The Welsh Way of Life

We're Welsh, we like a pint -

it's part of who we are.

As a focal centre of society, pubs are absolutely vital.

But we've also got a problem with drink.

It's one that has divided our nation for 200 years.

There was more of a feeling that the pub was a den of iniquity

and there was a devil at the bottom of every glass.

To understand this love-hate relationship with alcohol

we have to look at our past and the way that history has changed

how, when and what we drink in Wales.

'Drink has always been part of the traditions of Wales.'

It's believed that brewing was discovered in the Stone Age,

which takes us back 6,000 years.

It's been part of our tradition

for as long as anybody can remember.

FOLK SONG PLAYS

'Beer was brewed everywhere

'and, because it was a domestic normal part of life,

'it was mainly done by women'

and they were normally known as ale wives.

They would brew for the family just like they'd cook for the family.

'At a time when the diet wasn't too good - water was suspect,

'milk was suspect as well - and the safe drink,

'which had alcohol in it, which had hops, which are antiseptic, was beer.

'Weaker beers were drunk by the whole family including children.'

Beer was brewed throughout Wales

because hops and barley grew everywhere.

But in the south-east of the country,

there were sweeter ingredients to hand.

'What's being made here is honest, upright, full-bodied cider.

'Gallon upon delightful gallon of it.

'Enough to keep a mini army of farm workers

'marching stoutly through the harvesting seasons.

'You might not think so, but there's an art in pulping apples,

'an odd trick or two when making home-brewed cider

'with an appeal to the palate.'

After it's put into the barrel, we generally put...

an old rabbit or a... rat or a lump of beef...

'I wouldn't have thought that a rat would have added very much to the flavour.'

-Oh, yes.

-What does it do for the cider?

Well, the cider eats the rat...

You wouldn't see nothing - even a bone - in the bottom of the barrel

'when the cider starts to work.'

Drink was a natural part of rural life

and as such it was embraced by the church.

'If you look back at the origins of the Congregationalists,

'Independents, Baptists and so on, they were not instinctively anti-drink.'

And I'm told, there's a chapel in Bow Street, near Aberystwyth,

where there's a little niche

where the minister kept his half pint during his service.

But when the Industrial Revolution shifted the focus of Welsh life

from the countryside to the town, attitudes changed.

Suddenly you had a lot of people gathered together around mines,

factories, steelworks and so forth.

'That created a lot more social problems

'and suddenly drunkenness seemed much more of a problem.'

I was born in the Duke Of Edinburgh

and my mother and father kept the Duke Of Edinburgh at Cambridge

and the East Dock. When they were building the Dowlas Works

and as kids we'd hear them, "Dad, they're coming."

He'd go down and open then cos you could hear on the wooden bridge

the navvies coming, the Irish navvies, who built the docks,

and they used to be in there a whole day and night.

He'd just close at night, which some of them, they couldn't stand

and he'd be there and he'd just close the bar and leave them.

Then they'd get up in the morning and go to work.

Building the new industrial Wales was thirsty work.

Nowhere was this more evident

than in the pubs that served the Welsh steelworks.

There was huge long bar and they'd line them up - one pint here,

another there and another there. They'd be lined up three deep

'and suddenly the hooter would go, the doors'd open

'and huge numbers of men would arrive from the steelworks.

'Sweating like mad, they'd just knock back the first pint,

'virtually knock back the second and settle on the third.'

Heavy industries demanded heavy drinking.

As the pub was becoming the central feature of the new industrial areas,

that's the very time when a movement arose

to clamp down on drinking, to try and prevent it all together.

In the 1830s, the new temperance movement

found plenty of support for its ethos of moderation

and self-denial in non-conformist Wales.

Originally the movement came from America - the idea of temperance.

You shouldn't overdo it. Indeed they established the Two Pint Club,

where you could have two pints a night.

Which if you were working in an ironworks - hot all day -

you need two pints just to get your liquid back to a normal level.

So they settled on two pints. Some of the members thought, "Two pints a night,

"that's 14 pints, let's save them up and have them on Saturday night."

So the movement began to say, if people can't be temperate, they should stop - cold turkey.

