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What
we'll be losing if pubs disappear
This article first appeared in the
Propel Info newsletter on January 20, 2023
A
sociologist walks into a bar. It’s no joke. They sit down. They watch.
They listen. On a nearby table, an elderly gentleman wearing headphones
is doing the crossword. After a while the afternoon light dims and he
reaches into his satchel, pulls out a small desk lamp and positions it
over the newspaper alongside his phone, a calculator, a clipboard and a
bag of carrots. He switches it on and takes a sip of ale before resuming
cogitations on 19 down.
The
sociologist is fascinated. In their mind squirms the germ of an academic
paper – which appeared in December 2022’s edition of the Sociological
Review under the heading ‘Social
space and non-places: the community role of the traditional British
pub’.
Before I come to that article, let’s observe the observer. As far as I
know, sociologists started going into pubs in a professional capacity in
the late 1930s, as part of Mass Observation’s project to discover what
working people actually did all day.
Their
observations in pubs in Bolton are compiled in a book called The
Pub and the People,
and as George Orwell, an early reviewer, pointed
out,
behind it lay an intimation that pub culture was disappearing, to be
“gradually replaced by the passive drug-like pleasures of the cinema
and the radio”. A similar sense of imminent loss has generated a fresh
scrutiny of pub life since pandemic lockdowns (and now the
cost-of-living crisis) focused minds on the fragility of the hospitality
sector. If we lose our pubs, then what, exactly, (beyond the financial
contribution) will we be losing?
In
a lyrical little film released by the Campaign for Real Ale this week, The
Meaning of Pubs,
journalist Jess Mason muses on this question over a pint or two. It’s
a slippery subject. Her eyes flicker as she seeks the right words to
express her pleasure. Something ineffable escapes. Alongside the poetic,
there are more scientific approaches. On the same day, celebrity medic
Michael Mosley devoted his Just
One Thing
show on Radio 4 to how social connections improve health. Even fleeting
encounters with other human beings can get your endorphins going and
even lengthen your life, he concludes. Somehow, he manages to avoid
mentioning that pubs are an excellent facilitator for this. But we know
that.
The
British Institute of Innkeepers’ #notjustapub
campaign emphasises the social value of pubs, and it’s working with a
sociologist, Dr Claire Markham at Nottingham Trent University, to come
up with substantial evidence about the part pubs play in giving
communities their historical identities. And Dr Tom Thurnell-Read,
perhaps best known for his studies of stag parties, has turned his
attention post-pandemic to how
pubs address the problem of loneliness
among older people.
‘Social space and non-places’ is another intervention in this
debate. The sociologist here, Reid Allen of Goldsmiths, initially set
out to compare how people use two kinds of pub, a small local and a
large chain house. But it was the latter, a Wetherspoons, that really
caught his imagination. While the local conformed to expectations as
“a space of communal domesticity” and conviviality, a second living
room for its regulars, the social connections at the ‘Spoons were more
tenuous, “restricted to gestures and brief exchanges”.
Yet
this space was socially valuable too, as a kind of adaptable
“non-place” that people could make their own. Allen’s interviewees
among the lone customers frequently mention how “comfortable” they
feel there. “These new corporate pub spaces,” he concludes, “are
not devoid of meaning or domestic use. Instead, we see regular patrons
relishing the relative space, comfort and privacy.” For all its flaws,
I’ve always thought the success of J D Wetherspoon comes down not just
to cheap beer and food, but the way its pubs provide a kind of neutral
space customers can make into almost anything they want.
And I like the idea that pubs might give you privacy as well as
sociability. There’s a lot of attention paid to the great work
publicans and their teams do to generate interactions, to effectively
create communities by hosting events and gently pushing people into each
other’s company. But sometimes I just want to be left alone with my
pint. Cerys Matthews, for her show on Radio 6 this Sunday, has been
asking Twitter where we go to think, expecting followers to come up with
quiet bucolic locations. My answer (which she ‘liked’) was “the
pub”.
There’s a footnote to the ‘Spoons study. The branch where a chap can
feel comfortable bringing his own desk lamp is the Coronet in Holloway
Road, North London, and it’s one of the Spoons currently up for sale.
I hope someone will take it on, but if they don’t, we now have a
clearer idea of what we’ll be losing.
Phil
Mellows, January 20, 2023
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