From the archive: Clive Turner's big breakfast

Over the Easter weekend I'm posting a series of articles that were first published in the Forest magazine Free Choice.

The following piece was written by Clive Turner, former director of public affairs at the Tobacco Manufacturers Association (TMA).

In my previous post I mentioned the charming Charles MacLean. Well, Clive took charm to an even higher level!

For many years he was the principal spokesman for the tobacco industry. I often saw him on television or listened to him on radio and I admired how calm he was, whatever the provocation.

He retired a few years before I began working for Forest but we had met a decade earlier – when I was director of the Media Monitoring Unit – and we kept in touch. (He was as surprised as anyone, though, when I took the job at Forest!)

In my second year I invited him to our 'Eleven Deadly Sins' No Smoking Day breakfast at Simpsons-in-the-Strand and asked him to write about it. This is what he wrote:

BIG BREAKFAST

For 18 years Britain's No Smoking Day has been a feature of the anti tobacco calendar. It normally falls early in March to coincide with, or slightly preface, the Budget. This is no coincidence, of course, although for some years the point was blunted when a former Chancellor of the Exchequer moved Budget Day to later in the year.

Originally conceived by health activists anxious to give moment to the annual rises in tobacco taxation and aimed to hit smokers at a time when yet again they are about to be clobbered by a rapacious Treasury, there was an obvious objective of reminding smokers that here was a great opportunity to give up.

But in latter years there has been a rather stealthy association with the very commercial manufacturers of nicotine withdrawal products – patches and such like, sold to people who believe such methods will assist a quit programme.

It has always been the tobacco industry's contention that if the government wishes to support a quit programme then it's not up to the industry to intervene. For that reason individual companies were seldom heard criticising or rising to the bait of countering ASH statements or proclamations.

It was principally ASH who masterminded No Smoking Day, although there's been a long list of health bodies associating themselves with the endeavour. And it's always been true that most of the money to run the day was taxpayer funded.

Yes, there have been years when the industry spoke out against outrageous campaign statements, like the ASH claim that 50,000 smokers had given up on No Smoking Day – an obvious arbitrary figure drawn from the imagination of those fevered people who work so hard to convince us all that there really is no such thing as a happy smoker.

How does a figure like that get verified? Do ASH make thousands of telephone calls to gather such information? Of course not. They just make it up!

However, there have never been any restraints on Forest in terms of speaking out to counter the more ludicrous claims and to represent those who simply hate No Smoking Day on principle. And that includes hordes of non-smokers too, very large numbers of whom feel distinctly uncomfortable at the nanny state mentality and the persuasive coercion inherent in such an expensively mounted campaign.

In 1999 Forest marked No Smoking Day by spending it in Paris, widely recognised as the European capital of smoking. In January 2000 the organisation celebrated the new century by organising a party for 300 smokers at London's Little Havana, Cigar Bar of the Year.

"The Big Smoke was a great success," said director Simon Clark, "for the simple reason that people who smoke or drink and like to listen to Cuban music, for example, seem to be a lot more fun to be with than people who don't." That's a slightly naughty generalisation, of course, but maybe there's something in it.

For this year's No Smoking Day Simon and his team decided to invite some friends, journalists and parliamentarians to a champagne breakfast at one of London's best known eateries, Simpson's-in-the-Strand.

"Under this government," said Simon, "every day seems to be no smoking day. Drink and diet will be next, so come and join us and enjoy a morning of unalloyed pleasure indulging in an Eleven Deadly Sins Champagne Breakfast."

On the menu was Cumberland sausage, honeydew bacon, black pudding, devilled kidneys, friend bread, eggs, hash browns, grilled tomato, grilled mushrooms, baked beans – and tobacco.

Forest chairman Lord Harris of High Cross urged people to put two fingers up to to intolerance and, as your correspondent discovered, the party was both hugely enjoyable and a small blow against the unremitting necessity the state seems to have to monitor and regulate individual enjoyment and pleasure.

It was only a gesture but, in its way, the party spoke volumes because there is a growing, welcome, and faintly rebellious movement towards kicking against the zealotry of over regulation, the 'Big Brother' syndrome, and 'control freakery', all so sadly evident at present.

There's no doubt that after 18 years the public is bored by the harassment and social engineering that No Smoking Day represents. Maybe a few smokers are encouraged to give up or cut back, and good luck to them, but the vast majority simply ignore the day because they are either not ready to give up or (shock, horror) they may actually enjoy smoking and have no intention of playing the government's game.

Forest's aims are not about encouraging people to start smoking – or to give it up. It stands full square for the right to smoke, but also for the right of people not to smoke. Tolerance from and among both camps is the call from Forest.

It believes the progressive way ahead is to expend money, skill, intelligence and common sense, all with the objective of accommodating the disparate needs of smokers and non-smokers alike, so that neither is at loggerheads.

Forest sees no need for calls to outlaw a perfectly legal social activity and one which across the world raises astounding sums on tobacco taxes for the common good.

Next: Great Scot, interview with former Forest spokesman Brian Monteith.