This was the start of a holy war on drink,

which would pit the chapels against the brewers

in a struggle for the soul of the nation.

The temperance and religious revivals

that swept the valleys really worried the brewers.

'Lots of people signed pledges to give up drinking altogether

'and hung them on their walls. There was this very fervent atmosphere.

'The dominant form of religion was a rather puritanical Non-conformity.'

The ides of drinking for pleasure,

in fact the idea of doing anything for pleasure,

tended to be frowned upon.

'But then, of course, a lot of people back-slid

'and went back to drinking and then another revival would come along

'and so it would go in sort of waves. Further one way,

'then there'd be temperance, then there'd be temptation.'

The high point of the temperance campaign

was The Sunday Closing Act of 1881.

The Wales Sunday Closing Act satisfied the calls

of Methodist preachers for pubs throughout the country

to close their doors on the Lord's day.

The Sabbath was now the battlefield

on which the chapels and the brewers would fight for the next century.

What a terrible thing it'd be for our children,

to see people coming from public houses

when they come out from Sunday school.

That is what would happen if the public houses were open.

What kind of a Sunday would it be, sitting in a public house?

The chapels have far more to offer.

Remember that thou keep holy the Sabbath day.

Six days shalt thou labour and do all that thou hast to do,

but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.

'The Sabbath to me is a day to keep holy

'and do as little work as we can...

'and a day to go to worship, to chapel, and to worship our God.'

THEY SING A HYMN

THE HYMN CONTINUES

The pubs may have been closed,

but that didn't mean you couldn't get a drink on a Sunday.

'If you wanted to drink you'd join the Conservative Club

'or the Constitutional Club, the working man's club, the rugby club...

'Any of the dozens of clubs that most small towns in Wales had.

'There was an exclusivity about Sunday drinking,

'which was an unhealthy dividing factor in society.'

I think it did create too, in Wales,

the notion that we were rather a gang of hypocrites.

'There were one or two places on the border

'where half the bar might be in England, half in Wales.

'There was one on the borders'

where I think the public bar was in England

and the lounge bar was in Wales, so officially they weren't supposed to use the lounge bar on a Sunday.

And some poor fellow went into the lounge bar

and dropped dead from a heart attack, so they had to drag the corpse down the corridor

into the public bar in order to prove that they hadn't broken

the Sunday Closing Laws and that the fellow who'd died

was quite legitimately drinking in England

rather than illegitimately in Wales.

The Sunday Closing Act had been a major victory

for the Welsh temperance movement.

And in the first half of the 20th century,

they found a champion who would carry their cause even further.

DRUMS BEAT

'At the First World War, Lloyd George declared,'

"We have got three enemies in this war - one is Germany,

"the other is Austria and the third is drink."

And he had a crusade against drink and he did cut down on the hours.

'He weakened the level of beer and also he allowed local justices'

to close virtually when they liked. So that in Cardiganshire,

Tregaron closed at half past nine. The Aberaeron magistrates closed at ten.

So that the route between Tregaron and Aberaeron

was deadly about 9:40 because half the population of Tregaron

were driving to Aberaeron to get extra drinking.

These licensing restrictions remained in place

after the end of the war. But this apparent success for the temperance lobby would prove its undoing.

With shorter pub opening hours and weaker beer,

drunkenness and alcohol-related deaths dropped.

Drink was no longer the great evil that it had been.

'In the Second World War,'

the temperance movement again pressed for very heavy restrictions on the industry.

The Government turned them down. They said, "No, we see beer as vital for maintaining morale.

"We see the pub as..."

Someone called it the block house on the home front.

It was where the community could gather after dark

and where the heart of the nation would beat strong.

'Women came out a bit, you know, and it would be a social thing for them when their husbands were away.'

I suppose they'd put their children to bed

and they'd go out for an hour on their own.

'Shandy they'd have or a port and lemon.'

It was now socially acceptable for women to go to the pub.

However, they still had to know their place.

'The men would come in the bar and the wives would go in the cwtsh

and the men would stay in the bar. When they'd finished they'd call them, "We're ready!"

