Liberal Vision

Binge-drinking Britain or the New Temperance Movement

Rowdy behaviour; fights with police officers; urinating and vomiting in the street. It’s just another day in binge-drinking Britain.

Except that binge-drinking Britain appears to be a myth, according to a recent Harris poll conducted for the Metro.

The poll of 1,029 adults, conducted between 7 and 14 September, found that only one in ten drank more than 15 units of alcohol a week (over the recommended limit for women – men are recommended to drink no more than 21), while almost one in three drank no alcohol at all and almost as many drank a mere one to four units.

According to the Metro, This is not the first study to question dire warnings about an escalation in alcohol abuse in Britain. Earlier this month, the British Beer and Pub Association said the amount of alcohol knocked back by Britons fell at its sharpest rate in 62 years in 2009.

So what explains the disparity between the media obsession with “Binge-drinking” and the recent decline in drinking and apparent moderation amongst our population?

Well, of course we have to be cautious about the findings of one poll. And as the BBPA’s noted, alcohol consumption may have fallen recently (which may be either a return to, or a temporary shift from, trend). We also need to be aware that it is these days very easy to send a film crew down to a town centre and film a few dozen people behaving badly, and extrapolate this to the wider country. There may very well be scores of towns with scores of people passing out or becoming aggressive, but in a population of 60 million that is still a tiny minority.

However, we have also to be conscious of the many and varied groups that benefit from spreading health-scares. From quangocrats and the health establishment to politicians and anti-drink charities, there is a new temperance movement on the march, many of which are gaining wealth and power by attacking individual liberty.

Lest there be any doubt about the extent to which these people despise and patronise the general public, let us quote Don Shenker, of Alcohol Concern, who said that the Metro figures could be explained by the fact that “most people find it hard to remember how much they’ve drunk…” In other words, he would rather assume that the respondents must have had alcohol-induced memory-loss than accept that the Harris poll challenged his negative view of British society.

The new temperance movement is just part of a drift away from a tolerant and free society to one where powerful elites use legislation to dictate how the masses behave, all in the name of our own good and the good of the public finances. One can only hope that the new coalition government has more faith in, and respect for, the general public than their Labour predecessors.

This is important not only for our free society, but also for the Lib Dems future electoral prospects. When the Liberal Party was thrashed by the Tories in the 1874 General Election, William Gladstone blamed the Victorian drinks industry for its campaign against his government’s licensing restrictions. “We have been drowned in a torrent of gin and beer,” he lamented. Perhaps what actually washed his government away was the voters’ resentment at the Liberals’ attempt to interfere in their private lives.

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