres, explaining that:

[Kate]

they have cafes in them, and they were real centres for older people to go and (…) the community was really upset about the garden centres going.59

58 Helen (post office clerk), The Great Bromley Cross, Essex. 59 Kate (committee member), The Swan, Clewer.

The Swan try to recreate these interactions through hosting coffee mornings and plant sales in the pub, fulfilling the role of a popup garden centre. The Bevy also pointed to plant sales as a way of reintroducing older community members to socialising. At these events they sell plants and vegetables grown on the allotment (Figure 21) in their pub grounds: [Mike] the plant sale was amazing because everyone come down and we make quite a lot of money from selling plants. But loads of them come out the woodwork it was fucking carnage in here at four o’clock. People just like they’ll go ‘It’s the first time I’ve been out in a year.’ It’s just they needed that; a lot of people are really nervous, they needed that. You know, everyone’s been second jabbed. They needed the excuse to come out.60

In the context of the pandemic, the high street pub has been treated with caution by vulnerable people who were told to shield from social interaction by the government. Not only relevant in emerging from Covid-19, introducing more diverse daytime functions to the pub through temporary and permanent services provides a safer, more comfortable space for socially isolated people to reintegrate with their community. Services such as cafes, post offices, markets and shops have historically sat at the core of rural communities. Reintroducing these social spaces within the PIPS allows the continuation of these functions, consolidating the amenities of a high street or market square under one roof. 60 Mike (founder), The Bevy, Brighton.

2B.4 CULTURAL CENTRES

Perhaps more familiar in the pub context are PIPS that incorporate a music venue or art space. Whilst many traditional pubs house stages and music venues, they present new opportunities under community ownership. PIPS such as the Ivy House in Nunhead and the Bell Inn in Bath are more akin to DIY venues and have the autonomy to platform local musicians and artists. This sees the community not only setting the terms of their social lives but also becoming active participants in the creation of a local cultural heritage. This is particularly evident in the Old Abbey Taphouse (Figure 22), where a community radio station ‘STEAM Radio’ (Figure 23, 24) operates alongside their live music venue, with a regular ‘Amateur Hour’ on a Friday night. The station (22D) sits alongside a recording studio (22E), a coworking space (22F) and a meeting room (22G) (Figure 25) on the 1st floor. Venues such as these play a particularly important role in bringing access to creative pursuits outside urban cultural centres.

The pub as a cultural venue demands the inclusion of larger community gathering spaces. Where this is principally external in the Old Abbey Taphouse, pubs that were built in the 1930’s reformations, such as the Ivy House (Figure 26), introduce these spaces in the form of dance halls, ballrooms and assembly rooms. These spaces not only challenged the spatial requirements of the pub, but also aspects of atmosphere and cosiness that came with Victorian snugs and booths. For the most part, the venue (26C) in the Ivy House becomes part of the main pub, with tables and chairs stacked away for

A B C D E

B E C

Pub/Cafe (temp) Library (temp) Post Office (temp) Kitchen Outdoor Seating

A B C D E F G

AB C

Pub Kitchen Outdoor Seating Radio Station Recording Studio Coworking Space Meeting Room

AD 1 2 5 10 metres

D EF G

Plan of Ivy House, Nunhead.

events when required. Having a large hall-like space (Figure 27) also allows other community activities to take place that would otherwise require a village hall. For example, Hugo tells me that once a week there is an after-school drama lesson in the pub61. The Ivy House in this case forms an informal after-school club, with parents collecting their children after work and stopping in for a drink.

2B.5 NOVEL AMENITIES

In many cases, PIPS have introduced brand new amenities which challenge the contemporary conception of rural communities. In addition to a café, accommodation and an honest shop (Figure 28), the Farmers Arms, Lowick Green in the rural Lake District integrates a completely new function into the pub – the workshop. The plan of the Farmers Arms (Figure 29) shows these new functions retrofitted into a 17th century shell. The complex plan of the existing pub means that each amenity is kept slightly uncomfortably apart, with multiple entrances and some rooms only connected by small windows or narrow corridors (29A-D). The pub’s thick stone walls also mean that they would be difficult to adapt in the future.

On my visit to the Farmers Arms, in the weeks leading up to the pub opening, the workshop was one of the few spaces that had already been functioning for a while. It is both a working timber workshop and a pottery studio and opens to the public to host paid specialist workshops (such as dry-stone walling). Ben the workshop manager makes furniture and

pottery to be used in the pub. He showed me a shelf stacked with receptacles to be used in the main pub (Figure 30):

[Ben]

These will be like in the bar for serving. And there’s tankards, half-pints and pints amongst various other things that we’ll be using around the pub. (…) I want to make the beer pulls but I’m slightly puzzled as to how I’m gonna do that. (…) maybe ceramic? Or maybe wood just rethink it. Like why is it that shape? Because it’s traditional. But why is it traditional? why does it work like that? 62

Having a workshop inside the Farmers Arms invites Ben to adopt a ‘critical nostalgia for contemporary Inn craft’ 63, constantly rethinking and redesigning elements of the pub. It is not yet clear whether the workshop will be open and free for the community to use, but the popularity of other open workshops such as Men in Sheds 64 suggests it would be well-used. The informal setting of the pub invites a wider demographic into the workshop, shifting away from a traditionally male space where new users may otherwise feel intimidated. In this way, the COP is uniquely positioned to act as a ‘front door’ for the public to access common facilities that lie within. The pub becomes the spatialisation of the threshold between community and outsider that Agamben calls ‘the exteriority that gives it access’65

If we briefly return to our view of the pub-ascommons, we must understand the practical limitations of opening these additional

61 Hugo (committee member), The Ivy House, Nunhead.

62 Ben (workshop manager), The Farmers Arms, Lowick Green.

63 Neal Shasore, ‘The Earl Beatty’, in Knight and Monteiro, Public House 64 a network of 586 community maker spaces, set up to reduce social isolation in men. 65 Agamben, The Coming Community

common services to the public. Elinor Ostrom sees the clear formation of a boundary as the only way to successfully manage a commons. She writes that ‘without defining the boundaries (…) and closing it to “outsiders,” local appropriators face the risk that any benefits they produce by their efforts will be reaped by others who do not contribute to these efforts.’66

This is why the physical space of the public house as a mediation device between the public and the community is important. If all the common services were like Hardin’s open-access commons67, they would become impossible for the pub to manage. But if the COP is to become this ‘front door’, we must understand how its very nature as a space predicated on social drinking is limiting access to the pub and its amenities.