Then they'd go off together.

But while the pub had grown more respectable,

it was still a no-go area on Sundays.

The women would queue on Saturday night halfway up the street

with their flowered jugs and they'd be all in competition -

who had the nicest jug - for the couple of pints of beer

for the men for the Sunday.

'After the war, generally beer and going to the pub was regarded as more acceptable.'

So things like the Sunday closing were regarded as an anomaly now.

As popular support for Sunday closing slipped,

Welsh voters were given the freedom to make up their own minds.

In 1961, every county in Wales held its own referendum on the issue.

From now on, these polls would be held every seven years.

For the Welsh temperance movement, this was the beginning of the end.

'The vote on Sunday opening is a very clear indicator

'of the way in which there was a marked decline

'in respect for the Sabbath. In the first vote in the early '60s,

'the large urban districts all tried, but the rest of Wales

'remains very heavily committed in the early '60s'

to the notion of the sanctity of the Sunday

and that the peace of the Sunday shouldn't be destroyed

by drinking people coming out of pubs.

'But then every seven years, you can see them dropping one by one.'

'Today, three new chinks have appeared in Wales' alcohol curtain.'

As a result of the 1968 local option polls Montgomeryshire,

Denbighshire and, in the far west, Pembrokeshire

have changed their minds since 1961 and voted to have their public houses open on Sundays.

'The chairman of the Sunday Opening Council is David Baird Murray.

-'How does he feel after today's results?'

-I'm obviously delighted.

This is what we forecast. We thought we'd win these three counties and we've done it.

'The difference on the map is that while East Wales is completely wet

'on Sunday now, the patchwork quilt does remain because of Pembrokeshire's wet decision.

'It'll still be confusing to tourists and travellers

'that if they cross the border into Cardigan or Carmarthen,

'they'll find the pub doors closed on Sundays.'

# There's a little pub in Wales Where they sell the best of ales

# But if you want a drink on Sunday You will have to wait till Monday

# Did you ever see? Did you ever see?

# Did you ever see such a funny thing before? #

'This is the boundary of Breconshire and here is Glamorgan.

'The road winds in and out all along the boundary.

'Here you could have had any number of quick ones at the Mountain here

'between 12 and 2 PM. But that pub is in Glamorgan, which, of course, is wet.

'About two miles further along the same road,

'you would have found the Rose And Crown closed.

'And a little further on still, you would have come across two pubs,

'almost opposite each other - the Gwyn Arms and the Tregye Arms -

'also shut. And at the Berrington Arms you might have heard the licensee say,'

The corner of my premises is eight foot six from the Glamorgan border.

'What do you do with yourself on a Sunday?

'I go down over the border on a Sunday.

'I'm going down now with a friend of mine...

'to have a little drink where they're allowed to drink on Sundays,

'which is 200 yards away.'

'Montgomeryshire went in the late 1960s,'

so everybody would go to Machynlleth. There were only seats on the stairs

in the Black Lion Inn on a Sunday. It was absolutely packed.

With each referendum, the Sunday closing lobby lost more ground.

But just as the brewers were conquering their old enemy,

they found themselves under attack from a new quarter.

It's ironic, in a way, that when the temperance movement lost its momentum,

that other things actually hit the brewing industry and the pubs.

'One was called television, which arrived on a large scale

'and obviously people started to stay at home at night

'and watch TV. Ely Brewery even introduced a beer called TV Ale.

'They introduced it in large flagons hoping that people would buy that... while watching TV at home.'

The coming of the supermarket made it easier

and cheaper for us to drink at home.

And with the growing popularity of nightclubs and restaurants,

it seemed the very existence of the good old local pub

was under threat.

For the Mason's Arms it's D-day.

D for defence day against a council work squad and its bulldozer

now crawling inexorably towards this village local.

'The villagers say they're prepared to stand their ground

'to prevent the village's social centre being pulled down.

'And that from today on, they're ready for an instant sit-in

'to halt the bulldozer in its tracks.

'The villagers say that if the council's officials

'try to take over the pub, the lock-in will start and go on.'

