The Neighbourhood Boozers that Time Forgot

20 Dec 2006

Evening Standard

The iconic place of the neighbourhood pub in British culture never seems safer than amid Christmas jollities. Even if you cannot remember the name of a single character in Coronation Street, you know the name of the pub, the Rovers Return. Yet pubs are in decline.

In Hackney there was once literally a pub on every corner. But my road is typical of what is happening now. Of the three that used to be there, one has been knocked down to build flats, one is struggling to reinvent itself as a gastro pub and the other is half empty most of the time. And this is indicative of the trend in inner London. The Campaign for Real Ale says that 26 pubs close nationally each month and the number is climbing. Of course, some pubs are surviving and even thriving. Chain bars; pubs which cater for tourists looking for the authentic pub experience; pubs in business areas which cater for the after-work crowd; theme bars and pubs which have a niche market like gay bars are all doing well. But the working-class pub that acts as a throbbing hub for the streets around it (with EastEnders' Queen Vic as the archetype) seems to be in an irreversible decline. Some linger on. But they are often sad, shabby places propped up by a dwindling band of elderly, white working-class drinkers.

The trouble is that our city has changed out of all recognition since the heyday of the pub. Back then housing conditions - certainly in the East End - were grim and the pub was a haven. But city life is less communal now, too: once people leave their twenties and get their own place, they increasingly reject the collective experience of pub-going. Instead they buy their drink in the supermarket and watch television or a DVD at home. Demographic change in London is to blame, too. Back when there were dozens of pubs in Hackney's residential streets, it was an overwhelmingly white area. Now it is not - and many ethnic groups do not visit pubs at all. This is not just because some, like Muslims, do not drink alcohol. West Indians like a drink. But my mother's generation of West Indian women would never have dreamed of venturing inside a pub.

I had a brief spurt of pub-going as a young Left-wing activist. But to this day it would not occur to me to go to a pub unless someone else suggested it. And so the pubs decline. They'll be around for a bit yet. But how long is it before the neighbourhood pub becomes like the stone drinking troughs for horses that you still see in inner London, a relic of a bygone age?

 

 



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