The Opening
By GWYN THOMAS
LAST autumn's poll on the Sunday opening of pubs in Wales showed us the map of rejec- tion plain. The entire South-East, the crowded valleys and the coastal towns plumped for a removal of the traditional padlock and recalled malt from its Sabbath bolthole in the hills. The areas where the Welsh language and the dark truss of chapeldom are still potent voted heavily against any further anointing of the glottis.
Behind this situation there are some odd per- versities. Carmarthenshire, a county prone to operatic moods of violence, where the collective attitude seems eternally poised on the lip of some round of jocose licence, and there is the highest proportion of drunken offenders in the country, voted the pubs dry on Sundays. As did Pembroke- shire, which sounds and feels so much more English than, let us say, Cardiganshire, and con- tains our best-known tourist centres. In the case of Carmarthenshire it was probably a dose of guilt about past excesses and some anxiety about what might happen to the formidable West Welsh Id if it were given a wider lagoon of ale to swim on.
There is also the possibility that the poll might have taken place on one of those market days when the pubs of Carmarthen town stay open all day and . promote a dense municipal haze. Many pencil hands might have been unsteady and capable of putting the cross against the wrong proposal. As for Pembrokeshire, they might have felt unable to accommodate within the boundaries of one year and one small county two such enormous emotional indulgences as cheering welcome to German tanks and throw- ing open the inns on the seventh day.
The new licensing map gives a sharp definition to the mumbling prejudices of the separationists in the South who have long regarded the Welsh- speaking nationalists as a crew of mischief- making Mafiose holding the language as a loaded assertion of power at the heads of the poor mavericks who have slipped into the English stream.
A strong physical image has emerged' to supplement the old vague emotional spites. Many feel that this clear split into six-day and seven- day drinking weeks could be used to widen the current campaign to rationalise the pattern of Welsh counties, to incorporate those counties where public services are so thin on the ground they can afford only one fire a year, into groups that could afford two. There is an urge to resolve the immemorial bickering by one master-stroke. A county reserved for people who speak Welsh and hate drink. Another for people who speak Welsh and can tolerate a gill. Another for people who speak only English but would like to see taverns gutted and licensees jugged. And a broad swathe of the lusty, libertarian South for those who would like to hear the very last of Glyndwr's tongue and have the sort of Sunday N.,11 ich has not yet managed to corrupt or de- ment the yeomen of the Cotswolds. Between these zones freedom buses would be allowed to run on one day a month with amplifiers through
which one could discharge without hindrance the rancour and abuse, more pungent than the leek, which have been our principal intellectual exer- cise since a dying language, cretinously heavy industries, and the gelding knives of Calvinism put paid to our grace and serenity.
So there we have it. One half of Wales with its mouth open on a Sunday, drinking. The other half with one eye closed, winking. In the dry lands between Saturday and Monday, the ale- seekers will have still to slouch furtively along The old, accustomed mole-runs. `Go to the back door. Knock three times and say that your father shook the hand.of the bard John Ceiriog Hughes.' You may not get a drink but you will probably have an interesting chat about John Ceiriog Hughes.
Some nice aggravated bits of bitterness emerged from the contest Tales were heard of tactics bordering on terror employed by the entrenched pious. We heard of Salvation Army hands with augmented brass sections trying to blow known topers away from the booths. In the more sullen villages of the slate-belt waxen effigies of men who had been heard saying a kindly word for drink and lax living were pierced with needles honed on leather-bound hymnals.
The minority of hedonists in those counties that voted against opening are sorer than ever. While Wales as a whole voted clearly in favour of a more relaxed Sunday, they are denied a lib- erty by the local self-denial set. It is bound to set up a brisker urge towards the formation of clubs. Twenty-five people can form a club and get a licence. So if, anywhere north of Brecon- shire and west of Glamorgan, you see a group of twenty-four people looking expectant, sign any bit of paper they might thruSt at you. It could start a gusher.
The first Sunday of freedom was as quiet as a mouse. Landlords gave everyone a free drink, and this tended to give the proceedings a stupefied_ air, for Wales has always been sparing with this kind of gesture. The temperance fans among the aldermen seemed to double the numbers and alertness of traffic pblicemen. They must have expected an overspill of debauchery of the sort one associates with raiding Cossacks. Behind every other hedge a policeman on a motor-bike fixed the eye of Billy Sunday on anyOne travelling at more than fifteen miles an hour.
On that first Sunday club attendances took a beating. But the next Sunday the defectors were back, grinning like foolish lemmings. Pub land- lords have been grossly disappointed by the little use so far made of the new facility. The eighty years of repression undoubtedly killed some part of the nerve of desire. It is one of the sadder instances of human suggestibility. If sex were suspended for one whole year in seven, on the same principle that desiccated one day in seven, and then after several decades we managed to have the ordinance struck off the book, it would need sharp electrical treatment to get the libido back into its old steady stride.
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