The State Management Scheme - the story of 'Government Pubs' in Britain

Imagine if the Home Office took over the running of pubs and breweries – surely it would be a disaster?

One of the strangest attempts at social engineering in modern British history began in 1916 and came to an end in 1973. This was the ‘State Management Scheme’, developed by the Home Office to respond to the problem of alcohol abuse in wartime. Whereas the United States would approach the ‘evil of drink’ with an outright ban in 1920 and the beginning of the prohibition era, a more inclusive approach was utilised in the United Kingdom.

The First World War was, by 1916, a conflict that required a vast, constant supply of armaments.  A conflict that was intended to be over quickly had become bogged down in the trenches of northern France and Belgium. The opposing armies were lobbing shells and firing bullets at a phenomenal rate, which led to the ‘shell crisis’ of 1915.  This meant that vast munitions factories had to be established to service this demand. 

One such site was Gretna, just north of the Scottish border, but not far from the English city of Carlisle. The scale of the enterprise was vast; by 1917 there would be some 17,000 workers on site. Remarkably, almost 12,000 of those workers were women.  It is not difficult to imagine the social upheaval that this caused. People (most of them young women) were released from a very controlled domestic environment into a maelstrom of wartime hedonism.  This came to a head in the bars, pubs and clubs of Carlisle as thirsty munitions workers flooded into the city in search of a good time.

Two years earlier, in 1914, the government had enacted the ‘Defence of the Realm Act’ which placed general restrictions on the sale of alcohol that were not relaxed until the 1980s.  These powers were not sufficient to deal with the events taking place in Carlisle, so another solution had to be found.  What was decided was that a scheme needed to be put in place that controlled – rather than banned – the sale of alcohol.  There was also a need to remove the potential for profiteering from the sale of alcohol, something definitely not to be encouraged.

What finally emerged was the ‘State Management Scheme’, a system so rigid and radical that if we were studying it in the Iron Curtain countries or modern North Korea we would deride it as ideologically unsound, unworkable and unfair.  What happened was this – the government ‘nationalised’ not only the public houses in the Carlisle area, but also the means of production (breweries) and supply chains.

Pub landlords became salaried civil servants who would not only fail to make more money by selling more beer, but could also lose their jobs if customers failed to keep to the rules.  During the war (and a little afterwards, things were loosened in 1919) the rules were very strict indeed – the buying of ‘rounds’ was forbidden, as was the practice of spirit ‘chasers’ with pints of beer.

The scheme was implemented in two other areas too, around the famous armaments factory in Enfield, north-west of London and munitions works in the Cromaty Firth. Surely there was a clamour for this terrible practice to end after the armistice? Well, the Enfield scheme was wound up in 1922 as was the other Scottish experiment, but in Carlisle it continued into the 1970s.

There are a few reasons for this, one being that publicans and brewers – although selling a hugely popular product – were not well-liked.  They tended to produce indifferent products purely to generate vast profits for scions of the brewing industry that grew immensely rich on the meagre wages of the poor.  The State Management breweries implemented high standards and produced a quality product at a fixed price.

Next came the pubs themselves; conscious that the environment in which alcohol was consumed had an effect on drinkers, the civil servants behind the scheme enlisted an architect to join them.  This man was Harry Redfern whose other work included laboratories at the University of Cambridge. His contribution to the scheme was the ‘New Model Inn’, a design inspired by the Arts & Crafts movement.  These places were revolutionary in that they incorporated concepts like food service into the British pub environment. These new establishments were pleasant places to enjoy a drink, rather than the rough and ready slophouse.

The idea of the New Model Inn spread across the country and ushered in a golden age for the public house. This is where the concept behind the State Management Scheme needs to be looked into a little more deeply.  There was an unusual understanding of social need here – particularly unusual for a government that was sending soldiers overseas to be slaughtered in their thousands –that drinking alcohol was not something that should be prevented.  It was recognised that the drinking environment and what was being drunk were equally important. These ideas would eventually lead to the smoke-free, reasonably family-friendly pubs of today.

The State Management Scheme saw off the Second World War and the Swinging Sixties, but did not escape the attention of the Heath government of 1971. That government would nationalise Rolls-Royce in 1971, but chose to sell off another symbol of Britain – the ‘government pubs’.

This rather splendid website http://thestatemanagementstory.org/ plans to gather together more information on the subject.