2 CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
2.2 International Achievements in Sustainable Construction
The legal impact of the temperance movement as a whole has been
examined. This section will examine the public discourse surrounding the licensing reforms of the early 1870s in an effort to understand the qualitative character of the new system of regulation which the temperance movement helped to instigate. Do these legal frameworks owe more to prohibitionism or moral suasionism? And is the impact of either sufficient to refute Warner‟s judgment that the British temperance movement achieved very little?
5.1) “...to the spirits of just men more perfect”
Home Secretary Henry Bruce was the chief parliamentary backer of the Licensing Act 1872. Wiener presents Bruce as in agreement with Gladstone‟s description of the model citizen as possessing “self-command, self-control, respect for order, patience under suffering, confidence in the law, regard for superiors”.465 Gladstone made this remark as a description of those suitable for suffrage, but Wiener depicts Bruce as broadening its applicability to other areas of social life. He
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believed strongly in the use of prisons as correctional facilities and was also interested in reformatory schools for juvenile offenders. Interestingly, the biblical quotation inscribed on the Bruce family cemetery plot evokes this moral mission of social improvement; it reads “To God the Judge of all and to the spirits of just men more perfect”.466
The crucial issue relating to alcohol was how to make the spirits of men more perfect. Although The Era described Bruce as committed to diminishing drunkenness,467 he opposed prohibitory solutions in Parliament as well as Donald Dalrymple‟s 1870 proposal to give doctors the power to indefinitely detain habitual inebriates.468 The explanation seems to lie in Bruce‟s enduring faith in self-command and self-control; he stated that he had “no faith in any remedy for intemperance but the improved intelligence and morality of the people”.469
For Bruce, individuals were agents of behavioural self-reform rather than products of a deterministic social environment.
This faith in the responsible, self-improving citizen was not necessarily incompatible with the laissez-faire restrictions of the Beer Act 1830; responsible citizens do need to be regulated by the state. But, by the late 1860s and early 1870s, drinking and drunkenness were discussed in increasingly heightened moral tones. For example, The Times, which was generally opposed to the temperance
movement and licensing restrictions, complained of the nuisance and scandal of “our national drunkenness”.470
In a similar vein, Bruce was quoted by a group of
prohibitionists as saying that intemperance in Britain is “a blot in their social system
466 „Henry Bruce, 1st Baron of Aberdare‟, henry-bruce-1st-baron-aberdare.co.tv (accessed 24 March 2011).
467 „To Licensed Victuallers: The Licensing Question‟, The Era, 11 August 1872. 468 Wiener, Restructuring the Criminal, p.297.
469 Harrison, Drink and the Victorians, p.263.
163 and a disgrace to their civilisation”.471
The Hampshire Telegraph claimed that “England has always been a drunken nation”472
and the Birmingham Daily Post reported that “the French think we are a nation of drunkards”.473
The heightened alarm in these statements and their pejorative judgments on British drinking habits evoke both the self-denigration of temperance discourse (identified in Chapter Three) and, more fundamentally, the temperance movement‟s belief that all alcoholic drinks are in essence problematic. Public and political discourse was decreasingly
hospitable to the old idea that beer was a dietary essential and only adulterated beer and spirits produced social problems. As “our national drunkenness” was seen to result from beer as much as gin, so it was deemed necessary for the Wine and Beerhouse Act 1869 and the Licensing Act 1872 to bring the regulation of beer, ale and cider back into line with the more proscriptive treatment of alcoholic spirits. With the problem treated increasingly seriously, the self-control of the responsible citizen did not supply sufficient regulation.
But the Government was keen to ensure that this expansion of regulation would not be seen to constitute an excessive intervention. There was a pervasive popular belief during this period that you cannot or should not make individuals sober by force of law. The normative and practical aspects of this position often overlapped or coincided. That said, the practical inefficacy of state-enforced sobriety was often highlighted in discussions of the effects of (prohibitionist) Maine law,474 and the political or constitutional dangers inherent in such a project were articulated as liberal warnings of the possibility that a powerful or popular group (in this case teetotallers)
471 „The Licensing Act‟, Hampshire Telegraph and Sussex Chronicle, 17 April 1872. 472 „Portsmouth, Saturday, May 11‟, Hampshire Telegraph and Sussex Chronicle, 11 May
1872.
