Campaign for pubs
Monday, June 15, 2020 at 10:39 
Good luck to the new Campaign for Pubs which was launched on Friday.
The Morning Advertiser has the full story here but, bearing in mind the potential threat to smoking outside pubs after lockdown, I was more interested in the people behind it and whether they might be allies should that particular issue ignite.
The Campaign for Pubs appears to be run by the British Pub Confederation, a body I hadn’t heard of, although I don’t follow the sector as closely as perhaps I should.
When I looked into it last week I discovered that the British Pub Confederation was founded in 2015 to act as a ‘collective voice for publicans and pub campaigners’.
Members include a rather odd collection of groups ranging from the GMB and Unite unions to Justice for Licensees, the Fair Pint Campaign and the Society for the Preservation of Beers from the Wood.
The list also includes the Scottish Licensed Trade Association (SLTA) and the Guild of Master Victuallers (GMV), both of whom were supportive of Forest’s Save Our Pubs & Clubs campaign.
SOPAC sought to amend the smoking ban to allow separate smoking rooms but I know from that initiative (which ran from 2009 to 2011) how difficult it was to get trade bodies to play an active role.
As for individual publicans, beyond the handful who attended the launch of the campaign in Westminster and a subsequent reception at the House of Commons, it was virtually impossible.
It wasn’t that they weren’t supportive in principle. They just didn’t have the time to leave their pub to attend meetings or rallies in London because they didn’t have the staff to cover their absence.
Sometimes, during opening hours, it was difficult to get them to even come to the phone because they were busy behind the bar or doing the bookkeeping.
If they had to travel any distance to a meeting it was out of the question, not just because of the time factor but also because of the cost.
Instead we went to them. We organised meetings out of hours with the more committed publicans and they would invite other local landlords who would pour cold water on our plans and talk morosely about the demise of the British pub.
Getting them to do anything about it however was extremely difficult.
I‘ve lost count of all the ‘save the pub’ style campaigns that have been launched over the years and none has made a significant difference to the long-term decline of the pub.
It’s not all bad news, of course. There are still plenty of great pubs and proprietors out there. (The two go hand-in-hand, in my opinion.)
Yes, publicans need all the help they can get but they need to help themselves as well and far too often they take their existing customers for granted while doing very little to attract new ones.
(For several years we supported one of the Morning Advertiser's Great British Pub Awards so I know exactly what publicans can do, if so minded, to improve the appeal of their pub. It doesn't guarantee commercial success because there are so many factors involved, but too many publicans behave as if they have a right to stay in business in perpetuity without making much of an effort.)
Perhaps we need a national debate about the future of the pub because a bit of realism wouldn’t go amiss.
Most people love the idea of a village pub on the green, or a nice inner city bar within walking distance of their home (not too close, though, no-one wants to live next to a pub!). But how many regularly go there?
Location, Location, Location (Channel 4) is one of my favourite TV programmes and there are two things you can depend upon.
One, almost every couple searching for a new property will emphasise their desire to live near a good local pub.
Two, the programme will conclude with presenters Phil Spencer and Kirsty Allsop sitting in a pub or beer garden negotiating to buy a property while the prospective buyers look on anxiously, nursing a drink.
This bucolic vision of a country bound to the pub is a fantasy. We need to be realistic and accept that those days are gone, if indeed they ever existed.
Why should pubs be helped more than other small businesses? First, they have to help themselves, although I don’t dispute the significant difficulties many face living hand-to-mouth existences that preclude spending money improving the decor, toilets, outside facilities etc etc.
Also, when we talk about supporting pubs, I am minded that the pub industry did very little to campaign against the smoking ban despite the fact that smokers were said, at that time, to represent 47 per cent of regular pub goers.
What support we got for our Fight The Ban: Fight For Choice campaign (2004-2006) came from the Association of Licensed Multiple Retailers (now merged with the British Hospitality Association as UK Hospitality) and the Scottish Licensed Trade Association.
Apart from wringing their hands, the large trade groups did sweet FA.
Which brings me back to the Campaign for Pubs whose parent body, the British Pub Confederation, seems to represent the smaller, independent pubs.
