Opinion
Alcohol Policy:
“Persuading the working class to abstain from alcohol was thus seen as a genuine attempt at working class self-improvement”
An overview in general election year The drinks industry needs to make sure its concerns are taken into account by politicians when manifestoes are drawn up, says Paul Chase Introduction UK government policy on alcohol in England and Wales, and to a lesser extent under the devolved government in Scotland, has in recent years been something of a moving feast. In this article I want to explore what factors impact on the development of alcohol policy and what may change if the outcome of the upcoming general election results in a Labour government, or a Labour-led coalition government.
A very brief historical overview Historically the Liberal Party of Victorian England struggled to reconcile its support for individual freedom and free markets with its belief in local democracy, and its growing belief that the state should protect people from the perceived moral threat of alcohol consumption, which, as the twentieth century wore on, became medicalised as protection from perceived health threats. Meanwhile, the early union movement demonstrated some sympathy with the temperance movement; saw the brewing and distilling industries as capitalist enterprises which exploited workers and wanted to weaken their ability to organise. We also saw, between 1838 and 1858, the rise of Chartism – a mass working class movement for universal male suffrage; and “Temperance Chartism” became a distinct strand within the broader Chartist movement. Persuading the working class to abstain from alcohol was thus seen as a genuine attempt at working class self-improvement. This in turn fed the conviction that working class interests could only be advanced if the labour movement organised as a political party – the Labour Party. Historically, the Conservatives were generally much more sympathetic to the trade in beverage alcohol, and did much to defend its interests from the 1870s onwards; and it was thanks to the opposition of Conservative peers in the House of Lords that the attempt by the Liberal government of Herbert Asquith to close 30,000 of the nation’s 96,000 pubs over 14 years, and nationalise the rest was defeated. So, current party political attitudes to the “alcohol problem” reflect this difficult and changing history.
Modern alcohol policy Labour’s introduction of the Licensing Act 2003 was initially seen as a deregulation measure that reflected the growing neo-liberalism of “New Labour” under Tony Blair’s leadership. Alcohol was henceforth to be seen as part of a wider leisure culture that was good for tourism and employment. Overlaying this was the cultural proposition that we should favour a continental-style, café bar culture designed, in Tony Blair’s words, to create “a Britain more at ease with itself, and with alcohol.” The perceived liberalisation of the Licensing Act 2003 created a backlash from the forces of social conservatism and from those in the Conservative Party who saw liberalising the regulation of alcohol as a threat to law and order. It was only later that the way in which the “alcohol problem” was framed changed from “law and order” to “public health”. Nevertheless, the Labour government began to row back from the radicalism of the new Act as it reacted to the increasingly shrill opposition to its policy.
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The Conservative-led coalition government, formed after the 2010 general election, promised some radical supply-side changes to the way in which the sale of alcohol was regulated: a review of alcohol policy which led to the introduction of EMAROs and the Late Night Levy; banning below-cost sales of alcohol; and tackling underage drinking. In 2012 the Conservatives were minded to go further than a ban on selling alcohol below cost, and to introduce minimum unit pricing – a policy that had long been championed by the health lobby and had been passed into law in Scotland, albeit not implemented due to legal challenge. However, attempts at introducing Early Morning Alcohol Restriction Orders (EMAROs) have been thwarted by concerted and unified opposition from the trade and the Late Night Levy has so far only been considered or introduced by a handful of local authorities. Then we saw what the health lobby regarded as a “great betrayal”: minimum pricing was abandoned by the Conservative-led coalition government, or at least kicked into the long grass for lack of evidence regarding its efficacy, and with the convenient excuse that we should in any event await the outcome of the legal challenge to minimum pricing in Scotland that will be resolved sometime this year by the European Court of Justice. Minimum pricing was also contrary to the Conservative ideological opposition to anything that compromised free markets, and faced considerable opposition within Conservative ranks for that reason, as well as the more pragmatic opposition that arose out of the need to avoid measures that raised prices and gave ammunition to Labour charges of a “cost of living crisis”. So, Conservative attempts at supply-side reform, which reflected a growing acceptance of health lobby perspectives, were abandoned in favour of adopting voluntary industry responsibility approaches to alcohol harm that were supported by the drinks industry, and which could deliver on some health lobby objectives, whilst not offending ideological opposition to government intervention emanating from Conservative libertarians. This is a classic example of how politicians as brokers of interests seek to arrive at a compromise that splits the difference between opposing groups. The problem for the Conservatives in seeking to do this has been the increasingly ideological nature of the health lobby itself, which views any partnership approach that involves the drinks industry in policy formation as tantamount to supping with the Devil – and as far as they are concerned the spoon will never be long enough! So, at present we see a Conservative approach to alcohol policy that attempts to fuse traditional one-nation paternalism by supporting voluntary approaches, whilst avoiding policies that offend against libertarian tendencies, or that run the risk of opening the party to attack
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