On this day … 15 years ago

On this day 15 years ago we celebrated Forest’s 30th anniversary with a party at Boisdale of Belgravia.

In addition to that milestone the event also marked the publication of a new book, Velvet Glove, Iron Fist: A History of Anti-smoking, by a young writer called Christopher Snowdon who signed copies and gave a short speech.

Guests, as I wrote here, included actress Lorraine Chase who starred in Emmerdale but is arguably best known for appearing in a series of Campari ads when she was a model in the Seventies.

I think she was the friend of a guest but she clearly supported the cause. Interviewed for the official video of the event, she gave us this soundbite:

“We have a choice. I’m not an idiot. I can think for myself, and the more you take my thinking away from me, that’s dangerous. That’s dangerous.”

The video below, however, was shot and edited by Peter Snowdon, Chris’s father, who also filmed his son’s speech.

As it happens, a few weeks before Velvet Glove Iron Fist was published I wrote:

I can't speak highly enough of this extraordinary labour of love. I've read many books on smoking and this is the best by far. It's a superb read. To use that old cliche, it's a page-turner, which is some achievement. It's packed with information but it's also very readable - serious yet hugely entertaining.

Better still, this is no fire-breathing polemic. The amount of research that has gone into it is staggering. And the tone is moderate throughout which is important because it will appeal to a far wider readership.

Fifteen years on the history of anti-smoking now includes display bans, plain packaging and, most recently, the threat of a generational tobacco sales ban.

Time perhaps for a new, updated, edition?

Burning issue

Just back from Ireland.

Business concluded, I managed to squeeze in a visit to my old schoolfriend Bill who lives near Greystones in Co Wicklow, just south of Dublin.

I’ve known Bill since 1969 when my family moved to Scotland. We were briefly at Wormit Primary School together, before we moved on to Madras College in St Andrews.

During those teenage years we spent our summer holidays camping locally and then further afield in places like Pitlochry where I experienced my first (awful) hangover following a long night drinking Newcastle Brown Ale.

In 1975 we went hiking in the Lake District, and the following year we spent a fairly miserable ten days cycling around central Scotland in the pouring rain, desperately seeking refuge in a variety of youth hostels.

After studying law at Edinburgh University, Bill embarked on a hugely successful career in corporate law that eventually took him to the Cayman Islands via Hong Kong and, if I remember, Bermuda.

In Australia, en route to the Caymans, he met Patty, who is Irish, and it all worked out rather well because, a few months after they got married, I got married too and they invited us to spent the second week of our honeymoon on Grand Cayman, where they lived.

Some years later they moved back to Ireland, so I see them fairly regularly. We’ve even shared a couple of holidays - a week in Westport, Co Mayo, and a transatlantic cruise to New York aboard the Queen Mary.

Bill is a keen climber and his achievements include the Matterhorn, Mont Blanc, Mount Teide (Tenerife), and a previously unchartered peak in Greenland that he and his team named Mount Crean after an Irish explorer.

Anyway I caught up with them on Wednesday evening and Bill decided he was going to cook on the barbecue, a skill he perfected while living abroad.

None of your labour saving gas barbecue nonsense. This was a proper charcoal barbecue that you kick start using ‘natural’ fire lighters.

It then takes about 30 minutes for the charcoal to be white hot, at which point you start cooking, but I’m assured it makes a big difference to the taste of the food.

The only thing that marred the evening was the subsequent, and rather poor, Scotland-Switzerland match whose only saving grace was that it was slightly better than England’s performance against Denmark yesterday.

A low bar, I’ll grant you, and thankfully I missed most of the England game because I was still travelling.

Fingers crossed it can only get better but England have been here so many times I wouldn’t bet on it.

Dublin … dinner, drinks, music

I’m currently in Dublin.

My usual hotel was fully booked so I’m staying in a brand new hotel which opened in March and is a short walk from Dublin Castle.

Last night I had dinner at The Shelbourne on St Stephen’s Green. The hotel is 200 years old this year and 20 years ago, on the eve of the introduction of the smoking ban in Ireland, it was the venue for a live edition of Littlejohn, hosted by journalist and broadcaster Richard Littlejohn, on Sky News.