473 „Independent Order of Good Templars‟, Birmingham Daily Post, 10 September 1872. 474 „The Government Licensing Bill‟, Leeds Mercury, 17 April 1872.
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may be able to force their will onto the disempowered or numerically weaker in society.475 Lord Kimberley, the key promoter of the Act in the House of Lords, thus argued that people cannot be compelled by law to abstain from alcohol476 and The Times supported this position by claiming that “no moral work was ever achieved without personal agencies” and “an appeal to the free will... of our race”.477
The intensifying view of all alcoholic drinks as problematic meant adhering to the doctrine of minimal government was not feasible, but overly stringent legal measures, such as prohibition, were also rejected. To the Government and The Times at least, state- intervention was no worthy substitute for self-improvement.
People could not be coerced into sobriety any more than they could be left to govern themselves. Nevertheless, there was a discernable belief in this period that the state could practically and legitimately use the law to limit the temptations of drink. In Parliament, Bruce complained that:
At present, at most hours of the day, men and women are invited by illuminated Publichouses to spend a few pence on a dram of Liquor. The society and attractions of the House invite them linger, and they are tempted to consume far more than is good for them.478
Bringing such premises under magistrates‟ control, giving the police the power to enter them and reducing their hours of trade would, it was believed, reduce the “temptation to drink in excess”.479
In a speech prior to the Preston by-election in 1872, Liberal candidate Mr German claimed that although people cannot be made sober by Act of Parliament it is possible to limit temptation and so make drunkenness more difficult. German went on to support earlier pub closing times by arguing that “the hour between 11 and 12 was a time of temptation, when very often the seeds of
475 „The Working Men and the Licensing Act‟, Ipswich Journal, 17 December 1872. 476 „The Government Licensing Bill‟, Leeds Mercury, 17 April 1872.
477 „That portion of the British public...‟, The Times, 9 August 1872. 478 „The Licensing Bill was appointed for...‟, The Times, 7 August 1872. 479 Ibid.
165 bad habits grew”.480
Reducing rather than removing the temptation of drink was deemed by the Government and their supporters to be a tolerable restriction on personal liberties.
The creation of legal frameworks amenable to behavioural change is relevant to earlier discussion of the causation of drink problems. It was noted that debates within the temperance movement pitted moral suasionists, arguing that
intemperance resulted from individual moral failings, against prohibitionists, who believed that the (legal) environment was largely responsible. In a sense, restrictions on the drinks industry engendered by the 1872 Act implicitly attribute some causal importance to the external environment. But in terms of solving the problem of “our national drunkenness”, the dominant position reflected a belief that the individual should be the primary unit of social change. During an 1872 meeting on the subject of licensing reform, Mr Straight MP spoke of “the great bulk of the nation” for whom “freedom of action” was a crucial consideration.481
Equally, The Times asserted that “we shall not be able to check, or even much diminish, the continual stream of besotted votaries to the gin palace; at least, not by law”; 482
external stimuli cannot effect the sort of moral improvements needed. These arguments, and the form of governance they support, are demonstrable of the belief that individuals are not constituted purely by their environments but are actively engaged in processes of self-formation. As in moral suasionism, behavioural reform is therefore achieved by fostering ethical self-reformation.
So, the reforms of the mid-1860s and early 1870s, culminating in the Licensing Act 1872, established a system whereby drink was governed through
480 „Preston Election‟, Preston Guardian, 7 September 1872. 481 „The Government Licensing Bill‟, The Times, 2 July 1872.
