Temperance Its history and impact on current and future alcohol policy Virginia Berridge This report examines the history of temperance, and how it can inform alcohol policy in the present and future. Published at a time when alcohol consumption has occasioned much public and media debate, the report relates the past to the present by examining the culture of drinking, and how it could be changed. In the past, temperance helped to create a ‘respectable working class’ and an ethos which would now be called ‘ social capital’. The report explores whether this culture can be brought up to date. It also discusses the role of the media,of pressure groups and of local government, the prominence given to women’s’ drinking, the potential for religious influence in a multi cultural society, health messages about alcohol, and alliances between medicine, public health and the police. The report also reviews the political possibilities for alcohol. For the first time for many years alcohol is a political issue, as was temperance. The report looks at whether those with an interest in health should work with the drinks industry, explores the role of international networks of influence and considers how the history of action against tobacco can inform future alcohol strategies. The study concludes that the history of temperance offers many options for the present. It will appeal to all interested in alcohol issues and the development of policy. JRF Drugs and alcohol research programme This series of publications examines the social dimensions of drug and alcohol use. It focuses on sensitive issues which are difficult for government-funded research to address, and on the implications for policy and practice. This publication can be provided in alternative formats, such as large print, Braille, audiotape and on disk. Please contact: Communications Department, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, The Homestead, 40 Water End, York YO30 6WP. Tel: 01904 615905. Email: [email protected] Temperance Its history and impact on current and future alcohol policy Virginia Berridge The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has supported this project as part of its programme of research and innovative development projects, which it hopes will be of value to policy makers, practitioners and service users. The facts presented and views expressed in this report are, however, those of the author and not necessarily those of the Foundation. Joseph Rowntree Foundation, The Homestead, 40 Water End, York YO30 6WP Website: www.jrf.org.uk Virginia Berridge Professor of History and Head, Centre for History in Public Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, University of London. © London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine 2005 First published 2005 by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation All rights reserved. Reproduction of this report by photocopying or electronic means for non- commercial purposes is permitted. Otherwise, no part of this report may be reproduced, adapted, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise without the prior written permission of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. ISBN 1 85935 419 X (paperback) ISBN 1 85935 420 3 (pdf: available at www.jrf.org.uk) A CIP catalogue record for this report is available from the British Library. Cover design by Adkins Design Prepared and printed by: York Publishing Services Ltd 64 Hallfield Road Layerthorpe York YO31 7ZQ Tel: 01904 430033; Fax: 01904 430868; Website: www.yps-publishing.co.uk Further copies of this report, or any other JRF publication, can be obtained either from the JRF website (www.jrf.org.uk/bookshop/) or from our distributor, York Publishing Services Ltd, at the above address. Contents Acknowledgements vi Summary vii 1 Introduction 1 2 Then and now: background and context 3 Changes over time in the aims and activities of temperance interests 3 Current policy issues: the Alcohol Harm Reduction Strategy (AHRSE) and the Licensing Act and local government 4 3 How policy interests saw the history of temperance 6 4 How to change drinking culture: the lessons from temperance 8 How to deal with crime and disorder 8 Local government and civic culture 13 Women and a positive role 16 Religion and a multicultural society 18 Better scientific messages 21 Education 25 5 Political dimensions: the lessons from temperance 28 Political alliances and possibilities 28 Working with industry 31 Learning from other countries 35 Learning from the history of other substances 36 6 Conclusion: implications for policy 37 References 38 Appendix 1: Aims of the project 41 Appendix 2: Historical literature review 42 Appendix 3: Interviews 44 Acknowledgements This project has been advised by a small provided bibliographic ideas and my particular committee consisting of Dr Betsy Thom of thanks go to Dr Ron Roizen who provided Middlesex University, Andrew McNeill of the many excellent suggestions from the US Institute of Alcohol Studies and Charlie Lloyd of perspective. I am grateful to Professor Griffith the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Their input Edwards for the ‘Dreadnought’ quote. I am has been valued and the report would have particularly grateful to Dr John Greenaway been the poorer without it. whose book on the politics of alcohol since 1830 Suzanne Taylor of the Centre for History in provides an unrivalled analysis of the Public Health searched for the historical complexities of licensing as a political issue in literature and initiated me in the ways of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. EndNote, and my thanks are due to her. The full Dr Greenaway gave a talk to the Joseph literature database which formed the historical Rowntree Foundation funded drug and alcohol basis of the project can now be accessed by seminar we run at the London School of application to the Centre for History in Public Hygiene and Tropical Medicine which was also Health at the London School of Hygiene and valuable for the purposes of this project. I gave a Tropical Medicine at www.lshtm.ac.uk/history talk based on the draft report at the AGM of the or through the library of the Institute of Alcohol National United Temperance Council and at the Studies. Prevention Research Center University of Our thanks are due to the librarians of the California at Berkeley and I am grateful to both Institute of Alcohol Studies, the London School audiences for their comments. of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, the British This report was written and revised in the Library, Senate House Library and the Wellcome first half of 2005 and the interviews were Library for the History and Understanding of completed at the end of 2004. Comments on the Medicine. Members of the email network of the policy situation mostly relate to that time. Alcohol and Temperance History Group vi Summary •Temperance has the image of a rigid and currently underused by comparison with moralistic movement which aimed at total the position religion held in relation to abstinence and with little relevance to the drink in the past. present. • Scientific messages are unclear and alliances •Temperance in fact had a more varied with criminal justice interests could be more agenda, including the idea of progressive firmly established. An ‘advocacy coalition’ restriction and modification of drinking. could have greater impact. •Temperance history shows that the issue of • Better public messages are needed, as in the cultural change is central. Temperance nineteenth century. These could involve a helped change drinking culture but also range of drinking options, including built on more general social change. Such abstinence. cultural change can be achieved in society • Political division on the drink issue may through avenues like the media, which have develop through licensing as it did in the changed their attitude to alcohol. nineteenth and twentieth centuries. There • The local dimension was important for will be, and are, opportunities for external temperance; current licensing reform offers coalitions to influence developments. local government and local action •Temperance interests in the past worked opportunities which temperance reformers with sections of the drinks trade to achieve fought for in the 1880s. moderate reform, and new alliances might •Women’s changed role in society and be possible in the present, given the greater independence has been under- or changing role of the industry. misused in the current debate on alcohol by • The history of allied policy areas like comparison with women’s past role in smoking, where policy has moved through relation to alcohol misuse. different stages and cultural change has • The role of religion in achieving cultural been achieved, offers a model for possible change in a multicultural society is also change for alcohol. vii 1 Introduction If someone refuses a drink at a party, they The detailed aims of the project are set out in usually feel obliged to preface the refusal with a Appendix 1 at the end of the report. The overall disclaimer: ‘Of course, I’m not teetotal, you aim was to look at the relevance of the history of know’. Temperance does not have a popular temperance to present-day alcohol policy. The image in the early twenty-first century. Most methods used were of two sorts: a literature people associate it with outdated attitudes, rigid review of published historical analyses of moralism, narrow religion and an temperance; and a series of interviews with key uncompromising attitude towards the actors and opinion formers in the present, consumption of drink. Temperance parties with examining their perceptions of temperance and no alcohol, only fruit juice and crisps do not fit their views of current policy. Interviewees well with the twenty-first-century lifestyle. ranged from civil servants involved with Temperance is a joke. When I mentioned to government alcohol strategy and licensing colleagues and others that I was working on the reform to an imam in Camden, representatives relevance of temperance to the present, many of alcohol campaign organisations and medical were dismissive.