I was one of several guests flown in from the UK to appear on the programme, which was broadcast from the main bar, but the person I was sat next to was the former Irish footballer turned irascible pundit Eamon Dunphy who was also opposed to the ban.

Neither of us had the opportunity to say very much but this is how I described the experience:

Littlejohn was a hoot. Broadcast live from The Shelbourne, one of Dublin's most historic hotels, the hour-long show featured over a dozen commentators providing a wide range of opinion about the smoking ban. Presenter (and Sun columnist) Richard Littlejohn made no secret of his views (a non-smoker, he's an outspoken opponent of blanket bans), but the programme as a whole was well balanced.

Split into groups of three, guests were seated on stools beside small round tables trembling under the weight of alcohol. To the disappointment of production staff, very few people were actually smoking. My contribution was limited to a brief verbal spat with Professor Luke Clancy, the genial spokesman for ASH Ireland, after which I retired to the bar for another pint of Guinness.

After the programme Tadg O'Sullivan, chief executive of the Vintners Federation of Ireland, told me he thought 'our' side had won. I thought we escaped with a draw, thanks to Littlejohn himself and an extraordinary performance by an anti-smoking columnist with the Irish Sunday Mirror that was so melodramatic I thought she must be auditioning for the part of pantomime dame. Someone whispered in my ear that this was no act - apparently she's like this all the time. “God help her husband,” said another voice.

The antis scored a further own goal when a good looking young restaurateur said he supported a general ban because if he prohibited smoking and others didn't he would lose customers. Doh! Of course similar views have been expressed by some restaurateurs in Britain. The free market, they seem to be saying, is a wonderful thing unless it adversely affects their business, at which point they demand regulations to create a 'level playing field'.

The day before the programme I visited Johnnie Fox's, ‘the highest pub in Ireland’ and one of the oldest:

Founded in 1798, this traditional if slightly kitsch pub has played host to presidents, ambassadors, royalty, sports stars, tourists, "chatty locals" and even Salman Rushdie.

A stone-flagged floor ("daily strewn with sawdust"), ancient bric-a-brac, old dressers, open fireplace and crackling logs are just some of the attractions of this wonderful place. Investigate further and you'll find a penny farthing on one wall and, outside, a feeding pot said to have been used by up to 800 people daily during the potato famine.

Next week, thanks to Ireland's ambitious, uncompromising health minister Michael Martin, smoking will be banned in Johnnie Fox's. With its reputation for great food, numerous beers and a good selection of wines and spirits, I can't imagine that business will be much affected. But it will be different, and in my view the poorer for it.

The good news is that Johnnie Fox's is not abandoning smokers altogether. While other bars are busy erecting canopies and awnings with outside heaters so people can still smoke in relative comfort, JF has acquired an original 1952 double-decker bus, refurbished it, and renamed it the Happy Smoking Bus.

On Monday it will tour the streets of Dublin before returning to its final resting place outside the pub where it will provide a peaceful sanctuary for the pub’s many smokers. Effervescent business manager Fred Rainert tells me customers can smoke on the bus as long as it's not staffed. And the number plate? FU 2.

I’ve visited Ireland fairly regularly since then and I always enjoy popping over.

Six months after the introduction of the smoking ban in March 2004 I even took my family for a working holiday that took us to Westport (in Co Mayo), Galway, Kilkenny, and Waterford, before finishing in Dublin.

The ‘working’ part of the holiday involved visiting as many pubs as possible to gauge what impact the ban was having, so while it was quite productive it wasn’t the most onerous assignment.

But I digress.

After dinner last night we went for a drink at the International Bar, a slightly misleading name for a ‘charming Victorian pub full of Dublin character’ that describes itself as ‘the home of Irish comedy’.

A live band was playing cover versions of well known songs and when they finished we showed our appreciation by giving them tips.

Weather aside, I was reminded of Havana where every bar seemed to have a band and there was music everywhere.

This afternoon I’m heading south of Dublin to Greystones where my old schoolfriend Bill (who is English but pretends to be Scottish) has suggested he barbecue (a skill he learned in the Cayman Islands) while we watch Scotland play Switzerland.

Truly a glutton for punishment.

Below: The International Bar, Dublin

Labour and the decline of the British pub

Only Labour will end the decline of British pubs, declared a Labour Party tweet today.

