You are in:
- Archives » 2008 » January 2008
Hazy Moral Maze
Britain's Archbishop of Canterbury, symbolic head of the Anglican Communion's 77 million worshippers, is not usually given to the business of day-to-day moral guidance. Dr Rowan Williams prefers to focus on broader issues - war in the middle east, relations with the Roman Catholic Church, and trying to separate the church's factions warring over homosexuality.
However, marking the fifth anniversary of his enthronement, he has spoken out against Britain's 24-hour drinking laws, arguing that the legislation has made Britain "less safe and civil."
"It has had an effect of making less safe and less civil our public space in many, many contexts, including Canterbury," the Telegraph quotes him as claiming, "There is a culture of alcohol abuse that this country has failed to tackle and the 24-hour thing is the tip of the iceberg."
His comments come shortly after Prime Minister Gordon Brown was reported to have chosen to keep the 24 hour licensing laws open. It was rumoured that Brown was planning to axe the laws, introduced in 2005, as an early signal of his Presbyterian puritanism and ambition to reform Britain's boozy street culture.
Statistics are said to show that drunkenness and alcohol-related crime had not increased significantly in the two years since Britain's licensing laws were relaxed. Hospital admissions after midnight were up, but the flood of emergency calls which followed the old 11pm chucking out time had abated, said the report. Additionally, few landlords applied for all-night drinking licenses, preferring to close at midnight or 1.00am.
This seems to reflect experience in other cities where late-night drinking was pioneered. 24 hour drinking is restricted to a few specialist clubs, while most bars find their market-selected niche, closing earlier or later according to the demands of the culture and the neighbourhood. There is less trouble with staggered closing times than with the 11pm rush, particularly around fast food joints and taxi queues (the traditional flashpoints).
However, figures also show that alcohol-related deaths in Britain have doubled in 15 years. City centres do not feel noticeably safer - indeed, many residents see their town's entertainment zones as vomit-spattered no-go areas. Evidence shows binge-drinking on the rise.
Alcohol-fuelled chaos in British streets has become a regular horror story for the press.
Booze is getting cheaper: Regional newspapers have bemoaned the appearance of cut-price "Booze Buster" off-licenses, though this smaller chain is far from being the only offender. Earlier this week, supermarket giant Sainsbury's came under fire for offering cider at 26p a pint. It is claimed that cheaper alcohol, with its obvious appeal to the young, has been responsible for more violence and injuries than the 24 hour licensing laws. Brown is being urged to increase tax on booze to deter binge drinking.
In a sense, it was the ultimate Blairite fantasy that Britain's gruff pub culture, with "Time Gentlemen Please" being called at 11pm in most cases, would be replaced with a continental café society culture if only the licensing laws were changed. Indeed, Blair famously supported the law by asking why a family who had been to the theatre for the evening should be denied a drink after the show.
Most theatre goers know better than to hang around in the city centre: They hurry off, hoping that their car is still parked where they left it.
Would Britain become a society of pavement cafés, with families enjoying the Italian passeggiata ritual of walking around the bustling streets in their finery, stopping for a glass of wine here and there? It seems we've gone to the other extreme, the only people roaming town centres after dark are kebab-clutching drunks and thong-flashing harridans.
It's a complex issue. It is difficult to support government interference in people's private life: This blog has been a staunch opponent of Europe's campaign against smokers, so we shouldn't pick on those who choose to drink themselves to an early grave. Alcoholics will always find booze, 24 hour licensing or not; Grown-ups, like Tony Blair's hypothetical theatre-going couple, should not be denied the pleasure of a late drink because of the appalling behaviour of younger louts. Indeed, anyone who has been to a British theatre recently would very much need a drink after the show: They do not deserve further punishment.
Moreover, mainly complaints about public drunkenness are thinly-veiled attacks on the British working classes, who have been identified as uniquely wicked and degenerate by our masters in government (the British middle classes are also subject to government interference in their drinking habits, but the half-a-pint-of-Merlot-after-work classes are judged as harming only themselves rather than being a threat to civilisation in general).
However, the Archbishop has the moral duty to bring guidance on this issue: Despite claims to the contrary, many British towns have become extremely unpleasant places after dark. It harms another strand of Labour's "continental" policy, the hope that people will be encouraged to live in Britain's often empty city centres. Building stylish apartments on regenerated "Brown Field" sites is a tempting urban alternative to building some of Britain's hundreds of thousands of required new homes in the countryside. However, how can you get people to move to town centres if they are going to be frightened to leave their homes at night?
It's good to see Dr Williams "get his hands dirty" on this one. But British binge drinking is not a recent phenomenon, as the picture above shows.