2B.6 OPENING TO OUTSIDERS

An understanding of the ‘public’ house’s limited appeal was one of the driving forces in the creation of intergenerational ‘sober counterattractions’ in the State-designed New Model Inns. The issue is being addressed by the Old Abbey Taphouse, who were considering new ways to engage with nondrinkers in the local Muslim community:

[Julia]

So we were going for this second space, which we didn’t get and that was going to be non-drinking and was all gonna be about sustainability and food. And that is one of the issues with here is we don’t, it’s not disabled accessible. And because we’re selling alcohol, sometimes we can’t engage with certain groups. But we have worked around that so last year, when they did ‘eat out to help out’ we realised that loads of families couldn’t afford to go out. And we were offered some money by One Manchester to do packed lunches for families and holidays. And all the families we spoke to didn’t want packed lunches, they’d just had enough of being in the house with their families. So instead we shut the pub and we did a kind of kids party every night every Tuesday on holidays and we had a pirate entertainer, we had table tennis and it was like a normal night people got served and everything they just didn’t have to worry about the bill and that was really popular we got loads of people who would never come to the pub coming down. There are ways around it and even our friends at the mosque they you know they don’t have a problem with us being a pub, it’s just the way it happens.68

Consciously introducing new social groups to the public house forges pathways for a more democratic kind of social space to emerge. If we can give a diversity of voices a stake in their local pub, we may begin to tailor their amenities to accommodate the needs of more marginalised members of communities.

66 Ostrom, ‘Neither Market Nor State: Governance of Common-Pool Resources in the Twenty-First Century’.

67 Hardin, ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’.

68 Julia (campaigner), Old Abbey Taphouse, Manchester.

Workshop

Shop Pub Cafe

Room Kitchen Outdoor SeatingFigure 29 Plan of Farmers Arms, Lowick Green.

Figure 19 The Great Bromley Cross, Essex running as a cafe.

Figure 20 Temporary post office set up in the Great Bromley Cross.

Figure 21 Greenhouse and allotments at the Bevy, Brighton.

Figure 28 The Honest Shop in the Farmers Arms, Lowick Green.

Figure 23 Mixing lessons in the Old Abbey Taphouse radio station (Old Abbey Taphouse).

Figure 24 Rap collective one6wave broadcasting from the radio station at the Old Abbey Taphouse (one6wave).

Figure 25 Meeting room in the Old Abbey Taphouse, Manchester.

Figure 27 The stage at the Ivy House, Nunhead.

Figure 30 Shelf of pottery at the Farmers Arms.

19

PUB OPERATING MUTUAL AID (POMA)

2C.1 ‘MUTUAL AID’ IN THE PUB

Where PIPS integrate once autonomous and highly spatialised paid amenities (e.g. post office, shop, café), some COPs provide a base of operation for intangible social infrastructures. This is an additional invisible layer, a ‘social commons’ 69 that is often imperceivable at first glance. We see examples of POMA acting as social centres that offer provision of food, clothes and furniture, pastoral care, security, surveillance and social work. The pub is uniquely positioned in a secular society to spatialise these social functions that would otherwise be within the remit of churches, community centres, charities and the social care sector. In some places, the COP becomes a burgeoning institution of mutual aid, where communities take charge of their own social commons. Therefore, I have called this type the POMA: the Pub Operating Mutual Aid.

The term ‘mutual aid’ was popularised by the anarchist theorist Peter Kropotkin to refer to a system of reciprocal aid and cooperation within a community group, a phenomenon

which he claims has existed throughout human history 70. In a contemporary context, mutual aid often emerges out of necessity, not choice, where normal charitable and State aid is failing to provide adequate support. This has resulted in more than 4,000 mutual aid groups71 emerging in the UK since the start of the pandemic to fill the substantial gap in the State provision of food and social care. Whilst the circumstances under which they arise are unfortunate, these numerous mutual aid groups confirm the ‘widely-spread movement’ of institutions of co-support that Kropotkin claims have always existed under the surface ‘in all classes of society’.72

The autonomy that community ownership permits allows highly localised and immediate responses to community needs. In this way, the POMA can quickly pivot to deliver social services where State provision cannot. A particularly good example of this is the Never Say Die in Jaywick Sands, Essex (Figure 31). I met with the landlady Carol, and Bev who are both members of the committee for the Jaywick Sands Revival CIC that runs the pub.

69 An emerging idea in commons, applying ideas of common ownership to social resources such as the care sector.

70 Kropotkin, Mutual Aid a Factor in Evolution

71 Forrest, ‘Help The Hungry: More than 4,000 “Mutual Aid” Groups Set up across UK to Help Struggling Neighbours Get Food’.

72 Kropotkin, Mutual Aid a Factor in Evolution

Field Notes: Never Say Die

The Never Say Die is on the high street of Jaywick Sands, a seaside town of Essex whose neglect has resulted in it being one of the most deprived areas in the UK. Jaywick has suffered recently from bad press, most notably with images of its streets used in smear campaigns by the Republican Party. The Jaywick Revival CIC are currently renting the pub from a PubCo, paying about 3 grand rent a month, but the Plunkett Foundation are keen advocates for the project and have brought in a negotiator to assist a community buy out. Because the pub is not yet in community ownership, State support of the project was essential, and the council helped the CIC to pay rent over the pandemic. Carol is upbeat and driven to transform Jaywick into a more desirable place to live, she has also recently been elected as a local councillor. The pub, like others in working class neighbourhoods, was previously closed with a reputation for antisocial behaviour. The landlord has ensured since it’s opening that she sets the standard for customer behaviour and gladly compared herself to EastEnders’ Peggy Mitchell; not afraid to threaten ‘Get out my pub!’. This sets a tone of respect in the pub and local regulars have taken to calling her Nana.

Whilst the front room of the pub is a traditional boozer (31A), the back room is a dedicated ‘hub’ (31B) that accommodates the mess of a food, furniture and clothes bank (Figure 32, 33) as well as an office area (31C) where the landlord helps locals applying for benefits and fill out paperwork. The food bank depends on external fundraising (some by Carol’s daughter) although they did receive some grants from the COVID support fund. During COVID the pub delivered food parcels (Figure 34) and one of their grandsons was enlisted to deliver parcels locally on a mobility scooter. The CIC are also building a community pot to be used by anyone in the area to fund essential personal repairs that they cannot afford, examples of this were house repairs, wheelchair wheel replacement and prams. The pub’s success means they have been approached by the council to start running a café and a post office on the high street, although Carol thinks it’s a lot to take on.

