Binge thinking

Last month, Judge Charles Harris announced on the Today programme that "a very large proportion of domestic violence is committed by people who have been drinking - and if they hadn't been so drinking so much, they wouldn't be so violent".

'Twas ever thus. In 1751, novelist and magistrate Henry Fielding wrote: "Wretches are often brought before me, charged with theft and robbery, whom I am forced to confine before they are in a condition to be examined: and when they have afterwards become sober, I have plainly perceived from the state of case that the gin alone was the cause of the transgression."

The British have always been big drinkers. Indeed ours is a drink-based culture. Our ancestors understood this, even if we have forgotten it. It is something we need to re-learn and understand if the so-called "binge drinking" debate is ever to progress beyond the futile parroting of non-sequiturs.

In fact we are rather poor drinkers compared with our ancestors. Queen Elizabeth I was renowned for drinking ale stronger than any of her courtiers could take. During her reign, British beers were so popular abroad that exports were only permitted if sufficient quantities of wood to replace the casks used was imported.

Elizabethan brewers were often urged to reduce the formidable strengths of their beers, one of which, Pharaoh, was so named because it "would not let the people go". James took a similar line, only to be told that the brewers would be more minded to follow his advice were he rather more prompt in settling his bills.

Elizabeth herself disapproved of drunkenness, though for most periods it has carried little social stigma, even when the consequences were regrettable. During a visit by King Christian of Denmark to James I in 1606, the level of intoxication amongst the ladies performing the court pageant was such that "the lady who did play the Queen [of Sheba's] part did carry most precious gifts to both their majesties, but forgetting the steps arising to the canopy overset her caskets in his Danish Majesty's lap, and fell at his feet though I rather think it was on his face. His Majesty then got up and would dance with the Queen of Sheba, but he fell down and humbled himself before her, and was carried to his inner chamber, laid on a bed of state which was not a little defiled with presents of the Queen".

In the eighteenth century it was considered a great sport among gentlemen to bet on which of their footmen could be made the most intoxicated, and Dr Johnson once remarked that "all the decent people of Lichfield get drunk every night and were not the worse thought of". His contemporary, Sidney Smith, asked which two ideas were "more inseparable than beer and Britannia", and added this assessment of the politicians of the day: "Men of all ages drink abominably. Fox drinks what I should call a great deal, though he is not reckoned to do so by his superiors. Sheridan excessively and Grey more than any of them ... Pitt I am told drinks as much as anybody."

Expressions like "binge drinking" tell us less about our present drinking habits than they do about the neo-Puritan climate we live in. In truth the drinking habits of many have not changed greatly, but they are seen from the standpoint of a society that does not recognise that the values and attitudes of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras were the exception rather than the rule.

The present debate also tells us a great deal about the continuing class structure of our society. The great legacy of the temperance movement of the nineteenth century was its success in reshaping the attitudes of the upper and middle classes. Lichfield may have been legless in Johnson's day, but a few decades after his death its decent folk would have been scandalised at the prospect.

The enormity of this achievement is difficult for contemporary minds to consider. Ale and beer were right at the heart of the nation's way of life. Beer was thought of as having been, since the dawn of time, the single most important nutritional item for the overwhelming majority of the population. It was not seen as hyperbole when Jonas Hanway complained of the "epidemical disease" of tea drinking, and asked "were they the sons of tea-sippers who won the fields of Crecy and Agincourt or dyed the Danube's shores with Gallic blood?"

Similarly, attitudes to wine were very different too. Vast amounts were consumed - and smuggled, when we were at war with France - but there was most certainly not today's implicit assumption that wine was superior. As late as 1853 it was possible to maintain that "we may drink champagne in the caves of Epernay; and at Bordeaux, claret unpolluted to the English taste. We may luxuriate in Burgundy at its richest source. We may worship where they grew the fine wines of the Rhone. We may blissfully linger over Stainberger on the Maine; and sip imperial Tokay in the halls of the princely Hungarian. But all these like the blue and red flowers among corn, are merely pleasing to the taste; they lack the vigour and the truth of our own malt wine, that delicate Bitter Beer which cheers but does not over-excite, which exhilarates, but does not inebriate; which though it makes us merry, leaves us wise".

Today's alcohol debate is concerned with the where and when of popular drinking, but the only effective debate is the one that considers who, what and why. During the gin fever of the 1740s, when you could get "drunk for a penny and dead drunk for two", Fielding observed: "Gin is the principal sustenance [if it may be so called] for more than 100,000 people in this metropolis. Many of those wretches there are who swallow pints of this poison within 24 hours, the dreadful effects of which I have the misfortune every day to see, and to smell too."

Gin forced people to realise for the first time that it was possible to make intoxicating beverages that were not sustaining and wholesome, and from then it was but a short step to demonising alcohol in all its guises, to separate the middle and upper classes from their previous habits and haunts, and to allow them to convince themselves that their domestic consumption of wine and gin was somehow superior. This attitude prevails today, principally perpetuated by newspapers.

Attempts to defeat gin were successful, both in the 1750s and when gin drinking broke out again in the 1830s, because the debate recognised that disapproval of others' drinking was not, of itself, a sufficient response. The temperance movement failed because of this shortcoming. George Cruickshank, the famous artist, temperance campaigner and occasional illustrator of Dickens, drew a famous allegory of the evils of drink that became a much reprinted bestseller, but he still had no reply when Dickens asked: "Were the poor poor because they drank, or did they drink because they were poor?"

Adulterated, poisonous gin was defeated by encouraging more sensible drinking of nutritious beer, and improving the living standards of the poorest. British brewing is currently enjoying a renaissance and the emphasis on associating beer and food is at a 250-year high. If journalists would stop writing hysterical leaders about "24-hour drinking" and turn their hands instead to thoughtful drinks page features about the merits of our national drink, that would be useful in improving debate and reconnecting us with our forgotten history. Drunkenness is an attribute of those who do not appreciate what they are consuming, not of those who do.

Heavy drinking and hard liquor are still the norm among elders of some of the old, aristocratic cities of America. It is often assumed that if one has sufficient means, alcohol addiction is of no particular consequence. This is shocking to health conscious younger generations.

We never eat cookies because they have yeast

The least taste of which turns a man to a beast.

Oh can you imagine the dreadful disgrace

Of a man in the gutter with crumbs on his face?

We never eat fruitcake because it has rum,

The least bit of which turns a man to a bum.

Oh can you imagine the terrible sight

Of a man eating fruitcake until he gets tight.

(Refrain)

We must get rid of rum by gum

Rum by gum

We must get rid of rum by gum

Rum by gum

Rum

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