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restriction and encouragement. Contained within these frameworks was an inherent problematisation of all alcoholic drinks, a heightened belief in the gravity of the drink problem, a valuation of persuasive above coercive tactics, and corresponding efforts to reduce rather than remove the temptation of drink (in order to help the self-
improving citizen). Given this characterisation, the post-1872 system of alcohol governance begins to appear as distinctly suasionist in flavour.483
5.2) Moral Obligations and Behavioural Choices
The fostering of behavioural change did not end with the legal regulation of the temptation of drink. Arguing that people cannot be forced to adopt more
moderate drinking habits, Lord Kimberley spoke of the need to persuade individuals to govern their own behaviour.484 To an extent, the exhortations to self-improvement and the condemnations of drunkenness which are apparent in Bruce‟s rhetoric, as well as public and political discourse more generally, constitute a form of official persuasion. Similarly, Harcourt‟s commendation of self-denial,485
which was strongly reinforced by temperance advocates,486 may be seen as a stimulus toward
behavioural change. Other politicians were more specific in their advice: Charles Turner MP asked workmen “to discourage intemperance by giving the cold-shoulder to any of their fellow-workmen who were addicted to drinking heavily”487
and Lord Kimberley reiterated that people cannot be forced into sobriety before urging
483 That is not to say, necessarily, that Bruce and others were converts to the suasionist
cause; rather that when the Government‟s faith in self-reform met an agenda for licensing reform and a problematisation of alcohol, both of which had been advanced by the dual strands of the temperance movement, the results were far closer to suasionism than prohibitionism.
484 „News of the Day‟, Birmingham Daily Post, 13 May 1872. 485 „Public Meeting in Oxford‟, The Times, 31 December 1872.
486 See: Livesey, Joseph, „The Alliance and Permissive Bill‟, Preston Guardian, 26 July 1873. 487 „Conservatism in Lancashire‟, Reynolds’s Daily Newspaper, 8 September 1872.
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teetotallers to “persevere in spreading the rules of temperance as far as they can”.488 It should be stressed that this governmental project to persuade and encourage within restrictive legal frameworks cannot be equated with the liberal notion of free choice. It is significant that even legally permitted forms of drinking could be morally censured. To elaborate, Bruce left individuals with the legal freedom, within certain administrative and behavioural parameters, to drink as much as they wanted; but by stating that drunkenness is “a disgrace to their civilisation”, he left no doubt about the officially designated moral parameters in which this freedom was constructed.
The construction of behavioural choices about drinking with reference to officially encouraged and morally censured forms of behaviour was not restricted to political discourse. Echoing the Temperance Society‟s envelope of the 1850s, an F. Allen and Sons Cocoa Chocolate and Confectionary advert produced in the 1880s featured illustrations connecting the avoidance of drink to general wellbeing (see Figure Six). The image “Intemperance and Poverty” shows a slouched man,
clutching a bottle, in a bare room with a shabbily-dressed, miserable-looking family. This picture is juxtaposed with another of the same family entitled “Temperance and Prosperity”. In the second picture, they appear cheerful and well-dressed, and are sat at a table in a well-furnished room, enjoying (what presumably is) cocoa chocolate and cakes. The implication is clear: the choice of hot chocolate above alcoholic drinks leads to a wealthier, healthier and happier life for you and your family. These examples of political rhetoric and advertising demonstrate that the moral construction of choices about alcohol had ceased to be purely the business of temperance societies. From the 1870s onwards, more numerous and diffuse social
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agents were involved in the transposing of binary behavioural categories onto choices about drinking.
So, individuals may have been superficially presented with a behavioural choice, but in moral terms there was no doubt about which type of conduct they should and should not choose. Instead of a legal regime that precludes the
possibility of deviance, the Licensing Act 1872 is better understood as a regulatory framework allowing for a series of behavioural choices that are constructed in moral terms as either approved or condemned, right or wrong, or good or evil. Interestingly, „the wrong choice‟ about alcohol, which leads to drunkenness, continues to be legally defined in a fashion not unbecoming of the moral suasionist temperance movement. Neale v RMJE [1984] decreed that the offences of drunkenness created by Section 12 of the Licensing Act 1872 refer to persons who have taken intoxicating liquor to the extent that “steady self-control” is affected.489
Subsequent cases, such as R v Tagg [2001] and Carroll v DPP [2009], have applied the same definition of
drunkenness and so the legal eminence of self-control is discernible.490 The fact that offences contained within the 1872 legislation are still employed shows some legal impact; but the affinity of the dominant legal interpretation of drunkenness with the notion of individual self-control, so evident in Victorian political and suasionist
temperance discourse, indicates the deeper qualitative impact which the temperance movement had over the way alcohol is viewed and regulated in this country.