2C.2 FEEDING THE COMMUNITY

While the services of the Never Say Die align with many elements of the mutual aid philosophy, reverting to the longstanding charitable models of food and clothes banks can undermine the reciprocal nature of mutual aid. This can be seen in other mutual aid groups founded during the pandemic that have not existed for long enough to see members both giving and taking from a common resource. This is where the ongoing ‘living relationship’ between community members and the pub becomes important. The pub here acts as a trust mechanism and offers a way for the members receiving aid to return the favour to the community in the future. In

separating the food bank and pub, however, the Never Say Die misses the opportunity to deliver dignified free meals in an informal and accessible pub atmosphere. We can look to active examples of social eating spaces such as Foodhall Sheffield73 to see the community solidarity and cohesion that can form when sharing food in this way. Of the 18 pubs that were visited for this study, 5 discussed their provision of food during the pandemic, noting the inherent social value of meals on wheels to vulnerable community members. As well as meals on wheels, the Bevy (Figure 35) host their own Foodhall-like weekly social eating event called Friday Friends (Figure 36) that is aimed at lonely elderly locals. The founder Mike described the profound impact of their

73 Foodhall Sheffield, ‘About Foodhall’.

Figure 31 Plan of Never Say Die, Jaywick Sands.

food delivery service that now provides around 120 meals a week:

[Mike]

(Bill) was an old regular before, he lives in the sheltered housing, but we’ve done Meals on Wheels all the way through the pandemic and continue to do Meals on Wheels. So (Bill) is one of the people that isn’t great at looking after himself. But we know at least he was getting a meal, a hot meal every day. But more than that, the Meals on Wheels was checking up on people. So, he’s now got a care package. With so many people cos if they haven’t got family, they fall through the cracks. So basically, the people here he just fell over one day and was really ill and stuff. And we just argued and argued and now he’s got a care package. And he’s, you know, a lot more together. And actually, better for him coming in here and having a few beers than sit at home, drinking a bottle of whiskey or something like that. And I think that’s the bad thing. The beauty of pubs is ok, you can have alcoholics coming in, but it’s much easier, I think it’s worse to sit at home. cos you can just cane beer after beer can’t you, here financially, it’s too expensive, and you get kicked out at a certain point. You know what I mean, it’s just better to be around people.

Continued….

[Mike]

But literally if you live locally and you come in here and you got chatting to people literally within a week or something, you’d know people. And that’s what I really like, whereas

loads of the pubs in Brighton you could go in every day of the year...like if (Bill) doesn’t come in, after a few days someone will go ‘we’re going to his house’ and you know, see if he’s all right and to me that, when you strip everything down, that’s what a pub should be.74

It is clear that the Bevy are not only providing food packages, but a distinctly human form of social care (Figure 37). Julia at the Old Abbey Taphouse in Manchester also highlighted the importance of reciprocal care in establishing a more dignified provision of aid. Seeing supermarket shelves emptying at the start of the pandemic, the pub took action to provide ‘a hot meal’ and a ‘check-in’ 75 (Figure 38-39) where the council were slow to respond:

[Julia]

One of the key things I’d say is people don’t want a middle-class person coming in and giving charity, they want a sense of community. So, everything we do is about making sure its two ways, someone who may receive food, they come down and volunteer. And that’s so important in Hulme, the people are very proud, and they don’t want to accept help. So, it’s how you support the community in a way that’s not top down, that’s responsive, that shows you care.76

2C.3 RECIPROCAL CARE

POMAs are uniquely able to embed community support networks in a physical space that doesn’t feel institutional, sterile and onesided. Mike at the Bevy reiterated that community members can often find charities

74 Mike (founder), The Bevy, Brighton.

75 Julia (campaigner), Old Abbey Taphouse, Manchester.

76 Julia (campaigner).

and the State patronising and to lack an understanding of them as individuals. He told of regulars refusing the ‘old persons club’ with tea and biscuits that was set up by the council, instead choosing to form their own club that didn’t pigeonhole them based on their demographic. In this way, community agency over their social space can create bespoke clubs and amenities with a firsthand understanding of the people that they are for. In the Bevy, the Vicar from the local church has embraced his role as an embedded member of the pub community:

[Mike]

(Cameron)’s really he’s just down to earth. He runs the darts team. You know, so he’s actually ‘practical Vicar’. (…) He runs a Men in Sheds group as well.77

Similarly, the local Reverend can be found regularly socialising in the Swan, Clewer:

[Peter] Well it’s a community as well isn’t it? It’s the church community, it’s the pub community and if he wants to get more people into his church, then he needs to be seen to be relevant to them, as well as all the rest of us.78

The availability of representatives of charity, aid and support in the neutral space of the pub (Figure 40) encourages those less likely to accept help to ask for it. In the Never Say Die, where the landlady is the local councillor, Carol is easily accessible to the community

she serves and, trained in social services, can even sign benefit claimants’ documents in the pub. We see here the complete dissolution of formalised social services. Churches give way to the pastor being captain of the darts team, a job centre becomes the landlady signing papers in the back office. In all instances one is interacting with a familiar face in a familiar setting. This highly personable interface with Church and State aid sees the reassertion of the mutual aid that ‘had lately taken refuge in the narrow circle of the family’ 79

If we begin to frame these COPs as POMAs, we can articulate the true value of these services to the State and other funding bodies. The emergence of the POMA is a sign that mutual aid networks can once again blossom within communities, with the pub reclaiming its position at the heart of every neighbourhood. By understanding these services as ‘mutual aid’, we can begin to advance the current labour practices and systems of decision making within the pub as we move towards a pub-as-commons. Where most of the POMAs aid can only exist through volunteer labour, we must consider creating new reward systems to prevent volunteer burnout and to keep social wealth within the community. However, both volunteer-led pub services and the delineation of the community they serve introduce a complex set of issues - raising key practical and ethical questions on sustainable labour practices and the framing of ‘community’.

77 Mike (founder), The Bevy, Brighton.

78 Peter (committee member), The Swan, Clewer. 79 Kropotkin, Mutual Aid a Factor in Evolution

Figure 35 Plan of the Bevy, Brighton.