I know all political parties are guilty of hypocrisy but this takes the biscuit.

I’m sure that readers don’t need to be reminded that it was the last Labour government that introduced the workplace smoking ban in England.

Likewise, it was devolved Labour administrations that introduced the policy in Scotland and Wales.

But you may have forgotten the facts concerning the impact the ban had on pubs across Britain.

Ten years after the introduction of the smoking ban in England, Forest commissioned and published a report by Rob Lyons entitled, ‘Road To Ruin? The impact of the smoking ban on pubs and personal choice’.

On June 26, 2017, we issued a press release that began:

The smoking ban decimated England’s pubs and hurt local communities, according to a report published today.

New figures obtained by the smokers’ group Forest show there are 11,383 fewer pubs in England compared to 2006, a decline of 20.7 per cent since the smoking ban was introduced on 1st July 2007.

London alone has 2,034 fewer pubs than in 2006, North West England has lost 1,788, Yorkshire is down by 1,589 and the South East has a net loss of 1,013.

But the biggest decline in pub numbers has been in the Midlands where there are 2,560 fewer pubs than before the smoking ban, a drop of 23.7 per cent.

While the fall in the number of pubs is part of a long-term trend and is not solely down to the smoking ban, the report found there was a clear acceleration in pub closures after the ban was enforced, with pubs in poorer urban areas suffering most.

The figures, which were obtained from research specialists CGA Strategy, confirmed what we had known for a long time, and it wasn’t just pubs in England that suffered as a result of the ban.

In September 2010 research carried out by CR Consulting on behalf of Forest’s Save Our Pubs & Clubs campaign found that the smoking ban was the main cause of pub closures throughout the UK in the aftermath of the ban:

Using information from a respected industry database, researchers found that the number of pub losses demonstrate a very close statistical relationship between the introduction of smoking bans and the acceleration of the decline of the British pub.

This relationship, says the report, is considerably stronger than those that could be attributed to other factors such as the recession, alcohol duty or supermarket competition.

According to the report:

Researchers found a striking similarity in the rate of closures in Scotland, England and Wales following the introduction of smoking bans in each country.

While there is significant variation in the trajectories of pub closures in each country before the ban, there is an almost total correlation between the three countries after the ban.

This indicates that they are affected by a strong common factor - the smoking ban. The correlation is in fact so close that the trend line for the three countries is identical.

Commenting on the research, Oliver Griffiths, director of CR Consulting, said:

“The decline of the British pub had started before the smoking ban but at a relatively low level. The smoking ban had a sudden and marked impact, accelerating the rate of decline.

“While it is not the only factor, the smoking ban is demonstrably the most significant cause of pub closures in recent years.”

To be clear, workplace smoking bans in Scotland, Wales and England were introduced by Labour governments.

Despite this the UK Labour Party would have us believe that ‘Only Labour will end the decline of British pubs’.

I’m not suggesting that any other party would do a better job but, seriously, you couldn’t make it up.

See: Cigarette ban killing off British pubs: 11,000 lost in 10 years (Daily Star), and Devastating impact of the smoking ban on pubs laid bare (Taking Liberties)

Chancers

I’m not going to name names but I’ve lost count of the number of people this might refer to.

Chancer: a person who dexterously and expediently changes or adopts opinions.

Two-faced chancer: a person who doesn't hesitate to dump people (or causes) when they are no longer of any use to them.

The funny thing is, I suspect that many of the individuals I have in mind will have no idea I’m talking about them because they’ve convinced themselves they’re on the side of the angels - or the right side of history, at least.

I don’t. I just think they’re unprincipled shits.

The song remains the same

And the wait goes on.

The King’s Birthday Honours were announced last night and STILL no recognition for Deborah Arnott, the outgoing CEO of Action on Smoking and Health, or ASH Scotland’s Sheila Duffy.

Perhaps Deborah will be recognised in Rishi Sunak’s dissolution honours list - which would be appropriate given the PM’s unexpected embrace of tobacco control in the final year of his ministerial career - but time is running out before she retires in a few months.

I will continue to lobby the powers that be, but I fear my efforts are falling on deaf ears. After all, it’s ELEVEN years since I first noted this strange anomaly and still zilch.