Can I ask you this? If there is a confrontation with the law

or with council officials, how are you likely to react?

Well, we are likely to react and if it is the law...

well, we'll have to get out.

But otherwise from the law, we shall stay in till the last minute.

'Meanwhile, the council is playing it cool.'

They say they're prepared to wait until the regulars -

who'll be sitting in here soon - run out of patience,

out of time and out of beer.

The classic ingredients of every successful siege.

Perhaps the most fascinating side of this battle now

will be to see which of those supplies runs out first,

before there's final capitulation.

This is David Allen reporting from the Mason's Arms in Pembrokeshire.

'A lot of the family local brewers looked at the industry

'and decided to get out of the business and sell up.

'You had in the early 1960s the development of national brewers,

'who bought up a lot of the local regional brewers.

'Bass who took over Hancock's and Whitbread who took over Rhymney'

and Ely and Evan Evans Bevan at Neath.

They really built up huge dominance in the market.

This modernisation of the industry would change what we drank in Wales.

Traditional cask ales had demanded care on the part of the landlord.

'Often you had an awful smell coming from pumps

'because they didn't wash their pipes.

'And then, of course, you've got the keg bitter - coming in and turn on a tap.

'That was considered very grand.'

Keg beer was, essentially, like bottled beer

but in a larger container, which you could serve on draft.

It's beer which has been matured in the brewery

rather than maturing in the cellar.

'Whereas before each area had its local beer and its local style,

'you now had national keg beers - Watney's Red Barrel,

'Whitbread Tankard and Double Diamond.'

We've got Wandworth Six X, Foster's Best Bitter, Archer's Best Bitter...

'Then you had CAMRA, the real ale people, coming in and saying this was appalling,

'you need to have it on the pump and carefully looked after in cellars and so on.

'That was a very constructive revolution, I think.'

-..On Sunday. If you are...

-While brewing underwent a revolution,

the Welsh chapels were still fighting a losing battle to keep Sunday special.

In 1975 - seven years after the last referendum -

Non-conformist ministers took to the streets of Narbeth.

If they want to open, leave them open.

-That's you, that's your...

-That is my point of view.

We have a lot of young people who are being influenced

to take intoxicants and it's the bad example...

We know very well that smoking is, especially cigarette smoking as you are now,

is harmful. We're definitely told that and yet you have a choice.

-And you don't drink heavily?

-Well, I have a few, like.

-But a few only...

-That's your pleasure?

-That's our pleasure.

-You wouldn't sign this for the sake of the future generation?

-No, no.

-You wouldn't?

-No.

-In the name of Jesus?

-No.

By the time the votes in this latest poll have been cast and counted,

Wales was even wetter.

We were now happy to turn our backs on our Non-conformist heritage

and embrace more exotic influences.

CARIBBEAN MUSIC PLAYS

'Not the South Sea Island Bar of the London Hilton,

'but a sedate Gala hotel, for cocktails are now a serious business.

'So serious that this event is a contest to see

'which local bartender can shake out the best gin-based concoction.

'Altogether there are six cocktails competing for the taste buds of three judges.

'The two professionals and one amateur are trying to judge between

'Smooth Operator, Foxy Lady or even Mumbles Fizz.

'The winner is Cheryl Edwards with Smooth Operator

'by a short cocktail stick. It certainly seems a strong mixture.'

Four measures of gin and Cointreau a dash of cold Carib, and unsweetened orange juice

-and a dash of egg white.

-'What made you dream that up?'

I don't really know, I just wanted to use Cointreau actually -

an orangey-flavour drink.

By the 1980s, Cointreau was not the only foreign import

-hitting these shores.

-Then you got the lager invasion.

Now, lager, in my opinion, is what the human body does to real beer.

You might as well drink your own productions...as drink lager.

The problem with lager was that...its image.

It was initially sold as a temperance drink.

'It was weaker than the stronger British ales.

'It was viewed almost like Babycham or something.'

Any sort of macho man would not be seen dead drinking lager.

This was about to change,

as the brewers poured money into the marketing of lager as THE drink

for the young-man-about-town.

