SOBER BRITAIN [To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] SIR,—Since 1930
more than i,000,000 unemployed have been absorbed into industry, and more people are in employ- ment and the wages bill is many millions higher than ever before in the history of the country, yet convictions for drunkenness are 7,000 fewer than in 1930 and 49,000 fewer than in 1920. The wonder then is not, as Janus suggests, why more people are getting drunk every year, but why there is such a small volume of drunkenness in a period of unprecedented prosperity.
Is it fair to select 1932 as the datum year on which to establish that our people are lapsing into drunkenness ? In that year the country was faced with a financial crisis and an extra tax of id. per pint of beer in an attempt to extract Lio,000,000 more revenue from the working classes, and convictions were the lowest on record. In 1933 the total jumped by zo per cent., but the rate of increase has declined in every succeeding year to 5 per cent. in 1937.
The increases are confined almost entirely to industrial areas with a large " foreign " population—men living in lodgings and away from home ties and influence, for whom the public house is the only social centre, but many areas show decreases, and there is little evidence of a general increase
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