Pub Cafe Terrace Kitchen Community Kitchen Greenhouse Allotments

Outdoor Seating

Figure 32 Furniture and kitchenware donated to the Never Say Die, Jaywick Sands (Never Say Die).

Figure 33 Food bank volunteers at the Never Say Die (Never Say Die).

Figure 34 Packed lunches lining the bar at the Never Say Die (Never Say Die).

Figure 40 Punters drinking outside the Never Say Die.

Figure 36 Social eating at the Bevy, Brighton for ‘Friday Friends’ (The Bevy).

Figure 37 Food deliveries at the Bevy (The Bevy).

Figure 38 Volunteers in the kitchen at the Old Abbey Taphouse (Old Abbey Taphouse).

34

32 33

40

TOWARDS A SUSTAINABLE LABOUR MODEL

Within our new categories of PINO, PIPS and POMA, we find projects with varying degrees of dependence on voluntary labour in their construction, management and maintenance. This becomes particularly pertinent where pubs take on the provision of freely accessible common services. Where PINOs can adopt a traditional pub business model with paid staff, for PIPS and POMA, negotiating the provision of both paid and unpaid activities is often contingent on the support of volunteer labourers. As Torange Khonsari explains, the COPs, as newly formed commons institutions ‘start to negotiate these different worlds’80 of paid and voluntary work with varying degrees of success.

To ensure the survival of these vital social spaces, and to prevent volunteer burnout, we must therefore work towards sustainable and ethical labour practices that both maintain financial buoyancy and fairly reward the labourer. With significant financial stakes in the land acquisition and ongoing expenses of running a business, COPs often mimic tried and tested private business structures in order to find their position within the existing market. In PIPS and POMA, these models invariably merge with charity-like structures as they take on the provision of free community services (such as meals on wheels), which depend on both voluntary labour and external financial support.

This chapter will see various examples of COPs attempting to negotiate the coexistence of financial shareholdings and both paid and voluntary labour in the same space. In understanding these attitudes, we will work towards the creation of more robust economic models that fairly reward work whilst embedding psychological ownership and community agency.

3.1 NEGOTIATING LABOUR AND CAPITAL

Not only a product of financial investment, each COP is established as a product of both the labour and capital of its community members. While both are essential to the foundation of these spaces, each translates to ownership and agency in a very different way. Where disparities arise, we may consider new ways to include all contributing community members in the governance of the COP.

Investing Capital

Fundamentally, community ownership is contingent on the financial investment of community members in shares. This investment of capital by shareholders (a minimum of £50-£1000 depending on the project) directly translates to a stake in the COP’s governance. Although some inequity is propagated through the disparity in share

80 Khonsari, ‘The Commons, Community and Post-Covid Recovery’.

costs across projects, the power that share sizes grant is normally the same, with pubs usually employing a universal 1 vote per shareholder policy. Yet while these votes apply to decisions made in the Annual General Meeting (AGM), they in reality have little agency over the practical shaping of the pub. Very often, day-to-day changes are made by the manager themselves for expedience or otherwise for fear of having too many opinions shaping minor alterations81. Shareholder voting rights thus often fail to match Ostrom’s vision of community selfgovernance. There are also many examples of pubs with voting international shareholders who are not regulars but have invested in the pub for philanthropic reasons. While these investments in COPs are welcome, if we are moving towards a pub-as-commons we must consider new ways of engaging local community members without shareholder voting rights in Ostromian decision making.

Investing Labour Community members who cannot afford a financial stake in the project may choose instead to invest their time and labour in the creation, operation and maintenance of the space. Volunteer days, whilst also attracting shareholders, are an opportunity for these other members of the community

to contribute to the project. Although enthusiasm for volunteering is optimistic, this labour often comes with a moralised rhetoric of ‘getting dirty’ 82 and ‘getting stuck in’ 83 that distances any notion of fairly rewarding the work. This is evident at the Swan in Clewer (Figure 41), where despite the comparative affluence of the area, volunteer labour has still proven essential:

[Peter]

You have a look (at the old photos) and you’ll see what state the place was in and it was volunteers. vast majority of investors or loanees, who came in here, got dirty and were stripping walls, stripping wire, and taking all the old electrics out and getting the copper out of the wires, so that that was then sold, etc, etc. So, it was very much volunteer-led. When we need to pay for people we will. But we’ve also got a lot of very willing volunteers who have saved us an absolute fortune.84

Here, Peter acknowledges the financial value of the volunteer labour contributed to the project. Yet unlike shareholder investments, there are no receipts of this work and volunteers may well contribute an equivalent amount to the project through labour and not be granted the same voting rights. What community members who clean, build and decorate the pub do receive is an informal

81 Jim explains that community members discussed changing the fireplace style for several months. Jim (campaigner), The Old Crown, Hesket Newmarket.

82 Peter (committee member), The Swan, Clewer.

83 Mel (project coordinator), The Farmers Arms, Lowick Green.

84 Peter (committee member), The Swan, Clewer.

sense of psychological ownership85 and a feeling of belonging in the wider community. This is confirmed in Sforzi and Bianchi’s findings that the very process of establishing the COP increases community cohesion86. From my own observations, this psychological ownership seemed to manifest in a heightened hospitality and openness to outsiders. Despite not owning shares, some interviewees also felt a psychological ownership through the time they invested as pub regulars, seeing themselves as essential contributors to the daily income of the pub.

Establishing both ownership and governance

As Ostrom theorises, if the commons are to succeed, they must be both owned and governed by the community. In order to truly represent the needs of the pub’s users, we must find ways for community members without financial shares to participate in the decision-making process. This twin-notion of ownership (through labour) and governance is tracked by Kropotkin as it emerged as fundamental to the construction of a medieval society where ‘all the city contributed to it’. He highlights that if labour exists in order to build ‘one man’s imagination’ without community decision making, the essence of the space as a common is undermined, and the labour becomes akin to slavery 87. This imperative for co-creation can be seen in the words of the Council of Florence, where:

‘No works must be begun by the commune but such as are conceived in response to the grand heart of the commune, composed of the hearts of all citizens, united in one common will’ 88 . We see here a utopian image of a city whose

cohabited spaces are the product of a shared vision and shared labour. However, this sentiment is not so easily applied to the community owned pub, where participation in democratic processes and shared labour are not viable for every member of the community.

