T HE Bishop of Liverpool's Bill, as has been said, is
the last word in schemes of temperance reform. The authors have tried to rally to it the greatest possible amount of support by providing something for everybody ; they give a chance in the lottery of local option to those who want nothing to be done, a chance to those who want " disinterested " management, and a chance to those who want Prohibition.
Local Option is the cord which binds together people who believe in quite different and even contradictory reforms. A Prohibitionist has nothing fundamentally in common with a man who desires that the State should take over the drink trade, for he thinks that the State by so doing is touching the accursed thing and, worse still, trying to perpetuate it. Nevertheless, many people of rival opinions have joined together in the hope that by propaganda in the Local Option areas they may be able to get their own way, whatever it may be.
And it must be admitted that for the believer in " disinterested " management the prize offered is well worth winning. I must explain why this is so. The three options provided by the Bill are, in the language of the Bill itself:— (1) No change.
(2) Reorganization (i.e., " disinterested " management or State control exercised through a Board- of Management more or less on the lines now in force at Carlisle).
(3) No licence (i.e., Prohibition ih the area).
A memorandum issued with the Bill says, incidentally, " Nor is an area voting either for no licence or for reorganization committed to such system in perpetuity."
These words suggest that the voters have full powers to ring the changes as they please if they come to the conclusion after due trial that any one of the three different experiments is unsatisfactory. Yet it is clear from the Bill that full powers are not really given. If once the voters have tried " reorganization " they have no power to go back to the present system. They would then be allowed only the alternative between State beer and ho beer. I am not arguing here whether that provision is good or bad, but I must say that the sentence in the memorandum which I have quoted has the air of having been written by someone who was more anxious to persuade than to inform.
These remarks show how Local Option has obtained a fresh and rather adventitious importance. I have just been reading a little book by Lord Meston entitled Drink, and I find that Lord Meston (who, by the way, rejects State purchase for the whole country as out of the question on financial grounds) applauds Local Option because, as a Liberal, he likes its decentralizing tendencies. The Parliamentary machine, he says, is at present clogged by centralization ; there is a constantly growing interference from Whitehall. Local Option, in his opinion. Fuld enable the finance of reform to be " built up gradually " ; it would afford a variety of experience and experiment ; it would enable local opinion " to get down to local facts " and would thus develop responsibility.
So much for the virtues of Local Option. But there is much more to be said on the other side. It has been objected—for so many years that one is almost weary of hearing the objection—that Local Option is a form of " class legislation." No doubt this criticism has often been carried too far and has been turn:d into a phrase of prejudice designed to make the wage-earner round upon those who would do him out of his rights. All the same, there is truth in it, as there generally is in sayings which have become popular or proverbial. The public house is " the poor man's club "—another overworked saying—and I for one shrink from the idea that people who are well-to-do, who can drink when they like in their houses, and more or less when they like in comfort- able clubs, should be able to turn the vote against those whose only club is the " pub." Nothing will make me think that that is fair. I will not deal on those lines unless the wage-earner is able to vote against my cellar when I vote against his " pub."
The Local Optionists, it must be said, contemplate preventing any too arbitrary overruling of one class by another by making the voting areas large enough to ensure that the voting shall be representative of all sorts and conditions of men. This modifies, but does not by any means remove, the objection.
Nor does Local Option suppress drinking where sup- pression is most needed. The tendency is for areas where there was never any excess to accept all the restrictions they can, and for areas where restriction is obviously required to vote for remaining as they are.
The drunkards vote for drink, in fact. It is not my intention to enter upon the desert of statistics, but anyone who is interested enough to examine the figures can see for himself that drinking has not been reduced by Local Option in Canada, Australia and New Zealand. In New Zealand Local Option has been replaced by a National Vote. In Scotland the convictions for drunken- ness have decreased, but in the same period the convictions- showed a corresponding decrease in England, where there is no Local Option. In an article in the English Review in 1924 Lord Salyesell said that the grocer in wet areas in Scotland found if extremely profitable to deliver liquor from house to hone' in neighbouring dry areas. I do not know whether Lord Salvesen was right in speculating that for this reason the " dry " areas were drinking more than they had ever drunk before, but it is at least-credible. Liquor delivered from house to house, and probably not arriving with precise regularity, would be bought in larger quantities than in a public house. And let us never forget that wlic" a man wants to carry drink to his home he finds the t spirits are much more portable than beer. That is to saw, he is definitely encouraged to buy the more harmful drink. Lord Meston admits that the Scottish experience has shown the danger of making the areas too small ; " a .short stroll " takes a toper from a dry area into a wet one. With undesigned irony he writes in the same book of the joyful expectation of diverting money from public houses to " healthier recreations," among which he mentions eliarabanes. Most of the drunkenness I have seen in the past few years has been among charabanc parties. It is the fashion either to stop at a public house for drinks every few miles or to carry a cargo of drink in the chara- bane. This leads me on to say that a certain kind of reformer seems to have failed entirely to bring his schemes into relation with the facts of to-day. We live in a highly mobile age. The motor-car, not to say the bicycle, would make the necessarily narrow limits of Local Option areas almost meaningless. It would im- port confusion into all by finally upsetting the idea that any area can be master of itself.
Besides, what about the roadside inn, the proper function of which is to serve the traveller ? What right would an area have to say to all the rest of England, " There is nothing for you here. Even if you have an accident and are brought in half-dead you shall not touch a drop of drink anywhere in this area " ? Just when the roads are reviving, are the inns to be thrust back from the achievements which ought to be theirs and ought to be recorded in due time by a new Macaulay ? Let it be assumed, however, for the sake of argument, that Local Option is a success in Scotland. Even so, the small success it has gained is bought at the price of a general sense of uncertainty and instability. And so it would be everywhere. Who is going to put money into the improvement of a public-house knowing that every four years it will be liable to sentence of death ? Who will be encouraged to turn a disgusting drinking shop into a decent tavern ? No private person, of course. For hint all improvement would be practically prohibited. It may be answered that the State would not trouble about the uncertainty. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, I think, would. But anyhow the Bishop of Liverpool's Bill does not ban the private trader in drink—it only prevents him from doing his duty to the public.
The Bill raises before me a picture of all quiet and decent local regulations being broken down by bodies of drinkers rushing from one area to another and of the brewers being in effect compelled to keep all their houses (however bad, however much unlike the excellently transformed houses at Carlisle) just as they are.
I resent such a prospect. I want something to happen. I want all-round and quick improvement. On those who think that State purchase of the whole Trade is not practical politics a tremendous obligation rests to bring the brewers up to the mark and insist that they shall be better public servants.
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