Pub scene may change

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33093, 7 December 1972, Page 17

Pub scene may change

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter —Copyright) LONDON, December 6. Britain’s timehonoured liquor laws have been recommended for a drastic shake-up which would keep bars open longer and break with the traditions of the sixteenth - century alehouse.

Under the proposed new laws, drinkers would be allowed more time in the establishments variously known as taverns, inns, and

public houses—pubs for short.

But alongside the pubs would spring up a new kind of establishment more like the cafe-bars of the European continent. In these places, children could eat ice cream alongside their alcohol-imbib-ing elders. Such an arrangement is now almost unknown on the British drinking scene, where pubs are for adults only and —despite some diversity in recent times—still principally devoted to the sale of beer and spirits. The changes were recommended by a Government commission, headed by a

former Government Minister, Lord Erroll, which spent 19 months surveying British drinking habits. If accepted they could come into effect late next year.

The proposals are certain to run into heavy opposition both in and out of Parliament from temperance interests who have kept pub hours firmly rationed since the days of World War I.

That was when it was argued that too much liquor might divert the minds of the munitions workers from the war at hand in France. Restrictions of some kind on drinking hours go even further back—to 1604. Drink shops have required an official licence in England since 1552.

The present rules stipulate that most pubs must close for at least two hours in the afternoon and shut up for the night by 11 p.m., earlier on Sundays. The Erroll Commission suggested opening hours should stretch from 10 a.m. to midnight, seven days a week. At present, most pubkeepers fee! obliged to stay open all through the permitted hours. The Erroll commission suggested they should pick their own times of opening within the new limits, according to what the trade will bear. This would remove the afternoon dry spell which baffles tourists and drives Britons in their thousands to join drink clubs with special licences.

Lord Erroll insisted at a press conference that the changes were proposed not just to please tourists but to benefit Britons as a whole.

He said that it would be up to an individual bar-keeper to decide if he wanted the new type of licence which would admit children.

The commission envisaged a type of establishment which would cater for light refreshments and beverages like tea and coffee which are now rarely served in pubs. Lord Erroll told reporters that he hoped the legislation, if accepted, might come in during the 1973-74 Parliamentary session. By that time Britain will be firmly in the European Common Market whose members generally have more liberal liquor laws. There was swift opposition from anti-drink groups and—as usual in Britain—from the drink trade itself. The breweries and pub keepers argued that longer opening hours would mean more work with much the same return.

“We doubt,” said a spokesman for the Brewers’ Society, “that the new rules will mean Imore alcohol is consumed."