While I appreciate the most pressing matter is getting pubs back on their feet as soon as possible, this is what campaign director and former MP Greg Mulholland had to say in February 2010 when it was suggested that the then Labour government might extend the smoking ban to pub doorways and even beer gardens:
Read his comments in full and you will see they are equally pertinent to the present day.
As it happens the threat of an extension to the ban, which first raised its head the previous year, was one of the reasons why Forest founded the Save Our Pubs & Clubs campaign in June 2009.
Launched at a pub a short walk from Parliament Square, the initiative had two aims.
The first was to lobby the government to amend the smoking ban to permit pubs and clubs to have separate, well-ventilated smoking rooms.
Although we failed to achieve that goal (it was always a long shot), the campaign did win cross-party support that culminated in a reception on the terrace of the House of Commons in July 2011 when we were joined by 200 guests including MPs, publicans and members of the Club and Institute Union (CIU) which represented 2,000 working men’s clubs.
David Hockney was a guest too and he gave a short speech alongside MPs representing the three main parties.
In addition Conservative MP David Nuttall tabled a private member’s bill that would have allowed pubs to introduce separate, well-ventilated smoking rooms. Although the motion was defeated by 141 votes to 86, the result suggested that our lobbying had won some support.
The second aim was to stop the smoking ban being extended to outside areas.
To put the Save Our Pubs & Clubs campaign in context, the Labour government had promised to review the impact of the smoking ban three years after its introduction in England on July 1, 2007.
Although we saw this as an opportunity to highlight the sudden and significant increase in pub closures that had happened in the twelve months following the introduction of the ban, we weren’t naive.
We knew the review would probably be a whitewash (‘Ban has enormously benefited public health’ etc etc) but, worse than that, we also knew it might be used as a springboard for further restrictions.
We knew too that the Save Our Pubs & Clubs campaign would struggle to persuade ministers to allow separate smoking rooms but stopping an extension to the existing ban - well, that was far more realistic, and we succeeded.
You can see therefore why the subject still interests me and why I may be a little more paranoid than I need be.
Hopefully we can renew alliances but much has changed over the past decade and the big pub companies possibly hold even more power than they did ten or 15 years ago.
Either way, support the Campaign for Pubs, a ‘mass membership group open to all who love and care about pubs.’ To join click here.
Reader Comments (3)
The British public house was, historically, an open door to all who sought a safe and comfortable refuge from the travails of an often hard daily grind. They turned their backs on the working class when they chose not to oppose the most draconian smoking bans in Europe if not the world. They can burn.
The way the science is heading, the only way to keep pub goers safe from coronaviruses, whether it's nitric oxide or nicotine or both together is to repeal the smoking ban.
Or go back to Clive Bates' original plan
Letter to The Publican re. protecting employees from passive smoking
7th June 1999
Dear Editor
Re: smoking in pubs
It is true that the Health and Safety Executive is developing a new Approved Code of Practice to deal with passive smoking in the workplace (Pubs face new smoking bans, Code is a blow, 7th June 1999). All the ACOP will do is provide meaningful guidance on how the Health and Safety at Work Act (1974) should be applied to tobacco smoke in the workplace. This law already exists and has no exemptions for the hospitality industry. The ACOP will clarify the law and help publicans comply with it.
A new ACOP would not mean that all smoking must be banned in pubs. The heart of the law is that employers have an obligation to do what is reasonably practicableto reduce their employees’ exposure. That could include segregation,ventilation, banning smoking at the bar or other measures. It also means the ‘do nothing and ignore it’ approach is not an option. The best approach for any pub is to wholeheartedly embrace the Charter agreed by the Government and trade bodies such as ALMR and BII and to do what is reasonable and practical to protect their employees. That is good professional business, and it should not be a cause for alarm, despair or resistence.
Yours sincerely,
Clive Bates
https://web.archive.org/web/20131228114052/http://www.ash.org.uk/media-room/press-releases/letter-to-the-publican-re-protecting-employees-from-passive-smoking
Saving pubs and clubs depends upon preserving the right to smoke in pub gardens and ultimately designated indoor venues.
The second hand smoke gambit was a ruse and smoking bans must be amended.