Karen Hewitt - Understanding Britain Today

Today smoking is banned in all enclosed public spaces including pubs and other places of relaxation. In practice that means that you can smoke at home, in the homes of friends who do not mind if you do, and in the open air. Propaganda explaining the dangers of smoking is widespread in schools and workplaces. Film

heroes are non-smokers, whereas smokers tend to be portrayed as pathetic, nervous, irritable people who are despised by clean fresh pretty girls. Tobacco is also heavily taxed, such that those taxes also contribute significantly to the exchequer.

In the late nineteenth century Sherlock Holmes, the great fictional detective, used to inject himself with morphine or cocaine whenever boredom overcame him. His mind craved 'artificial stimulants'. In The Sign of Four Dr Watson remonstrated with him for his indulgence in drug-taking. 'The brain may be ... roused and excited, but it is a pathological and morbid process, which involves increased tissue-change and may at least leave a permanent weakness" he told Holmes. But the great man was unimpressed, and in the last sentence of the novel he stretches out his long white hand for the cocaine bottle.

The stories of Sherlock Holmes remain world-wide favourites with young and old. Yet in Britain today, anyone who behaved as Sherlock Holmes did one hundred and twenty years ago could find themselves in prison.

Three kinds of drugs - alcohol, nicotine and cocaine which were all once perfectly legal are now, in Britain in the early twenty-first century, treated very differently as a matter of public policy. This chapter examines the culture and social consequences of drinking, smoking and using illegal drugs in Britain. It also provides a history of the way in which democratic government has interacted with popular opinion in developing policies to deal with drugs.

In all European countries drinking alcohol is part of normal everyday life. A glass of wine, a bottle of beer, a dram of whisky all contribute to that pleasant social activity 'drinking with friends', whether we drink in the home, in a pub or café, or out in the open air during a picnic. What is less well-known unless you are able to travel from one country to another and observe the natives instead of the tourists, is how widely the drinking culture of one country varies from that of another. The English do not drink like the French. The Germans do not drink like the Russians. The Scots do not drink like the Italians. In this chapter I look at how and why the English drink as they do; and I try to answer some questions that Russians have asked me about the strange behaviour of English students. Then I look at the social, medical and legal implications of government policy on drinking alcohol, and discuss how far politics can change culture.

Some definitions first. By 'alcohol' I mean any drink which contains alcohol, whether it be 4% or 40%. Beer is 'brewed', wine is 'made', spirits are 'distilled'. English beer is brewed by a different method from the beer in the rest of Europe, including Russia. So our beer has a distinctive taste. Many of us enjoy the imported lager beers with which you are familiar. Very few vineyards exist in England; almost all our wine is imported. As for spirits, whisky is distilled in Scotland and sold throughout the world, gin is distilled in England (among other places), some 'vodka' is distilled in Britain, but good vodka is imported from Russia and Poland. The drink you call 'konyak' is distilled from grapes. We call this drink 'brandy' and import it from France. In the European Union, 'cognac' applies to a kind of brandy made in a particular area in France, and the law states that no other area can use this word! In pubs, draught beer -i.e. beer which is not in bottles - is sold in pints. A pint is a little more than half a litre. (You can also buy half-a-pint of beer. That is a perfectly normal measure, particularly for a woman, or, for example, in the middle of the day.) Wine is sold in glasses which used to contain 125 millilitres (one sixth of a wine bottle) but is now sold in glasses containing 175ml. or 250ml. Spirits are generally sold in 25 millilitre measures. (See below for a further discussion of these measures.)

If you are going to understand Britain, you need to understand what an English pub is like, since what is called a 'Pub' in Russia is Not The Real Thing. A pub is a kind of neighbourhood club where most of the customers are 'locals', people who know each other, who sit and talk for an hour or so, and who may drink as little as half a pint of beer during that time. Nobody is forced to talk to other people, but the atmosphere is friendly and relaxing. I once entered a so-called 'pub' in Russia, and was informed that I must leave because every place was taken. In England nobody has the right to tell you to leave - unless you are drunk or violent - because any adult is legally entitled to come into a pub. ('Pub' stands for 'public house'; the laws licensing their use insist that they must be open at certain times because travellers have the right to quench their thirst.) People rearrange the tables, squeeze up together, share corners, or quietly leave because they themselves decide that the place is overcrowded.

Many of our pubs are in very old buildings because for centuries people have felt the need for a good, thirst-quenching mug of beer and a place to rest. Consequently, once a pub is established there is rarely a good reason for closing it. Customers become used to old stone walls, sixteenth-century beams across the ceiling, eighteenth-century windows, or, especially in the big cities, nineteenth-century panelling, mirrors, dark wood and heavy tables. Some big pubs were specially built in the twentieth century near main roads so that drivers could stop for refreshment. If you are visiting England, you will probably drop into a pub intended for tourists in the centre of the city; they provide a special experience for visitors and foreigners but if you want somewhere more typical ask your English friends to take you away from the crowds.

Fifty years ago, English pubs were places where men went to drink, away from their families and in the company of their friends. Women rarely went into pubs unless they were heavy drinkers; most women stayed at home and tried to save as much money as they could for ordinary household expenses. Then, in the nineteen-seventies and nineteen-eighties, as the country became more prosperous and more relaxed, women began to join their men for a drink out, and pub culture changed.

The arrival of women - wives, sisters, girlfriends, and women coming in together as friends - meant that different drinks began to be supplied. Men mostly drank beer; women mostly preferred wine. In earlier decades, you could find, stuck behind the bar, a bottle of horrible red wine and a bottle of horrible white wine which no-one bothered to look after. When the women arrived, the landlords studied the wines of France, Italy, Spain, and later, of Australia, Chile, Argentina, for they needed to buy good wines for their customers.

Women also liked the idea of eating something with their drinks; perhaps a sandwich or a light salad, or at lunch time a light meal. Many pubs began serving food, sometimes brought in from a commercial source, but often decent food cooked on the premises. Then wives who were also mothers decided that they would like to bring their children along to what was becoming a kind of family club. The law said that children were not admitted to the bar, but regulations were changed in some pubs, especially if food was sold as well as alcohol. Children began to come with their parents (not on their own) during the daytime. Not everyone welcomed these changes. Many men yearned for a woman-free evening with their mates; many middle-aged men and women wanted adult conversation without children disturbing them; many young couples on the other hand wanted to enjoy their leisure time with their children. So if you ever wonder at the number of pubs in an English town, you should remember that each one provides a service for a specific community. Anyone is entitled to use any pub, but you will find some are full of men playing darts or dominoes, while others have small children in one room and family tables. People choose their 'local' according to their taste and help to make it part of their own community.