BRITISH LIQUOR INQUIRY.

Evening Star, Issue 20255, 16 August 1929, Page 8

BRITISH LIQUOR INQUIRY.

“Mr Ministers have decided that the time has come to investigate the whole field of legislation relating to the sale and supply of intoxicating liquor, and on their recommendation I propose to appoint at an early date | Commissioners for this purpose.” So stated a paragraph in the King’s Speech at the opening of the British Parliament, and the Labour Government has lost no time in proceeding with the appointment of its Commissioners. Among the many other important proposals with which it was included the pronouncement made in regard, to the liquor business seems to have attracted the least attention at Home in discussions of the Government’s programme, and Mr MacDonald did not refer to it in the expansion which he. made of other parts of the Speech in the Address-in-Reply debate. It was in accordance, however, with a pledge which the Prime Minister had given during the election campaign; and the presence in the new Ministry of several members who were known to be strong temperance reformers—notably the dislike which Mr Snowden, the new Chancellor of the Exchequer, was known to have for “the trade”—made it a foregone conclusion that its ideas for licensing legislation would be very different from those of the last Conservative Government. Mr Churchill had promised “the trade” a reduction of 25 pdr cent, on publicans’ license duties, at a cost to the revenue of nearly a million a year, and a concession to those who are known as off license holders to sell single half bottles of spirits. These advantages were to be given to “the trade” if the Government was returned at the elections, and when it was not returned an end to that programme was taken for granted. The setting up of a. Commission to make investigations in a field of which, according to the most ardent reformers, all the conditions are as well known now as they can ever be, instead of bringing forward legislation right away, is a sample of the caution which has been the Government’s attitude to no small number of its domestic problems. The variety of inquiries and of surveys which the King’s Speech forecasted induced Mr Baldwin to make the comment that the whole of.them might have been put into lone paragraph; “My Ministers are going to think.” The comment was unfortunate, since it provoked the retort that that itself would be a new thing. Extreme legislation on the licensing question would bo unlikely to receive more than a minority’s approval when, owing to the high prices of heavilytaxed liquor and sharply-restricted hours—owing also, wo may hope, to the natural amelioration of manners—England every year tends to become more sober. It would be a wonderful licensing system, on the other hand, that could not be improved. The difficulty with Mr MacDonald’s Commission threatens to be to get agreeinentMrom it on all but the smallest changes. It will consist of twenty members, including representatives of “the trade” on one side and life-long temperance reformers on the other, with a big body of more or less general opinion as a buffer between those extremes, Suggestions for an order of reference made by a journal with strong temperance leanings included the following:—(1) A bona fide investigation of the experiment in State management and ownership of the liquor trade as carried out in the Carlisle area, in order that the futile report of the Southborough Commission may be set aside and definite conclusions on the facts of that interesting experiment be available. (2) An examination of the results of the limited experience of the practical working of the Scottish Local Option Act. (3) A careful survey of the grave problem of the rapid growth of liquor-supplying clubs, A consideration of the experience of “ hours of sale ” gained tinder the 1921 Licensing Act, particularly so far as the closing hour at night for liquor bars in London is concerned, and the advisability of a permanent settlement of the closing hour in the metropolis. (5) An inquiry into the extent to which the Board of Education’s syllabus on hygiene and food is used in the schools. The actual order of reference is couched in general terms, but those are wide enough to include all the subjects suggested. They are wide enough to include even a study of Prohibition, if that remedy for all ills, in the eyes of its enthusiasts, were less repugnant to all' British tradition. The Commission will waste its time, and invite a score of reports, instead of one, or two, or three, if it goes to America to judge how that system is, working. 'Without that diversion the Labour Government will be lucky if it is still in office when its findings are received, since a period of two or three years is set down for its investigations.