3.2 ATTITUDES TOWARDS PAID AND UNPAID LABOUR

With an understanding of the value of both capital and labour in the creation and management of the COP, we look to applied examples of both paid and unpaid labour practice.

Voluntary Labour

A dependence on a volunteer workforce favours communities with members who are time rich. Whilst this may not be exclusively class related, it does mean that retirees, part timers and students are more likely to be able to find time to volunteer and hence accumulate psychological ownership more easily. The volunteer programme at the Farmers Arms, run by an experienced arts charity, is a useful lens through which to view who is volunteering in this context. Volunteer days are geared towards local residents (Figure 42) getting involved in the build of the pub, whilst the volunteer week is framed as a residency and aims to recruit young artists from the wider country (Figure 43).

I volunteered at the Farmers Arms on a day when both locals and visiting artists were present. The volunteer artists are in a period of free time post-graduating art school, they labour in the pub in return for free on-site accommodation, meals and the opportunity

85 Peck et al., ‘Caring for the Commons’. 86 Sforzi and Bianchi, ‘Fostering Social Capital’. 87 Kropotkin, Mutual Aid a Factor in Evolution. 88 Kropotkin.

to expand their practice as artists. One volunteer, an architecture graduate, saw it as an opportunity to get hands-on building experience89 (Figure 44). This influx of artists is certainly advantageous to the pub and the local community, who benefit from importing new cultural knowledge to their rural neighbourhood. Yet bringing in significant numbers of volunteers who will not use the space in the future contradicts the ‘for the people by the people’ philosophy.

[Mel]

So it’s a really core part of the way that the organisation works is that everybody sort of works together. So we all eat together, we all work together, and everybody gets involved. (…) it’s really key for us that (…) it’s a fairly flat hierarchy. And I think that that’s a great way to run things. Because that hopefully will also mean that people will feel able to get involved and able to contribute, able to participate as well.90

Here the charity understands that with labour comes agency, yet the aspirational ‘flat hierarchy’ is somewhat undermined by the coexistence of paid workers and volunteers. Where the employees of the charity are paid a salary, the volunteer artists are rewarded in social capital and the potential to access exclusive opportunities for funded art installations in the future.91 The arts residency framing is also predicated on the assumption that the artist will be afforded time to expand their arts practice, which is sometimes not the case. I spoke to one volunteer who, looking forward to spending time renovating the pub, was disappointed to find themselves engaging in tiring manual work in the grounds of the

neighbouring accommodation, which is often rented out on Airbnb.92

We can also be critical of the universal approach to volunteer labour, it is rarely the case that volunteers have the correct skill set to be of best use in the construction of a new space, as Kate at the Swan explains:

[Kate]

I mean, sometimes you have to be a little bit careful about the kind of help. You know, there’s a lot of enthusiasm, sometimes not necessarily the right skill. But equally, we always find things for somebody to do. Nobody turns up to a volunteer day and doesn’t get a job even if you’re sweeping the courtyard, which needs doing a lot.93

If COPs are to depend on volunteers in the future, they must expand their understanding of what volunteer labour is and think critically about how the skills that exist in the community (and wider network of COPs) can best be managed and applied.

Paid Labour

In order to take the investment of time and labour as seriously as a financial shareholding, we must move beyond the notion of labour as an act of altruism. By acknowledging the shortcomings of a dependence on voluntary work and the associated volunteer burnout, we can establish more formalised ways of rewarding labour. An effective mutual aid network should have strategies to ensure wealth remains within the community and maintain balance amongst its members. The founder of the Bevy believed that for

89 Alex (volunteer), The Farmers Arms, Lowick Green. 90 Mel (project coordinator), The Farmers Arms, Lowick Green. 91 Grizedale Arts, ‘Current Opportunities’.

92 Harriet (volunteer), The Farmers Arms, Lowick Green. 93 Kate (committee member), The Swan, Clewer.

their business to function within a capitalist economy, it cannot rely exclusively on volunteer labour:

[Mike]

We’ve got paid staff. So, you know, it’s great having volunteers, but actually, you can run volunteers into the ground. (...) in reality, what we want to do is create jobs, we want so everybody is on the Brighton living wage. So, you know the problem of volunteering, is its (only suitable) if you’re retired or wealthy or well-kept or whatever, whereas actually we want to create jobs for people around here.94

The importance of paid labour is heightened in communities where residents have less financial security. In COPs, a rejection of volunteers in favour of the creation of jobs is particularly common in relation to day-to-day bar and managerial staff. Only one of the pubs that I visited depended on a volunteer staff - the Great Bromley Cross. Where volunteer work is more widespread is in the initial retrofit and renovation of the pubs. Whilst a volunteer force did help in some of the stages of the Bevy, the majority of the work was carried out by hired local builders and decorators:

[Mike]

So, they cost they cost five grand, they should have cost a lot more but that was builders doing stuff for cheap. Well, (Andy), you and (Callum) were in here for what seemed like months and months.

[Andy]

Yeah I think it was about 6 or 7 weeks. And then (Callum) was putting shelves up and stuff

like that for a couple of weeks.

[Mike]

So always get builders that drink in your pub because eventually you’ll get the money back.95

As we see in the Bevy, hiring local tradesmen who become regulars can ensure capital stays within the community. But whilst hiring tradesmen resulted in an enhanced psychological ownership for the builders involved, this approach does waiver the potential of having far more community members involved in the pub’s construction. The creation of paid work was also key for Julia at the Old Abbey Taphouse. She explained how the pub used the Covid-19 government kickstart scheme to introduce new paid roles that would have otherwise been voluntary:

[Julia]

we had loads of young people volunteer for us and they’re all so talented. (…) and the kickstart scheme came up by the government and (…) I managed to get a group of social enterprises together (…) to create our own kickstart scheme for 33 young people. So that’s who’s in the kitchen now, and they’re getting paid to come work for us, they get to do two dinners on a Tuesday, Thursdays, we do workshops, we’ve done film, we’ve done theatre, confidence building, and the rest of the time they work at the venue.96

The kickstart employees have taken over the provision of the pub’s meals on wheels service, which was once run on volunteer labour. This use of government grant money to fund

