I’ve always been told that before WWI, pubs in the UK could stay open as long as they wanted, setting their own opening/closing hours.
With the advent of the war, closing hours were enforced to ensure that factory workers producing the tanks/guns/bullets were all sober enough to do their job properly.
Is there any way that this can be verified?
The Defence Of The Realm Act, 1914 brought in a great many changes to national life; one that became permanent was restrictions on opening hours
Interesting article:
Of course, the 2003 Licensing Act means that it is once again legal to sell booze round the clock. Surprisingly few pubs have taken up the opportunity so far, though.
I don’t find it all that surprising that many didn’t bother. How much money is there to be made selling drink at 5am on a Wednesday morning? And how much will bar staff want to be paid to work ridiculous hours? What it has done is remove the farce of 24-hour supermarkets having to stop selling drink at 11pm.
Are there many 24-hr supermarkets? The Big Boys tried it briefly, and they soon dropped it because it didn’t pay - not enough people wanted 24-hr shopping.
Personally I’d close all boozers at half-past ten, and ban the sale of alcohol anywhere except off-licences and pubs
I’ve got a 24 hour Tesco up the road, another 15 mins away, and an Asda just on from there. Not exactly being in the centre of the universe, I’d presumed this was fairly typical? (Note that they’re all large out-of-town stores, not smaller ones within towns or cities.)
Well, there are two 24-hr supermarkets within two miles of me. Of course that’s “24 hrs except Sunday”, which is a bit irritating - it closes at midnight, and only opens between 10am - 4pm. However, there are two petrol stations within a mile of my house that also sell booze round the clock - one even has a sign that proudly advertises “24 HOUR BOOZE!”
From local historical evidence, where in medieval times there was a pub built on the far end of a “stert” - a peninsula of parish, sticking into another parish - to allow the denizens of parish #2 to drink piss on a Sunday, I’d imagine the licensing restrictions were decided at the parochial level.
I expected more pubs to stay open later than 11pm, maybe to 1am, not necessarily 24 hours. But almost all of them round here have stuck to the traditional closing time.
Getting the extension is an exercise in bureaucracy, and of dealing with moronic local councillors who will immediately start bleating on about anti-social behaviour. And staffing even those times is much more of a problem. People doing another day job, or at college or whatever, are OK with working an 11pm close and being out of the place at midnight. But a 2am close every night, then up again in the morning?
Also, what some places appear to have done (certainly two near me have, anyway) is get the later licence, in their cases I think it’s untill 1am, but still keep the posted closing time as 11pm. It means the problems above are avoided, but if they have a special occassion (staff celebration, for instance), or a bunch of heavy-spending expense-account drinkers still going strong, then can opt to carry on serving. Particularly useful at this time of year - last December I was in my then-local, and one large group on an office party had got their entire drinks tab going onto the boss’s credit card :eek: They certainly weren’t being turfed out at half-eleven, when it was already well into four figures!
Most of the massive supermarkets have always had staff on site throughout the night, stacking shelves and sorting stock.
The big stores figured that if you’ve got the lights on, heating working and doors open for staff, there’s no real additional cost in letting customers in.
The introduction of self-service checkouts means that you perhaps only need 1-2 staff on the checkouts - a v. small additional outlay.
That may be why the lock-in continues in popularity, especially in rural areas but doubtless elsewhere as well.
I’ve no idea what our Irish cousins south of the border do, but here in NI the 24hr Tescos stores (there are at least three within Belfast) stop selling alcohol at 11ish.
The change in licence laws was only for England & Wales. Scotland always had more relaxed ones, at least for pubs. The NI ones, while having been set in line with the English ones, will now be in the hands of the Northern Ireland Assembly.
The Scottish licensing laws for pubs were relaxed from wartime criteria in 1976.
I recall a visit to Glasgow in 1975 during which many of the pub clientele decamped en masse to a hotel at about 9.30 in the evening, the permitted drinking hours being somewhat more liberal at such places.
Strictly speaking, I believe one had to be resident at a hotel in order to drink there after pub closing time but nobody seemed to care too much about this petty restriction.
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(Edited to avoid ambiguity).
Another plus is that with lock-ins being illegal, the smoking ban isn’t necessarily followed. I was pleased to smoke a cigar at the bar of one of my locals on Saturday night/Sunday morning, while we were locked in (and of course, law enforcement agents locked out…).
Where I live we have a 24 hour Tescos superstore,plus two privately run small 24 hour shops and of course all the petrol stations in the area have 24 hour shops.
:smack:
Great, Mr Paisley and his god squad now have a say in where and when I can have a drink.