Last Saturday night I decided to go and buy a loaf of bread. Since I live in the centre of town and don’t own a car, this was a challenge in itself but that’s definitely a theme for another day. What it meant, however was that I came face to face with the reality of what our night-time city centres are really like.
No, there weren’t clusters of ‘hoodies’ dealing drugs or ladettes urinating in the street or any of the clichés of the tabloid town-centre but there was a very odd atmosphere. Everyone but me seemed to be devoted to the single-minded pursuit of the cheapest available route to drunkenness in the shortest possible time. So far, so Daily Mail, but look around. What else is there to do?
Unlike most European countries, British towns and cities provide very few options for the young at night. The shops are shut; you can rarely get a coffee or soft-drink for love or money, still less a table at which to drink it and any meal or snack beyond a Snickers bar is out of the question. Is it any wonder Britain’s youth are world champion binge-drinkers. There is literally nothing else available.
When young people crowd into large towns, the first question has to be – “Why are they coming?” To answer that, go to your local suburban shopping arcade and try to find so much as even that chocolate bar after 7pm, never mind the continental pavement café of myth and legend. Youth clubs? Sporting facilities? Forget it. If I want to do anything with my evening, the town centre is the only place to go.
It isn’t even that there are too many bars and clubs – towns with one or two venues can have just as much trouble with anti-social behaviour as those with dozens or hundreds –so the banning instincts of some not-so-liberal Liberals are not going to get us anywhere. So what do we do?
Well first of all – let’s stop making the problem worse. If you close down your seating area at 11 pm, your takeaway can stay open later than if you allow your customers to eat in. So immediately we are funnelling people back onto the street, at best to loiter and litter and at worst to vomit and fight. For goodness sake, let the people sit, eat and process their discount lager.
How about designating areas where cafés, snack-bars and small shops are encouraged to open late and catch the evening trade? The necessary extra lighting and a small police presence would more than pay for itself.
Many councils own halls and community spaces in town centres and in the suburbs: Let’s invest in young people by providing something to do at the weekend, whether it’s drama or music or just somewhere to go and buy a panini. Again, it costs money but it could drastically cut the need for remedial policing and bring immeasurable benefits to the community.
We’ve designed binge-drinking and anti-social behaviour into the fabric of our towns and cities by taking away every alternative and turning them into one-stop shops for alcohol and disorder. We scapegoat the young people our society has failed, calling them yobs and hoodies and now we’ve even come up with ultrasonic gadgets that scare off anyone under 25 like we were moles in the lawn. Then we’re surprised when some youngsters opt out of voting, engaging or even caring what the rest of society does.
Britain’s youth is targeted and persecuted in ways no other segment of society would tolerate without riots in the street; is it any wonder kids turn to drink?
This is a clear case of Britain needing a Liberal alternative to the Get-Tough consensus only concerned with headlines and the votes of Middle-England marginals. Which will be the first Lib Dem council brave enough to say that the way to tackle the crisis amongst the young in our towns and cities doesn’t only extend to banning things and take meaningful action? Lest anybody forget, the disenfranchised youth of today are the voters of tomorrow. What is the outlook for a future Britain inhabited by the adults these young people will become?
* Benjamin Mathis is Chair of London Liberal Democrat Youth & Students, and has been a party member since 2005.
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21 Comments
Resurrect true pubs (controlled by local landlords, free from the stranghehold of the sickmaking large pub companies). Relax age restrictions. Then you’ll soon see people having a few social drinks instead of buying cheap from supermarkets, where the sole purpose is to get drunk.
Alternatives have disappeared because of how people behave, not the other way round.
Most young people don’t want to sit around having a panini in a trendy cafe.
Whats wrong with having a drink anyway? The issue is drinking till you fall over, not drinking in general. There are many ways to enjoy alcohol in a socially responsible way, as most people do.
A lot of anti-social behaviour occurs in pedestrianised areas when shops close for the day. The problem was so bad in Taunton they pulled a lot of seating out of the high street to be replaced with moveable chairs laid out and taken in by the pubs. However, this just gives drunken louts a larger area in which to fight in my view! And it’s also annoyed visitors to the town who now can’t sit in the high street without buying a beer or a sandwich from the pub…
In Canada you are allowed free entry to enjoy sports when you are young…why can we not direct these kids energy into something more worthwhile? Free travel would also help. Never mind the pensioners!
“Everyone but me seemed to be devoted to the single-minded pursuit of the cheapest available route to drunkenness in the shortest possible time.”