94 Mike (founder), The Bevy, Brighton. 95 Mike (founder). 96 Julia (campaigner), Old Abbey Taphouse, Manchester.

work that would otherwise be deemed part of the volunteer sector is an important step towards legitimising the ‘mutual aid’ work that has been taking place at COPs over the pandemic. It is important to the campaigner that these newly paid workers also benefit from access to the community facilities that the pub offers. Whilst I speak with Julia, she is organising for some of the kickstart employees with an interest in music to be taught how to use the equipment in the radio station. We see here the introduction of a new way of rewarding labour in the pub, playing with notions of an access-based economy, paying labourers in access to a facility that is otherwise not entirely public. This raises questions about a whole host of facilities that could become accessible to volunteers. Julia was frustrated that the nature of volunteering depends on ideas of altruism and that there is a discomfort in the sector around rewarding volunteers for their work:

[Julia] there was quite a lot of people in the charity in the co-op sector that wouldn’t do the kickstart scheme yet were using young people to be volunteers. I just think be practical, it’s actually important at the moment.97

In order to sustain the mutual aid practice that has been birthed through the POMA, we must look to ways of legitimising the work of volunteers. If we are to reject the notion of completely replacing volunteering with paid work, we must instead develop robust internal economies that reward work and ensure community resilience. These new economies must be more ambitious than merely offering a free beer at the end of the day and be viable in relation to the economy at large. In the next section I will outline how this could be achieved through the implementation of a time-based currency.

3.3 TOWARDS A NEW TIME-BASED ECONOMY

In the current political-economic environment it is often not feasible for all the labour in the COP to be paid, therefore the communal activities of the pub must be separated from the traditional pub business model. We can look instead at creating an effective internal access-based economy that fairly rewards the labour of the individual. Alongside the necessary investment of financial shareholders, we may imagine a way to establish new ownership rights for labourers. This could be through contracts that legitimise this labour and reward it with either access to amenities or a ‘payment in kind’ in partial shares and voting rights. This would secure the agency that the volunteer has over the space and ensure an ongoing voice in how the space will change in the future. A move towards an internal time-based currency could thus reward volunteer hours with legal rights over the space. Rights and assets could accumulate from day of release, for example, one day of labouring could be worth 1/100 th of a share, that could be accumulated over time and eventually form an equivalent stake to a financial investor. Partial shares could also be donated back to the pub if the volunteer wished to remain within the moral remit of traditional charity, or otherwise be spent on goods and services within the pub.

We can look to the success of the Ithaca Hour for an alternative currency based on the value of hours of time where ‘HOURS stand for the

protection and enhancement of the quality of their community life’98. This currency was even used in one instance to purchase beer (at Maxie’s Supper Club99). A system of rewarding volunteer labour through a time-based currency is also already being explored in the Foodhall, Sheffield as a means of rewarding volunteers with access to certain amenities.

There are novel strategies already being applied by COPs to accrue financial capital and ensure that assets are kept within the community. For example, The Swan in Clewer offered a loan system for community members who could not afford the £1000 share100. The loaner could pay any amount up to £999 to The Swan and claim back double that amount at the bar in 2 years’ time. It is easy to see how a system like this could be applied to rewarding labour.

This notion of an internal economy becomes more interesting when each pub is considered as part of a wider national network of COPs. Could labour in building one pub in the network be redeemable in another? This could allow skills that exist in specific pub communities to be shared amongst the wider network, where currently specialist knowledge is not easily shared between different types of pub. In this way, the moral imperative of the volunteer can exist alongside a tangible remuneration. Such a system could embed trust that labour can be rewarded in a fairer way and establish a relationship between temporal and permanent communities.

98 Jacob et al., ‘The Social and Cultural Capital of Community Currency: An Ithaca HOURS Case Study Survey’. 99 Jacob et al.

100 Kate (committee member), The Swan, Clewer.

Figure 41 Volunteers erecting walls in the Swan, Clewer (The Swan).

Figure 42 Elderly local volunteer at the Farmers Arms.

Figure 43 Volunteer artists at the Farmers Arms (Grizedale Arts).

Figure 44 Art graduate limewashing walls in the Farmers Arms.

By understanding the COP through drawn analysis and the narratives of its founders and users, this paper has provided the first framework to assess the variety of COP types that have recently emerged, and the impact they have on their communities. It sees the COP not as a monolithic entity, but rather a series of sub-typologies, here categorised as the Pub in Name Only (PINO), the Pub Incorporating Public Services (PIPS) and the Pub Operating Mutual Aid (POMA).

In terms of ownership, this research found numerous conceptions of ‘owning space’ beyond financial shareholdings. It found evidence of psychological ownership being established through repeated use by regulars, as well as volunteer participation in labour (particularly in the COPs creation) that often translated to stewardship.

In terms of amenities, this paper saw many examples of new facilities and services in PIPS and POMA in rural, suburban and urban contexts. Where rural COPs often responded to rapidly closing public services, those in urban neighbourhoods fulfilled more cultural roles or responded to financial inaccessibility of services. A diversification of amenities in turn saw a more diverse range of users frequenting

CONCLUDING REMARKS

the pub throughout the day. The study also found many instances of popular PINOs that have chosen not to expand their offer.

In terms of governance, we see the majority of COPs mimicking the organisation of traditional pubs, with a tenant landlord hired to operate the day-to-day of the business. This model works well for PINOs but becomes strained where PIPS and POMA introduce new common services that are not profitable and depend on volunteer labour. In this case, COPs become hybrids of charity and pub organisational models and finances, aid and labour (paid and unpaid) often become entangled and codependent.

Finally, in terms of impact, this research acknowledges the COPs significant effect on social cohesion in a community (as evidenced by Sforzi and Bianchi 101) but distinguishes a heightened social impact in the services provided by the new categories of PIPS and POMA. We see many PIPS become valuable aggregations of public amenities, and POMAs that are actively facilitating mutual aid practices. These categories allow a proper positioning of each project in relation to each other in order to assess their impact.

101 Sforzi and Bianchi, ‘Fostering Social Capital’.

4.1 A DIVERSE TYPOLOGY WITH ESSENTIAL SOCIAL FUNCTIONS

This study gives evidence that the COP is a diverse and adaptable typology that can flex to the needs of communities across an array of socio-economic backgrounds. The exceptional situation of the coronavirus pandemic has exposed the vital social function of the COP but also the disparities between projects. We find examples of POMAs forming to deliver services such as food and clothes provision where many PINOs instead closed their doors and hibernated. This is why categorising these spaces is important. By furthering our understanding of the many emerging COP typologies, we may understand their impact and pave the way for more valuable social spaces to be established across the country. Considering the breadth of services that the PIPS and POMA are seen to host, from a radio station to a food bank, there is a strong case for COPs to be built as essential cores to any new housing development.

