Analysis: The 'uncalled for' and 'offensive' Drunkenness (Ireland) Bill sought to make it an offence in 1905 to buy a drink for a drunk person
By Martin O'Donoghue, Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory
Pints of Guinness at Chequers seemed to symbolise Keir Starmer's promised ‘reset’ in Anglo-Irish relations as he and Taoiseach Simon Harris were photographed with Ireland’s most famous beverage at their first official meeting. But the subject of alcohol produced a very different tone in Anglo-Irish relations over a century ago.
The British government’s introduction of the Drunkenness (Ireland) Bill in July 1905 drew strong objections from Irish MPs like Joseph Nolan who claimed ‘it was uncalled for, ill-considered, mischievous in its provisions, and offensive to every Irishman who had any regard for the fair fame of his country’. The Louth MP ‘resented any special measure of this kind being brought forward to deal with drunkenness in Ireland which was not applicable to Great Britain as well’.
The 'drink question'
However, the ‘drink question’ and Irish politics had a long life in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Academic studies on temperance and the Pioneer movement by Elizabeth Malcolm and Diarmaid Ferriter respectively, attest to both the problem of alcohol abuse and the contestation of the question in many aspects of public debate.
Politics was no different. Ostensibly, few if any politicians were against ameliorating the health problems and social disorder associated with alcohol misuse. But many politicians in the period were themselves publicans or former publicans, and support for legislation aimed at reducing drunkenness was often allied with support for the economically important licensed trade at Westminster and in Dáil Éireann.
The Irish Party and the alcohol question
The proposed 1905 legislation was to introduce an offence of knowingly serving a person who was drunk. Notably, debates on the wording of this referenced consultation with temperance movements and publicans, and Nolan was clear he ‘should not attempt to challenge either the honesty or the intelligence of the publicans of Ireland’.
This was broadly the position of many members of the Irish Parliamentary Party at Westminster. While some members of the House were known temperance advocates, Irish Party MPs often declared themselves to stand for moderation and end to drunkenness while supporting the licensed trade.
Debating the Sale of Intoxicating Liquors (Ireland) Bill in May 1906, the Unionist MP T.W. Russell argued that ‘drink was degrading and ruining the people of Ireland’. Dublin MP J.P. Nannetti objected to British legislators ‘experimenting’ with Ireland as a test case for Sunday closing. While Nannetti did not dispute the need for reform, he cited poverty and the pitfalls of the trade going underground in arguing for a moderate approach: ‘so long as the working classes in Ireland had not decent habitable houses, they must go for their recreation to the public-houses. The public house was practically the poor man's club.’
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From RTÉ Archives, in a 1987 clip Dr Elizabeth Malcolm talks temperance, the effects of colonialism and the negative stereotyping of Irish people
As statistical analysis by historian Conor Mulvagh has shown, Irish Party MPs at Westminster did not always vote as one bloc on questions surrounding alcohol legislation at Westminster. It was noteworthy that they often aligned with the British Conservative Party rather than the Liberal Party, their traditional allies on the home rule question. The reasons for this varied, but undoubtedly, the support of vintners for the Irish Parliamentary Party and the fact that a number of MPs were themselves in the trade was significant.
The Free State legislates
The 1920s famously saw the introduction of Prohibition in the United States, and issues surrounding the regularisation of licensing laws were still to be tackled after the establishment of the Irish Free State. This was led by Cumann na nGaedheal minister Kevin O’Higgins, a politician who showed no qualms about upsetting the vintners with two Intoxicating Liquor Acts passed in 1924 and 1927. While some opponents claimed drunkenness was ‘not prevalent’ in the new state, it was ‘somewhat a relative question’ for O'Higgins, as he cited the arrest of 674 men and 734 women for drunkenness in the Dublin metropolitan area in 1923 alone.
In the 1924 Intoxicating Liquor Bill, the Government proposed to end the practice of mixed-trading (a staple of rural life where the one premises would function as grocer and public house), limit opening hours for vintners, and reduce the number of pubs in the state by offering publicans compensation to close their businesses. John Redmond’s son, William Archer, was one of a number of TDs who expressed reservations about aspects of this legislation. Fellow ex-MP Alfie Byrne, a former trader himself, spoke against what he perceived as a notion that ‘the licensed trader was someone that was unclean’. Indeed, arguments over the legislation and the complaints of the licensed vintners led to the Intoxicating Liquor Commission in 1925.
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From RTÉ Archives, Conor Hunt talks to people in Ardee, Co Louth in January 2018 for RTÉ News about the decision to lift the Good Friday ban on alcohol sales
The 1927 legislation, however, was the final proof of O’Higgins’ determination (even in an election year), with restrictions introduced on opening hours and the number of licences included, alongside stricter reinforcement in the area of licensing offences. Exceptions for hotels serving alcohol on Good Friday were also eliminated. The Irish Times was quick to call it an ‘excellent measure’ to take on the licensed trade and tackle ‘Ireland’s greatest menace’. The so-called ‘Holy Hour’ of pub closures in the afternoons lasted in Dublin and Cork until 1984, while the Good Friday ban would last until as recently as 2018.
Changes over time
As Alice Mauger has pointed out, stereotypes of the 'drunken Irish' have waxed and waned over the years, from continued complaints of British portrayals of the Irish, to 1970s evidence that alcohol consumption was actually lower in Ireland than in its near neighbour.
It can still raise political sensitivities too of course; Mícheál Martin's recent visit to the Kenyan Guinness brewery drew criticism in the same week Starmer and Harris met at Chequers. Yet from a political perspective today, the ‘drink question’ currently seems more likely to be employed to highlight Irish brands, and even Anglo-Irish friendship, rather than the outrage of Joseph Nolan almost 120 years ago.
Dr Martin O'Donoghue is a post-doctoral Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory. He is the Director of the Irish Association of Professional Historians.
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The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