It makes me nervous that you assume this is a bad thing in and of itself. It sounds rather like a Victorian surveyor venturing into the East End for the purposes of social observation. Were you or anyone else being harmed by it? Were they underage (I’m sure some were)? Was there anti-social behaviour (whatever that is)? Yes, there is *possibly* a public health concern in terms of saving people from themselves, but by no means everyone reading this would even concede that much.
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with your ideas of having more to do in town centres – who could disagree? – but I’m not keen on us buying into the whole notion being touted by Jackie Smith that public drunkenness is a sort of unattractive scourge that must be stamped out or controlled in some other way on aesthetic grounds alone, when quite a lot of the time it really isn’t harming anyone, and there are already laws to deal with situations where it does.
Hm, also never been sure about the equation of alcohol with disenchantment and disengagement. I mean, currently the entire business world is run on coffee. A couple of hundred years ago the entire trading and diplomatic world was run on snuff and, quite often, opium. A couple of hundred years before that it was run on – yes! – alcohol again. Seems to me the substance abuse du jour is entirely incidental. So I can’t be all that pessimistic about the future of society on the grounds of binge-drinking alone.
I have to echo some of the other commentators here, while I agree completely with what you’re saying about lack of facilities and options for the young that really only relates to anti-social behaviour.
The facts are there for us to read, if we’re willing to read them, on binge drinking. It’s on the decline except in the few vulnerable and poor in society, in fact we’re pretty much back to drinking levels we were at before anyone even knew what binge drinking was and pub/bar sales have slumped in recent years.
There are issues to resolve about where people drink and what atmosphere they drink in, Labour’s licensing laws have failed to stop kids with a problem from drinking and hasn’t drastically reduced the numbers of people drinking in the first place, all it’s done is force them out of a supervised environment such as a local pub and back to their homes (cheaper due to super market pricing) or worse on to the street where the only supervision they may get is from friends who don’t understand how much is too much.
Like many articles about binge drinking I feel this one misses the mark on what the problem actually is, but I would never say bad things about any idea to restructure some level of culture and variety in to our town and city centres.
Last week, a group of friends of mine went to a (Preston) city centre pub, watched a couple of bands, had three or so pints each, then walked home.
On the same night, the local paper ran a “story” showing teens (and older types, heh) falling out of a well known dance club the very worse for drink surrounded by police.
I suspect the reasons why one group of people can handle their drink during a night out, and another cannot, could fill a report of many hundreds of pages. Is it that the live music venue has more expensive prices? That the cluv has too many cheap promotions? That me and my friends are mature enough to know how to act in public?
The problem with so many city centres could well be “solved” by Ms Smith by banning drink within 100 miles of the coast, forcing supermarkets to put 200% mark up on beer, and closing all pubs that don’t sell a pint of water with every shot sold…There are far too many complex reasons for the state of our city centres. “Binge-drinking” is not a national sport, after all.
Lee – how is providing an alternative to drinking as a night out or a night in free of charge nothing to do with binge drinking?
Alix you sound like you need a beer! :@)
Nah, it’s vodka all the way for me before 4 o clock!
I’m curious to what extent ‘binge drinking’ (or ‘enjoying yourself’ in a less puritanical context) is a new phenomenon. Hasn’t it been around since Hogarth if not before in the UK? I’m not sure it is the lack of alternatives that are a problem. My university had plenty of other entertainment and/ or food options but that didn’t make the bars any less popular.
And I’m all in favour of supermarkets selling cheap alcohol. Contrary to one of the earlier posters the sole purpose of buying alcohol in Tesco is not to get drunk but to avoid exhorbitant prices in pubs and restaurants, and enjoy a quiet drink at home!
Liberal Hammer, if we are “binge drinking” now, then we have been binge drinking for decades without ever having the phenomenon brought to our attention.
Jo, I don’t believe I said such things have nothing to do with binge drinking? I said this article misses the mark on if it is truly trying to talk in any part about “solving” binge drinking. The binge drinkers in our society are falling, to 1997 levels in fact, and those that are binge drinking under-age are dropping in number though increasing in consumption. There’s a specific problem here with specific socio-economic groups and certain age groups/demographics, not with drinking in general.
Also, while I agree with supermarket prices being too low, I wholeheartedly disagree with recent suggestions that alcohol tax should go up again. Supermarket prices will always be cheaper than pubs and bars, so a blanket increase in alcohol tax would only further damage local economies and communities while relegating drinking to a less social and therefore more dangerous atmosphere.
The question I think for you, Jo, is one someone else posed here…what exactly is wrong with going out and getting drunk? That’s what seems to be the overarching feeling coming from politicians these days. Why is it that the vast majority of people drinking socially, perhaps to the stage of getting drunk, while clearly never breaking their limit of alcoholic units for the drink are going to get dragged down with the yobs and those who need support because of their personal choices?