# I said it was a pity that we had to hurry home

# Cos her 80-year-old mother was all on her own

# So she kissed him very nicely And said she'd phone

# Harp stays sharp to the bottom of the glass

# Harp stays sharp! #

It took over straight away with the youngsters.

Yeah, I remember when they bought Labatts, the Canadian one -

'that caused a stir and it was absolutely taken by storm

'when it came over here first.

'We sold more of that than anything at the time.'

With lager flooding the country, the Welsh temperance movement finally went under for good.

Publicans in Dwyfor are gearing up to open their doors on Sundays

for the first time in 115 years.

'There was no mistaking the relief felt by publicans in Caernarfon last night.

'The cheer went up as the last bastion against Sunday drinking fell.

'It's the end of an era in Dwyfor.

'From Sunday the pubs will be open in every part of Wales.'

'People said, "Well, that's that. We'll bury it."'

So we've jumped from being the most religious or dutiful society to one of the most secular.

The death of this last relic of the temperance tradition

coincided with the birth of a new term - binge drinking.

# ..Don't ask me Why ask me... #

Fell out with the girlfriend

and I've come out with the boys to have a good night out.

-Few drinks, few beers, a dance and a home curry...

-Take me home.

When you're with your friends you drink

and maybe you drink too much because your friends are drinking as well.

I don't drink during the week, only if I'm out with my college friends.

I drink about eight pints a night or something like that.

That's how much I drink, depending how I feel.

Ironically, in the view of some, it was the late temperance movement

that had helped create our heavy-drinking culture.

The temperance movement did result in the divorce

of the practice of eating from the practice of drinking.

If you go to France in the evening, they probably drank just as much

'as the wilder elements of Bala or Llanrhos, but they eat with it and they pace themselves.

'The general practice in much of Wales is to drink

'as many pints as you can get by 11 o'clock.'

So you fill yourself up with beer, then you top yourself up with curry

and the end result is...

'a rather unsightly activity.'

'In small towns - Llanrhos, for example, Bala -

'they can be very rowdy. I've stayed in Bala on a Saturday.

'Don't think of going to sleep if you're on the Main Street

'until about quarter to four.'

This pattern of heavy drinking creates serious problems

on the streets of Wales.

'Wrexham after dark - North Wales Police say it's a hotspot

'for drink-related crime. They believe

'that they could cut violent crime by half here

'if they could reduce the amount of alcohol drunk.

'Combating the increase in binge drinking

'has called for increasing ingenuity.

'In Wrexham, last year, police began ordering people who urinate in the street

'to clean up after them with a water jet.'

It's simply never been worse.

There are more people out there, drink is cheaper,

so people can drink more and our officers

'are being stretched to their limit, in terms of dealing with the aftermath.'

The problems created by binge drinking

reflect a fundamental change in our society.

On Friday and Saturday nights, Welsh towns and city centres

are becoming the playground of the young.

'In city centres, you tend to get pubs taken over

'by a certain age group and you don't have that cross section

'of the public, which sort of kept its own social control.'

When I first started drinking, you'd go in a pub

and there'd be the older regulars - normally all sat round the bar -

and you couldn't misbehave because if you did

it wasn't the landlord who'd tell you off, it was the regulars.

The young kids were good. They'd come in and know all the old fellas, buy them a pint

and sit with them for a while and have a chat.

You now have to have bouncers on the door of pubs -

you never used to have bouncers on the doors of pubs.

That's...because it was a self-governing community, the pub.

I can't understand about these places.

How they... You see them out sick in town, falling around in the streets

and young girls... Surely somebody must be there to control them and say, "You've had enough."

With alcohol now a major health and social issue,

can it be that we've forgotten the lessons of history?

By abandoning the legacy of temperance,

have we released the demon from the bottle?

There's a terrible lack of discipline in our life, I think.

We've let things go too far. If we're going to let it go here now,

our country's going to become more pagan all the time.

You do feel that things go in circles

and you're coming back to where drinking is a problem again.

'Drink is something that has been the ruination of the nation.

'It's been around an awfully long time.'

It might be our way for making up for lack of sunshine.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd 2005

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