But, can regulatory licensing reform really be connected to the project to morally regulate alcohol? In some ways, these licensing reforms appear diminutive
489 Neale v RMJE [1984] Crim LR 485.
490 Carroll v DPP [2009] EWHC 554; R v Tagg [2001] EWCA Crim 1230.These cases dealt
with distinct, separate issues and are cited here purely to illustrate and provide some support for the contention that the definition of drunkenness as loss of “steady self-control” is now legally well-established.
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next to the demands of prohibitionists, whose desire for the state to legally
restructure social life can appear as a firmer conviction in the need to ethically reform people‟s behaviour. However, Ruonavaara has sought to distance moral regulation from Corrigan and Sayer‟s conception of a top-down governmental action and
incorporated concerns for self-formation and self-governance of identity and conduct into the concept (as discussed in Chapter One). Ruonavaara thus recognises an enhanced role for non-state actors and persuasive tactics. From this perspective, the official promotion of the temperance movement‟s model of the sober, respectable working man is an ethical subjectivity that aims to engender, but not force,
behavioural change. If a person comes to see himself as disrespectable and immoral due to his drinking, he may be persuaded to change his behaviour. Teetotal
suasionist Joseph Livesey argued that alcohol regulation should restrain and not force, citing high duties and licensing controls as examples of legitimate legal restraint.491 But within these restraints, “people are fit to be made better, and they can be made better”,492 or, to use the terminology of Bruce‟s epitaph, made “more perfect”. The establishment of restrictive, non-prohibitive, legal frameworks around alcohol can thus be seen as an attempt to encourage behavioural reformation. Following Ruonavaara, this project is consistent with the characteristics of moral regulation.
The problematisation of all alcohol, the normative saturation of behavioural discourse and the focus on ethical self-formation all testify to the salience of moral regulation within the model of alcohol governance established by the Licensing Act 1872. Moral regulation must be construed, therefore, as something broader than just
491 Livesey, Joseph, „The Alliance and the Permissive Bill‟, Preston Guardian, 19 July 1873. 492 Livesey, Joseph, „The Alliance and the Permissive Bill‟, Preston Guardian, 26 July 1873.
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legal regulation. Akin to the legal moralist Lord Devlin (who will be discussed further in Chapter Six), prohibitionists seemed to conflate legal regulation and moral
regulation, believing that without the former the latter could not be realised. To suasionists, however, legal regulation was never the sum total of their aims. Their focus on self-denial and self-control indicate that there is a practical and moral currency invested in personal or extra-legal regulations. In 1841, temperance campaigner W. Hunt argued that “every Christian professor is laid under a moral obligation… to abstain for his own benefit as well as the benefit of others”.493 The significance of this quotation is that for suasionists, unlike prohibitionists, a moral obligation takes precedence over a legal obligation. Governance of the drinking habits of the population does not, therefore, end at the boundaries of legal
imperatives but extends to broader areas where regulation is constituted largely by moral compulsion. Choices are delineated by legal parameters of permissible and indictable conduct; but within the space afforded by these parameters, the
persuasive faculties of moral discourse construct individual behavioural decisions.
5.3) Reflecting on Attitudinal/Heuristic Changes
It is therefore possible to reappraise the impact of the temperance movement. Ruonavaara‟s distinction of coercive and persuasive tactics focuses attention on the division in the temperance movement between the externally-driven, coercive social change sought by prohibitionism and the behavioural self-reformation promoted by moral suasionists. It is the latter type of moral regulation which is most pervasive; the system of governance established by the early 1870s appears as an active,
moderately interventionist promotion of individual behavioural change by the state. The Licensing Act 1872 in particular sought to aid total sobriety by establishing legal
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rules more amenable to improving the “intelligence and morality” of the population. Given that this statute constituted a significant break with the Beer Act‟s model of alcohol governance, it is defensible to assert that the British temperance movement, particularly its suasionist strand, does posses some enduring social legacy.