Politician defends freedom to smoke
Monday, December 14, 2020 at 14:45 Ukip Wales has called for the smoking ban to be amended, with publicans allowed to have separate, well-ventilated smoking rooms.
This is of course identical to the policy advocated by Forest when we launched the Save Our Pubs & Clubs campaign in 2009, two years after the ban was introduced in England and Wales.
Nigel Farage was one of the speakers – alongside Antony Worrall Thompson and Conservative MP Greg Knight – when we launched the campaign at a pub in Westminster.
It subsequently attracted cross-party support (a reception at the House of Commons was hosted by three MPs – one Labour, one Conservative and one Lib Dem).
In 2010 Conservative MP David Nuttall – a supporter of the campaign – even tabled a ten-minute rule bill urging the government to allow smoking rooms.
It was defeated by 141 votes to 86 but given the odds stacked against it we were pleased with the level of support. The campaign continued.
Last week's announcement by Ukip Wales was made by party leader Neil Hamilton who – to put this in perspective – is currently the only Ukip member of the Welsh Assembly. (In the previous parliament the party had seven, more than a tenth of the total number of AMs.)
According to the former Conservative government minister:
"Ukip believes in freedom of choice. Freedom not to drink in smoke-filled rooms but also freedom to smoke if others are not inconvenienced. That's the free society we believe Wales should strive to be.
“Individuals should decide for themselves what risks they run in life - whether smoking, free-fall parachute jumping, or being bored to death by a Mark Drakeford speech.
“Only Ukip stands for liberty and freedom of choice in these Senedd elections.”
Sadly the smoking ban is not going to be amended unless one of the major parties backs it – and by that I mean the Welsh Conservatives who have hopes of becoming the largest party in the Welsh Assembly after next year's election.
The problem is, while there are individuals within the party who would probably support a relaxation of the ban, very few will consider it a priority and I can't see the policy being adopted unless the Conservatives are worried that a significant number of voters might switch to Ukip over the issue.
That is unlikely because, post Brexit, Ukip has become an irrelevance.
In Wales, mirroring its disarray nationally, the party has had five leaders since 2016. The previous leader quit last year and now sits as a member of the Abolish the Welsh Assembly Party.
Hamilton is right, though. Liberty and freedom of choice ought to be an election issue. What a pity there is so little support for this radical concept among mainstream political parties and politicians.
The remarkable thing is there is far more support for an amendment to the smoking ban than most people realise.
According to the Western Telegraph last week (Smoking inside pubs in Wales could make a return):
A 2017 poll by Populus found that around 60 per cent of the Welsh public supported the introduction of contained smoking rooms.
The poll referred to was commissioned by Forest on the 10th anniversary of the smoking ban in Wales.
Intriguingly the result was very similar to another Populus poll the previous year (2016) that found that 54 per cent of adults in Scotland would allow smoking rooms in pubs and clubs.
Likewise, a third poll conducted ahead of the tenth anniversary of the smoking ban in England (2017) found that 48 per cent of adults would allow smoking rooms in pubs and clubs, with 42 per cent opposed to the idea.
Politicians however are repeatedly told that the legislation is hugely popular with the public and has been a great "success".
The ban is credited (wrongly) with a reduction in the smoking rate and, with very little evidence to support the claim, we are told the health of the nation has benefitted enormously.
At the very least governments should examine the evidence and review the impact on pubs and clubs, but don't hold your breath.
As we have seen throughout the pandemic governments are now so risk averse there is very little chance that ministers will relax a single one of the existing anti-smoking regulations.
Instead we are fighting to prevent the ban being extended to other (outdoor) areas where there is not a shred of evidence of risk to by-standers.
Nevertheless, if Neil Hamilton's intervention encourages further debate in the run-up to the Welsh election in May it will have served some purpose.
I should perhaps add that the late Lord Harris, chairman of Forest from 1987 until his death in 2006, was a very good friend of Hamilton.
Admirably, he stood by him when the latter's political career went belly-up in the mid Nineties.
I knew about the 'fighting fund' Ralph set up to help Hamilton fight various legal battles. Until this morning however (when I Googled 'Lord Harris, Neil Hamilton') I was unaware of a letter he wrote to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards in February 1997.
It even includes a reference to Forest:
One among many libertarian causes Mr Hamilton and I share is upholding the rights of adult smokers. Indeed, I am chairman of Forest (Freedom Organisation for the Right to Enjoy Smoking Tobacco) of which he has been a member for many years. Whatever view is taken of personal health risks, we believe it to be the hallmark of a free society that adults should be able to make up their own minds about such indulgences so long as no harm is caused to others.