Obviously there are places with serious problems of anti social behaviour aggravated by alcohol and drugs, but the moral panics created by New Labour’s determination not to be outflanked by the Tories on law and order have made matters much worse by demonising young people who would not otherwise have been regarded as causing a nuisance at all. If you clamp down on the natural high spirits of young people then there is a good chance that you are going to create just the problems you are trying to avoid. For example, in Winchester since time immemorial young people would go down to the rivers just outside the town in the summer and sit around drinking, and in more recent times smoking dope, and splashing around in the water. Sure, a bit of litter may have been left and sometimes people got drunk, but it didn’t cause any genuine problem. Over the past twenty years Winchester College and Winchester Diocese, who between them own most of the land along the rivers, have progressively restricted public access so that there is now almost nowhere the public can get into the water. And guess what? We are all so law abiding in this country now that everyone meekly accepts it – though of course the kids who would have been messing around in a natural environment are probably now getting pissed up behind a garage block and using their frustrated energies in chucking stones through old ladies’ windows.
…moving onto the gin…
Now in the right thread:
Binge drinking in town centres has been going on for quite some time. Certainly all my adult life (and a chunk of my childhood too).
It indubitably got worse during the 70s and 80s, and accelerated after 1987 with a levelling off in the late 1990s.
The reasons are twofold:
(1) The steady increase in the disposable income of young people.
(2) The Town & Country Planning (Use Classes) Order 1987, which enabled the hospitality trade to open up cafes in town centres and convert them into pubs without needing to obtain planning permission for change of use.
No (2) was a deliberate response by the Thatcher government to lobbying from the brewing industry which was seeking to swamp town centres with “super pubs” in order to maximise profits during a period of contraction for their sector.
The moral right cannot honestly moan about teenage drinking (as if this is something terribly wicked and presages the collapse of civilisation) when the Prime Minister it worships caused the problem.
Now, I am old enough to remember a moral panic about binge drinking in the Summer of 1988. Strange, 20 years later the world still exists.
Lee – I have no problem with anyone over the age of 18 going out with the main aim of getting drunk – however it has been quite a few years now since I’ve spent my evening with someone who wants to do that!
The problem arises when binge drinking spills over into something else. My liberty to sit down in the high street in Taunton (not that I’d want to loiter for long you understand!) has been taken away from me due to the street becoming one huge pub – rather than resolving the anti-social behaviour that this was meant to tackle I think it has pandered to it instead. Why shouldn’t I be able to sit down without spending money in a pub? Why shouldn’t I be able to go out and have a drink without worrying about someone starting a fight?
Yes people have the freedom to drink themselves sick if they want to – but surely we also have a sense of social responsibiity as liberals to reach out and try and help if there’s a problem? We also have to protect the freedom and liberty of those who went out for a quiet night with a couple of drinks.
Good points, well made, I say.
Hic.
Jo, I agree and repeat I’ve not said there shouldn’t be non-alcoholic activities for people to do. Whether they are slap bang in the middle of alcoholic venues and if that is the most appropriate place for them is indeed another debate.
But it’s interesting that you talk about you worrying about others starting a fight. Is this because fights are often happening where you live or because you just have a fear of other peoples behaviour? For instance I rarely ever witness fights wherever I am, and any that happen are very swiftly dealt with by security, be it here in Bristol or back in my hometown in Cornwall. I personally don’t have a fear of anyone around me starting a fight, let alone one I may be affected by…where does this fear come from, reality of a situation or the overall culture we’ve grown up in that says we can’t say hello to our neighbours, that we don’t greet people sitting next to us on trains and that we also fear those having fun along side us if we don’t know them and they fall in to the stereotype of those likely to start a confrontation?
No I was talking about an imagined situation. But, yes, Lee, fights happen a lot in Taunton town centre, which is why nice people go elsewhere to drink. Me included!
* joins Alix on the booze *
Brandy?
Cider!
There are a lot of variables to consider, of which the design of town centres is one.
The primary reason why people binge drink is because they enjoy it. For those who do not enjoy it so much, they do it because of the peer group pressure to do so. Another reason is that it makes you a rebel, and for some that means it does wonders for your self-esteem, particalarly when you can boast about it afterwards.
I think the short term thrill and lack of consideration for the consequences is the biggest problem of all. A similar mentality applies to those who have unprotected sex, or take drugs.
There is more than one way to experience pleasure in life, there are alternatives to being anti-social or wrecking your health and well being.
Playing and instrument, reading a book, performing in a play, learning to paint can all be very pleasurable, but learning the skills to enjoy them puts a lot of people off.
There is a lot to consider, and too much for me to find time to write for now.