A slightly hyperbolic but nevertheless serious article in The London Times (“It’s your round: buy a pint and save a piece of Britain”) points out that the British pub is an institution under threat. I’ve read a bit about the pub in the formation of working class culture in Britain in the nineteenth century. Sometimes while studying the past it is easy to lose sight of the way that traditions continue to the present (or sometimes do not continue) which is one of the reasons this article caught my eye.

It opens with two amazing paragraphs that encompass so much that is unique about British culture and the way that Britons conceive of their nation and its past:

The lights are going out all over Britain. We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime. Or possibly ever. To paraphrase the British foreign secretary on the eve of the first world war might seem over the top, but we are facing a threat to the British way of life that I consider vastly more important than the existence of Belgium.

The British pub is under threat. An institution adored and envied all over the world is disappearing before our very eyes and with it our national drink, beer, as the nation that invented jingoism succumbs to its terminal preference for anything foreign.

Statistics reveal that the pubs are under threat because beer sales have decreased dramatically:

According to figures released by the British Beer and Pubs Association (BBPA) last week, beer sales in pubs are down by 14m pints a day, or 49%, from 1979 levels. Nearly 60 pubs each month shut their doors for good.

At the end of the article Peter Millar reflects on the meaning of the institution in his life and gives one example of how the pub creates and nurtures local culture and community.

British beer and the British pub are joined at the hip, intermingled like no other alcoholic combination. British ale bought in a bottle is a fine but different product from cask ale drunk in a pub. Traditional real ale is a labour-intensive artisanal drink made with natural products and producing a rich range of flavours.

My local, the Pear Tree in Hook Norton, Oxfordshire, is blessed by being owned by the village’s brewery 150 yards away – which still delivers locally by horse-drawn dray – but we are well aware how lucky we are and terrified that we might be living on borrowed time.

Regulars include a jobbing gardener, a carpenter with a degree in earth sciences, the drayman who looks after the brewery horses, a nursery school teacher, a builder, a software writer, an optician, a lorry driver and one of the brainiest blokes I know who refills cigarette machines. Very few of us would know each other if it weren’t for the pub.