Culture war

The IEA’s Reem Ibrahim has issued a plea to ‘Save our shisha bars’.

Writing for the online magazine Spiked, Reem notes that if Keir Starmer’s proposed outdoor smoking ban is enacted, shisha lounges and cafes could face complete extinction.

I feel I’ve been here before. Back in 2007, a few days before the indoor smoking ban was enforced, I wrote:

An article in today's Times highlights the impact the smoking ban will have on the shisha community. ‘On Sunday,’ the paper reports, ‘the last charcoal will be lit, the last shisha will be brought to the table and a culture that stretches from Morocco all the way back to ancient Persia will be snuffed out.’

Britain’s shisha bars were indeed hit hard by the indoor smoking ban but, as Reem acknowledges, ‘many venues adapted to the new rules as best they could’.

For those that survived it meant taking the practise outside, on to licensed pavement areas and other outdoor spaces, although I once enjoyed an evening in a shisha cafe that still allowed it in what I remember being a rather dark back room!

Anyway, I am reminded of something else I wrote back then. It followed Forest’s Revolt In Style dinner at The Savoy hotel in London where 400 guests were invited to ‘eat, drink and smoke’ in an indoor public place for one last time:

A special guest at The Savoy on Monday was Ibrahim El-Noor of the Edgware Road Association who has been fighting - albeit belatedly - the smoking ban which owners fear will result in the closure of many of Britain's 600 shisha bars.

I first met Ibrahim 15 months ago when he took me to a local hookah bar and showed me how to smoke shisha. There is very little tobacco involved - it's mostly fruit peel filtered through water. Shisha smoking, he told me, is a social activity enjoyed by different age groups and different sections of the community.

According to Ibrahim, "For many young people, who do not drink or go to pubs and bars, the main leisure and social activity is to visit a shisha café. Here, they can socialise, debate and discuss their affairs without being intoxicated, introduced to drugs, or subjected to violence and anti-social behaviour."

The smoking ban, he says, will destroy this culture and a centuries old tradition. He is holding on to the hope that legal action could lead to shisha bars being excluded from the ban (as they are in New York). Short of funding a potentially expensive - and therefore crippling - legal battle, we have offered to help in other ways.

On Monday, for example, we gave him a platform to publicise his campaign and he responded with a short, moving speech that will have registered, I'm sure, with many of the MPs and peers present. If he can persuade just one of them to introduce a private members' bill on the subject, they may - just may - stay in business.

A few months earlier I had been invited to a press conference organised by the Edgware Road Association and hosted by Ibrahim. His impassioned plea included the points that:

"Shisha smoking is a social activity enjoyed by different age groups in a happy environment. It is an alternative culture that reflects the diversity of British society today. Its popularity is reflected in the prevalence of shisha cafes in many major cities and towns in England, Wales and Scotland.

“For many young people, from all walks of life, who do not drink or frequent bars and pubs, the main leisure and social activity is to visit a shisha cafe. Here, they can socialise, debate and discuss their affairs without being intoxicated, introduced to drugs or subjected to violence and anti-social behaviour."

Commenting on this, I wrote:

This late attempt to secure an exemption for what are essentially smokers' clubs will almost certainly fall on deaf ears because the anti-smoking agenda is now so extreme that 'tolerance', 'compromise', even 'culture', are dirty words. Nothing can be allowed to dilute the impact of the ban which is designed not just to 'protect' barworkers but force people to give up a legal consumer product.

Shisha bars are unlikely survive the ban because, unlike a pub or restaurant, the principal activity is smoking a shisha pipe. In New York, shisha bars are exempt from the ban. Sadly, in Blair's Britain, few people seem to care that an entire culture is about to be destroyed.

In hindsight the threat may have been exaggerated because the culture, like shisha bars, still exists.

Nevertheless, an outdoor smoking ban really could be the final straw because it’s not like a cigarette - you can’t walk a few yards down the road with your hookah pipe in hand (at least, I don’t think you can!) and it ignores the fact that smoking a shisha pipe is, in the main, a communal activity.

In April 2021, with shisha bars still closed due to Covid, Ibrahim contacted me again:

As you know, shisha places are not just businesses, they are part of the community and provide a social platform for very large and diverse sections of society.

We spoke on the phone and had a long chat, but after that it all went quiet again. Perhaps I should give him a call …

PS. Shisha pipes were part of Forest’s fringe event at the 2006 Conservative Party conference when we invited Keri Remes of High-Life Hookahs to bring some of his products to the party.

And bring them he did.

Keri was one of many people trying to persuade the Labour government to exempt shisha cafes from the smoking ban and we thought this would a good way to highlight the issue.

Ultimately it made no difference but it was certainly a popular feature of the event.

Below: I did inhale, honest!