This research also shows that an effective COP needs a strong community leader driving the project (such as in the Tommy Flowers and the Bevy), with a process of involving community members in the co-creation of the space through effective dialogue and shared labour. In successful PIPS and POMA in this study, the needs of the whole community were

properly understood (including those currently marginalised from the pub) and suitable amenities and services were integrated in response (such as the Old Abbey Taphouse accommodating non-drinking locals). This study has revealed a number of invisible, yet vital social services, (such as a ‘meals on wheels’ that acts as informal social care) embedded in pubs that are often dismissed as working-class boozers. The case studies demonstrated microcosms of mutual aid and subconscious anarchist organisational practices, often sitting unassumingly within privately owned housing estates.

4.2 SYSTEMS OF SUPPORT

The creation of novel sub-categories of COP allow us to better understand the different goals and impacts of each project in order to transform volunteer-dependent COPs into financially sustainable organisations. Not yet distinguishing between the activities of the PINO, PIPS and POMA, current funding bodies also fail to account for wealth and class disparities and the varying degrees of time, skills, business knowledge and manpower at each community’s disposal. To understand both the typology and the community in question is an essential part of understanding the role of COP in different socio-economic contexts and providing them with targeted systems of support.

The COP has thus far been proven a success, with a report at the end of 2020 seeing a ‘100% survival rate’ in projects 102. Although this paper has discussed examples of vital social spaces that are privately-owned, it is only through community ownership that these projects can be resilient. In October 2021, due to financial losses incurred over the pandemic, the Never Say Die, Jaywick Sands closed its doors for good. This study saw the Never Say Die as exemplary of the potential of a POMA and followed it through the beginnings of a community ownership bid supported by the Plunkett Foundation. The publican, Carol, interviewed in the Clacton Gazette explained that:

[Carol]

People just do not have the money at the moment, and they are struggling more than ever and so the pub cannot sustain itself any longer. (…) People are still scared to come out, because it is still a scary time, and we have a lot of elderly and disabled people around and it is worrying for them.103

This failure belies the fragility of community pubs that are still on leasehold from a PubCo. POMAs, with their provision of social services, do not carry the profit margins associated with typical pubs. They therefore lack the financial resiliency to survive a systemic shock such as Covid-19, despite temporary grant support from the local council and external foundations. This raises the question of the extent to which the State has a responsibility to fund such services.

Although the State once provided a wealth of public amenities – libraries, social care, post offices - the current UK political climate directly opposes the heightened public ownership of the inter- and post-war years. Yet where State provision falls short, we have seen the growth of a network of grassroots spaces and services filling a variety of gaps in social provision.

Recent proposals of conservative governments, such as David Cameron’s ‘Big Society’ and Theresa May’s ‘shared society’104, have broached sharing the provision of

102 McCusker, in Walzer, Community Owned Businesses 103 King, ‘Jaywick’s Never Say Die Shuts Its Doors to Punters’. 104 Coote, ‘Building a New Social Commons: The People, the Commons and the Public Realm’.

social services between State and private institutions. These proposals use rhetoric of sharing and social reform to support the defunding of State services. Some critics believe that ‘the right readily co-opts mutual aid as a cover for dumping more of the State’s responsibilities on to the voluntary sector.’105 Labour that was once adequately funded under State management is now the remit of the unpaid volunteer.

While the State may never reabsorb the plethora of services that have been sold and apportioned to the private and voluntary sector, it is still its responsibility to ensure that they exist and are adequately funded. Commons theory provides the framework through which we can understand the ‘State’s role in incentivizing the production and governance of shared goods and services106 The COPs examined in this study, while ignored by policy and sometimes left to fail, mark the beginnings of community provision of such services. The next step in supporting

this typology will be the definition of their interaction with the national government and full recognition of the array of services they house (from PINO to POMA).

With the 2021 budget including a £150m community ownership fund107, theoretically ‘community ownership’ already has support in place. However, ‘community ownership’ as it is currently understood does not differentiate between nominally community owned PINOS and the extensive social provision of the POMA. Under the current definition both typologies, though producing vastly different social impact, would receive the same funding.

A 21st century pub reformation, with renewed State support, would precisely categorise these institutions allocating resources depending on their social function. Much like the Carlisle Experiment, this project could engender a progressive social change, but this time with the public setting the agenda.

105 Shabi, ‘Anarchy in the UK? The Transformative Power of Mutual Aid’. 106 Foster and Swiney, The Cambridge Handbook of Commons Research Innovations. 107 Norman, ‘BUDGET 2021 - PROTECTING THE JOBS AND LIVELIHOODS OF THE BRITISH PEOPLE’.

What form could the proto-pub take?

DESIGN IMPLICATIONS

The rise of the COP has wide-reaching design implications, presenting a new challenge not yet the remit of contemporary designers. Until now, the creation of COPs has been led by amateurs within the community, retrofitting the antiquated shells of existing pubs. Considering the rich history of public houses embedded in residential developments, how may we create new-build pubs that can be claimed, adapted, and governed by communities in the future, and what range of amenities might they contain? Should we be aspiring for freely accessible art studios, sheds, assembly rooms, workspace? Aligning with cybernetic conceptions108 of an evolving architecture, and an understanding of commoning as an ongoing social process,109 the COP could be in a perpetual mode of redesign, with a dynamic feedback loop adapting to the residents’ changing needs. We could imagine a new method of community building, one which seeds new housing estates with ‘proto-pubs’ that begin as a site office (in the Victorian fashion) and continually change form to reflect their changing community.

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure 1 Gretna Township, Clayton Greens in Sarah Harper, The Gretna Bombing: When War Came to Gretna 7th April 1942 (The Devil’s Porridge Museum: Eastriggs and Gretna Heritage Group (SCIO), 2018).

Figure 2 Ridealgh, Joseph, Axonometric studies of Harry Redfern’s New Model Inns. January 2021.

Figure 3 Ridealgh, Joseph, Plan of Gracie’s Banking, Annan. January 2022.

Figure 4 Cumbria Image Bank, The Golden Lion, Botchergate, façade before state management. [online] <https:// historicengland.org.uk/research/current/discover-and-understand/military/the-first-world-war/first-world-warhome-front/what-we-already-know/land/state-control-of-pubs/> [accessed 27 January 2022]

Figure 5 Cumbria Image Bank, The Golden Lion, Botchergate, façade after state management. <https:// historicengland.org.uk/research/current/discover-and-understand/military/the-first-world-war/first-world-warhome-front/what-we-already-know/land/state-control-of-pubs/> [accessed 27 January 2022]

Figure 6 Ridealgh, Joseph, Diagram of sliding scale of pub categories. January 2022.