Where have I gone wrong?

See also: The waiting game continues for Deborah and Sheila (June 2017), Honours update (December 2020), Still no honours for titans of tobacco control (January 2022).

Manifesto watch - Labour

As expected, Labour has committed itself to the same creeping prohibition of tobacco as the Tories.

In a section entitled ‘Action on public health’, the party’s manifesto, published this morning, states:

Labour will ensure the next generation can never legally buy cigarettes.

The funny thing is, some people have told me privately that they thought it might have been better if the Tories’ Tobacco and Vapes Bill had been passed while the Conservatives were still in government because under Labour the regulations could be even worse.

We’ll see, but it says a lot about the state of politics in Britain today that both Labour and the Conservatives have included the policy in their manifestos.

Furthermore, we know from recent events that it will be supported by the Lib Dems, SNP, the Green Party and Plaid Cymru so the only question that remains is how quickly does the incoming Labour government want to push this through Parliament.

The number of Conservative MPs who vote against it in the new parliament will also signal the direction the post election parliamentary Tory party is going to take.

My guess is that while the number of Tory MPs will be massively reduced, a great many will be just as paternalistic as their predecessors.

As for Rishi Sunak, I’ve given up second guessing the outgoing prime minister, but what was he thinking when he proposed the generational tobacco ban at the Conservative conference in Manchester last year?

It was, after all, Labour’s Wes Streeting who, in response to New Zealand and the subsequent Khan Review, became the first UK politician to seriously flirt with the idea of a generational tobacco ban.

That was in January 2023 and the Tories could and should have responded by shutting the idea down.

To be fair, that’s what public health minister Neil O’Brien appeared to have done in April last year when he gave the Government’s response to the Khan Review which had advocated a New Zealand style ban in 2022.

As I wrote here:

Parts of his speech may have been lifted from the tobacco control template, but I was impressed by his short but firm answers to the questions that followed.

Gratifyingly he also emphasised the Government’s belief in personal responsibility which, together with freedom of choice, is the principal platform Forest has stood on for over 40 years.

Had Sunak stuck to the line about personal responsibility, mocking Labour’s addiction to the nanny state, he could have portrayed the Tories as the more liberal of the two parties.

It would also have created a clear blue line between the two parties, giving voters a more obvious choice (although he would need to have done it in other areas too).

Instead he chose to adopt a policy first introduced by the Labour Party in New Zealand (later repealed by the new centre-right coalition government) so that it effectively became a race between the Tories and UK Labour to see who would be the first to introduce it in the UK.

In other words, no choice at all.

And that’s the Blair-like legacy Rishi Sunak will leave behind. He must be so proud.

Manifesto watch - Conservatives

The Conservatives are due to publish their election manifesto this morning.

I know it’s not a priority issue for most people but, having spent the last eight months thinking of little else, you’ll forgive me for speculating about the inclusion of a generational tobacco ban.

But first, a quick recap.

On May 24, having unexpectedly called an early general election, Rishi Sunak told journalists he was "disappointed" that his flagship bill banning the sale of tobacco to future generations of adults had to be dropped due to lack of time.

In the unlikely event the Tories were to win the election it was suggested the policy would be a priority for the new government. But then came this report:

Speaking to reporters on a flight from Belfast, the prime minister did not promise a ban would feature in the Conservative manifesto, but he said he remained "very committed" to it.

This morning however, in a long report in The Times (Conservative manifesto 2024: The key policies we expect, explained) the generational tobacco ban to which the PM remains “very committed” isn’t mentioned at all.

That doesn’t mean it won’t feature in the manifesto, but the policy clearly divides opinion within the party (to such an extent that it has been branded “unconservative” by Sunak’s predecessor Liz Truss, and “bonkers” by Boris Johnson, who knows a thing or two about winning elections), so why risk further unrest?

We’ll find out soon enough so watch this space for updates.

Update: Not mentioned in Rishi Sunak’s speech launching the 76-page manifesto but tucked away on page 41:

We will bring forward our landmark Tobacco and Vapes Bill in our first King’s Speech.

Translation: Tories commit to generational smoking ban.

Remember that if and when a Conservative candidate knocks on your door asking for your vote.