Ralph's key point however was this:
I am therefore able to declare from direct knowledge over almost 30 years that he [Hamilton] has been unwaveringly consistent in the causes he has espoused and I know of no exceptions to that course of conduct.
Last week's policy announcement suggests that Harris was right. Hamilton is indeed "unwaveringly consistent", even when the 'cause' is the freedom to smoke, an issue on which few politicians are currently willing to stick out their necks.
Whatever your view of him (and opinions vary enormously), how many politicians can honestly say that?
Reader Comments (6)
Isn't a shame that UKIP wasn't more vocal about this when it was pulling in support from all over the place and terrifying the Tories.
It's a bit too litte too late now.
It would be great if a new party like Reclaim was to make it a major issue - after all, we should be able to reclaim some of the space stolen from us.
Meanwhile, take a look at this delightful piece with the great Diana Rigg by Mark Gaitkiss who said :She would eat a pork pie before every show and sit on the stairs, smoking furiously. “Exiled,” she would groan, waving a hand..." https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2020/dec/13/diana-rigg-remembered-by-mark-gatiss?
People haven't forgotten, we are not quitting in huge numbers, lockdown has proved it with tobacco shops as one of the few other than supermarkets to do well, with massive amounts from smokers pouring into the Treasury, and most of us are still angry as hell about the way this was done by stigmatisation. Depopularisation is OK but denormalisation was deliberate stigmatisation with a view to encourage public bullying and humilation of people who smoke.
The ban should be amended if we really live in a decent and tolerant society where all views and lifestyles are treated with equal respect. Each to their own but sadly highly paid lobbyists with everything to gain in terms of funding are the only ones really bothered about keeping it.
Ask most people and they couldn't care less if the smoking ban is amended. As long as they have the choice to go to places where people don't smoke, if they don't like, they couldn't care less if smokers go to places where people do smoke.
The market was sorting that issue out itself before the lobbyists came in with their sledgehammer to crack a nut . They have had their day and it is time now to allow others an opinion on the matter of using in public something that is not illegal.
ASH says health is not a matter of public opinion and yet they tried to use public opinion to get the ban when it suited them. In short, no one is allowed to have an opinion that differs from theirs but when it comes to health they are right - my health is not their business nor the public's.
The state does not own our bodies and minds yet and we must be treated as adults who have autonomy over our own lives, who we socilaise with and where.
The problem was that Ukip, as a party, was ambivalent about the smoking ban, in the same way that most other parties are. It was individuals such as Nigel Farage and Gawain Towler who were strongly opposed to it but when Farage stood down as leader and was replaced by Lord Pearson (who had no interest in the issue) it was quietly dropped from the manifesto.
Now that Ukip Wales is effectively a one-man show (AM-wise) Neil Hamilton is able to put it on the agenda because it's a subject he has a genuine interest in. Under another leader it would probably be different.
Thanks, btw, for alerting me to the Diana Rigg article!
I lost hope in UKIP when it made immigration it's flagship issue after Cameron gave the EU referendum that had been ukip's usb up until then. Now and again the Farage leadership made the occasional whimper on the issue of smoking and freedom of choice generally but never treated it as important.
I remember a few years ago wanting to talk about the danger of looming plain packaging at a ukip conference only to be told by the chairman that it wasn't that important when winning the EU and controlling immigration was of greatest, and it seemed, the only issue that ukip then was bothered about - and then they later appointed a health person who announced ukip would ban smoking outdoors.
That lost them the libertarian pro choice supporters in the party but I always felt that there were more votes to gain from a party promoting the idea of live and let live.
The question now as a smoker is who to vote for? None of them want my vote so none of them will get it. To exercise my right to vote, I'll probably vote for a random independent who has no hope of winning anyway. What a state of affairs to be in for a democracy as old as ours. Politics is so depressing.
I've used the pandemic to write a couple of lengthy posts under You Tube vlogs pointing out the similarities between the smoking ban and the response to the pandemic, from the dodgy modelling, to the mandatory changes in behaviour and the effects of both on businesses, in the hope that non-smokers might realise how big an impact the ban had.
I, personally, more or less went into lockdown on 1st July 2007 when I decided that I wasn't going to spend hard-earned money being treated as a second class citizen.
It is nice to see a voice for accommodating smokers for a change. It is a star t, but without concerted support will be soon overlooked. ASH continues to suppress the right of public opinion as a core component of setting public policy. They are authoritarian, totalitarians that seek to promote only their views and allow only thinner position to be heard. That alone demonstrates the inherent weakness of the position.
You are right, dear friends, UKIP has lost my trust. I feel the same, no one wants my vote. If there will be ever elections again, perhaps independent would be the best choice.