Figure 7 Roberts, Will, The Gardeners Rest, Sheffield, beer garden [online] <https://www.ourfaveplaces.co.uk/ where-to-go/the-gardeners-rest/> [accessed 27 January 2022]

Figure 8 Aitchison, Gavin, Local art on the walls at the Golden Ball (2013) [online] <https://www.yorkpress.co.uk/ news/10218326.golden-age-again-at-the-ball/> [accessed 27 January 2022]

Figure 9 Jan Kattein Architects, Aberfeldy Street Regeneration Facade (2020) [online] <https://jankattein.com/ projects/aberfeldy-street/> [accessed 27 January 2022]

Figure 10 Jan Kattein Architects, Aberfeldy Street Regeneration Fabric Samples (2020) [online] <https://jankattein. com/projects/aberfeldy-street/> [accessed 27 January 2022]

Figure 11 Ridealgh, Joseph, Regular watering flowers at the Star Inn, Salford (June 2021).

Figure 12 Ridealgh, Joseph, Bar area of the Old Crown, Hesket Newmarket (July 2021).

Figure 13 Ridealgh, Joseph, Plan of Tommy Flowers, Canning Town. January 2022.

Figure 14 Ridealgh, Joseph, Partial plan of the Old Crown, Hesket Newmarket. January 2022.

Figure 15 Ridealgh, Joseph, Partial plan of the Ampleforth, Oxford. January 2022.

Figure 16 The Atlantic pub, Brixton’s ‘Unofficial Community Centre’ in Eric McAlpine, ‘What’s Wrong with Brixton?’, Flamingo, February 1964.

Figure 17 Ridealgh, Joseph, Plan of Anglers Rest, Bamford. January 2022.

Figure 18 Ridealgh, Joseph, Plan of Great Bromley Cross, Essex. January 2022.

Figure 19 Ridealgh, Joseph, Temporary café at the Great Bromley Cross, Essex (June 2021).

Figure 20 Ridealgh, Joseph, Temporary post office at the Great Bromley Cross, Essex (June 2021).

Figure 21 Ridealgh, Joseph, Greenhouse and allotments at the Bevy, Brighton (June 2021).

Figure 22 Ridealgh, Joseph, Plan of Old Abbey Taphouse, Manchester. January 2022.

Figure 23 The Old Abbey Taphouse, Mixing lessons in the Old Abbey Taphouse (2021) [online] <https://www. instagram.com/p/CUhbfOIh2hj/> [accessed 27 January 2022]

Figure 24 ONE6WAVE, one6wave broadcasting from the Old Abbey Taphouse radio station (2021) [online] <https:// www.instagram.com/p/CWfzp8FDfCm/> [accessed 27 January 2022]

Figure 25 Ridealgh, Joseph, Meeting Room in the Old Abbey Taphouse, Manchester (June 2021).

Figure 26 Ridealgh, Joseph, Plan of Ivy House, Nunhead. January 2022.

Figure 27 Ridealgh, Joseph, Stage in the Old Abbey Taphouse, Manchester (June 2021).

Figure 28 Ridealgh, Joseph, The Honest Shop in the Farmers Arms, Lowick Green (July 2021).

Figure 29 Ridealgh, Joseph, Plan of Farmers Arms, Lowick Green. January 2022.

Figure 30 Ridealgh, Joseph, Shelf of pottery in the Farmers Arms, Lowick Green (July 2021).

Figure 31 Ridealgh, Joseph, Plan of Never Say Die, Jaywick Sands. January 2022.

Figure 32 JSR’s Community Hub, Furniture and kitchenware donated to the Never Say Die (2021) [online] <https:// www.facebook.com/JSRNSD/photos/253046853179649> [accessed 27 January 2022]

Figure 33 JSR’s Community Hub, Food bank volunteers at the Never Say Die (2021) [online] <https://www.facebook. com/JSRNSD/photos/227675042383497> [accessed 27 January 2022]

Figure 34 JSR’s Community Hub, Packed lunches line the bar at the Never Say Die (2020) [online] <https://www. facebook.com/JSRNSD/photos/146649933819342> [accessed 27 January 2022]

Figure 35 Ridealgh, Joseph, Plan of The Bevy, Brighton. January 2022.

Figure 36 The Bevy, ‘Chatterboxes’, Social eating at the Bevy, Brighton (2020) [online] <https://www.thebevy. co.uk/2020/07/30/chatterboxes-lunch-club/> [accessed 27 January 2022]

Figure 37 The Bevy, Food deliveries at the Bevy, Brighton (2020) [online] <https://www.thebevy.co.uk/2020/11/01/ bevy-meals-on-wheels-a-community-comes-together/> [accessed 27 January 2022]

Figure 38 The Old Abbey Taphouse, Volunteers in the kitchen at the Old Abbey Taphouse, Manchester (2021) [online] <https://www.instagram.com/p/CRy292It4Vd/> [accessed 27 January 2022]

Figure 39 The Old Abbey Taphouse, Volunteers preparing food parcels at the Old Abbey Taphouse, Manchester (2020) [online] <https://www.instagram.com/p/CECXMWcAtP9/> [accessed 27 January 2022]

Figure 40 Ridealgh, Joseph, Punters drinking outside the Never Say Die, Jaywick Sands (July 2021).

Figure 41 The Swan, Volunteers erecting walls in the Swan, Clewer (2020) [online] < https://theswanwindsor.co.uk/ volunteers.html> [accessed 27 January 2022]

Figure 42 Ridealgh, Joseph, Elderly local volunteer at the Farmers Arms, Lowick Green (July 2021).

Figure 43 Grizedale Arts, ‘Lucy, Sophie, Nikita & Eliza - our June ‘19 volunteers’ at the Farmers Arms, Lowick Green (2019) [online] < https://www.grizedale.org/opportunities/> [accessed 27 January 2022]

Figure 44 Ridealgh, Joseph, Art graduate limewashing walls in the Farmers Arms, Lowick Green (July 2021).

Figure 45 Ridealgh, Joseph, Concept drawing of a proto-pub, September 2021.