Personal Blogs

It’s an interesting campaign because of its nostalgia; it speaks to a Britain that no longer exists (if it ever did), one that a past generation desperately clings on to. It’s not a policy that is aimed at the Britain we live in today but a fictional one that a growing number of Britons have never recognised.

Let me elaborate.

 

In his new book ‘A shellshocked nation: Britain between the wars’ historian Alwyn Turner writes about the significant changes in British culture in the aftermath of the First World War, changes that were both technological and cultural.

 

On the technological side of things the immediate aftermath witnessed, firstly, the rise of cinema whose impact witnessed the death of variety (and prior to that music hall), followed by the advent of radio which changed cultural behaviour.

 

Cinema goers had moved on from the somewhat simplistic and, arguably, sub-par offerings of variety shows preferring the glamour of, predominantly, Hollywood, so they stayed away. Variety died because it did not meet the needs of the people.

 

Radio too meant that ordinary people moved away from the collective experience of variety, and even to a degree cinema, to one that could be enjoyed in the home surrounded by family.

 

Just like policy interventions to protect pubs, like those being suggested by Reform UK, actions were taken in the 1920s to protect live entertainment and sport. The newly formed BBC were prevented from reading football results on a Saturday before 7.00pm (to protect sales of late night final local papers), they were prevented from reporting live from the FA Cup Final (the footballing authorities thought it would ensure more people attended the game), and in music impresarios demanded their leading musicians should not appear on the radio.

 

Of course, as we know today, for the most part media coverage drives live attendance rather than diminish from it, but 100 years ago the overwhelming view was one of protectionism for the status quo.

 

The truth is that variety was lost because the people had moved on, they no longer had a need for it. 100 years later, arguably, the same is true of the pub.

 

The reason we don’t go to pubs now, accepting that they are far more expensive, is that we don’t want to. The communal experience of radio listening has moved on too to a personal one of mobile devices.

 

There is a strong argument that reliable radio was the biggest technological advance of the twentieth century for how it shaped society, just as there is a strong argument that reliable headphones is the twenty-first century equivalent.

 

But these advances don’t shape humanity they enable our inherent preferences. If collectively we want to go to the pub we will do, and just like the death of variety no amount of policy manipulation will make us do something that, one the whole, we simply don’t want to do enough to be commercially viable.

 

In 2026 there is not one of us that mourns for death of music hall because not one of us experienced it. In all likelihood the same will be said in 100 years’ time for the death of the ‘British pub’. It is a policy for the nostalgic few that doesn’t stand up to the test of a contemporary Britain that has moved on from ‘the boozer’.