BEER SUPPLIES (Hansard, 21 May 1910)

§ Mr. SEDDON

I wish to call attention to a matter of grave importance affecting the public life of this country and a situation which is fraught with danger. Last night I hoped to call attention to the very serious unrest and danger that is arising from the shortage of the beer supply in this country. Since then I have had the opportunity of meeting a very important and influential deputation from Lancashire, and from the statement made the matters that have happened in one city during the last few days are certainly menacing and of a very grave character. I see my right hon. Friend the Minister of Food in his place, I assume to answer any criticism I am about to make. Although I have the highest regard for him, so far as his reply is concerned, I anticipate that it will be just as effective as if Boadicea were brought in from the Embankment and given the power of speech to answer, because it is not my right hon. Friend's Department which is responsible, but something much more important—that is, the Cabinet itself. I am rather surprised that the Leader of the House, who was here up to the last moment, has not found it convenient to remain in his place. I am profoundly convinced that, unless the Cabinet change their attitude, this shortage of beer is not only going to be a menace but a great danger to civil order and will be a prolific motive of disturbance in a very short time.

What is the position? If the whirligig of time had placed the Food Controller where I am sitting and had placed me where he is sitting, he would be doing what I am doing, criticising not only his Department but the Cabinet on this question. We are told that the Department responsible for this shortage of beer is the Food Department. My right hon. Friend stated yesterday, in answer to a question, that the cereal supply, potential and immediate, was not sufficient to re store the prewar supply of beer. I demur from that statement. He may have more information than I have, but I have been told by gentlemen in the country closely associated with agriculture that there is any amount of cereals that remain, un-threshed and that many farmers are in a 532 state of perturbation as to what is going to happen to their crops. Therefore, I want to enter this caveat against the information given me yester day, and I make this statement, on ex parte evidence, I admit, for the right hon. Gentleman to answer, that so far as the cereal supply is concerned it is enough both for the bread supply and the supply of beer approximate to the supply in 1914.

Then the right hon. Gentleman must shield himself behind the fact that this is a question for the Cabinet. We have a Liquor Control Board. If I am to take it upon its actions and Its methods, I should come to the definite conclusion that it is in the pay of the Bolsheviks or that it is the creature of teetotalism, which is playing a very un-English game. This question has nothing to do with temperance at all. If fanatical teetotalism is the guide and philosopher of the Liquor Control Board, it is playing a very un-English game. If they want to make this country dry, let them come out flat-footed and meet their opponents and not take advantage of an organisation which is the creature of war and has been brought about by war conditions. Therefore the Liquor Control Board can not be attacked in this House. There is not a man to attack. It is a nebulous body so far as the House is concerned. It has drastic powers, but the Cabinet has fathered its decisions, and my charge is against the Cabinet. I want to give this warning. We have lived through four and a half years of war. The great mass of the people have worked strenuously and laboriously, not withstanding here and there an ebullition, an outbreak or a strike. After the Armistice was declared there was a relaxation, and people became irritable, and certainly susceptible to many influences which were not in the interests of peace, order, progress, and good government. One of the greatest irritants has been the curtailment of the beer supply. It was curtailed as a war measure. One hopes the War is at an end, except that the terms have to be signed, but during the last few months the people have been waiting for as increase in the supply of beer. There has been a small increase agreed upon, but it is not going to the consumer. On the other hand, I see I have been criticised for raising the question, because it has led to drunkenness, and it is said there has been an increase of drunkenness amongst women. One of the most prolific causes 533 of this increase, if it exists, is the control of the beer supply. The ordinary house wife, trained in the traditions of her race, looks upon her beer as an adjunct to her ordinary daily requirements. I have heard it said in Lancashire that bread and cheese is the staff of life, but bread and cheese and beer is life itself. The ordinary housewife, who believes a glass of beer at night helps to sustain her, has hitherto been able to go to the the nearest public-house, get a gill of beer in. a "bottle and consume it at her leisure over her supper. The publicans get more customers than they can supply over the counter, and, therefore, the woman who wanted a gill of beer to take home cannot get it, and she goes to the public-house and meets Mrs. Smith or Mrs. Jones. They say, "How do you do?"; begin to talk about their losses in the War, and the result is that, instead of having one gill of beer, she gets some times two or three gills. If there is an increase in drunkenness amongst women, it is caused because they cannot take their gill of beer home. In the interests of true temperance, there ought to be a larger supply of beer. So far as cereals are concerned, it is a possibility, and I warn the Government as to the position. In Lancashire they are getting near to the great holiday of Whitsuntide. In Manchester last night the trams were held up as a protest against the shortage of the beer supply. If that continues until the. Whitsuntide holidays, without being a dismal prophet, I warn the Government that, instead of there being passive resistance, there will be active resistance. If that takes place, the responsibility will be upon the heads of the Cabinet, because they have not taken cognisance of the real resentment against the shortage of beer, which has not arisen out of the shortness of supply, but because of some individual who is advising the War Cabinet at the present time. I am told that one of the advisers of the War Cabinet is the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby (Mr. J. H. Thomas). He speaks with great authority, 534 but if my information is correct—I do not say that it is—and if he goes to the War Cabinet and says there is no unrest amongst the working classes because of the shortage of beer, then I would ask him to take the platform and make the same statement in Derby, and he will soon find that he has made a colossal blunder. I have brought this question forward purely in the interests of law and order, and un less something is done speedily there is going to be great unrest, which may lead to consequences, the effect of which no man in this House can conceive.