2.0 The Carlisle Experiment

THE CARLISLE EXPERIMENT

In 1918, the State, under the Central Control Board nationalised all of the pubs in Carlisle and the surrounding area (Figure 2). Dubbed the ‘Carlisle Experiment’, what began as an intervention to control unruly drinking around munitions factories became a far greater progressive campaign to transform England’s social space. The project, under the influence of the Temperance movement, set about reforming the public house from the Victorian ‘gin palaces’ of alcohol consumption, to what was deemed a more inclusive and proper venue of leisure, a model that was then copied by breweries across the whole country. The Carlisle Experiment was born from the construction of the vast H.M. Factory in Gretna, stretching 9 miles and operated by over 12,000 predominantly female workers 8 . Such a large influx of people meant that housing needed to be built quickly and two temporary ‘wooden townships’ at Gretna and Eastriggs gave way to permanent housing (Figure 1) designed by the Garden City architect Raymond Unwin. Unwin saw this as an opportunity to build generous workers housing and to consolidate the improvement of living conditions through the Garden City movement.

Figure 1 - New housing replacing wooden township in Gretna.

In Homes for Heroes, Swenarton argues that ‘it was not only on questions of architecture that Gretna, Well Hall and other schemes were seen as potential prototypes for any future state housing.’ 9

The workers, dropped into brand new state housing in rural Cumbria, resorted to commuting into Carlisle to spend their pay packets in the city. Carlisle’s population was only around 50,000 at the time, so the pubs in Carlisle became considerably busier and tales of drunkenness inevitably proliferated. One account tells that ‘At Boustead’s, a watering hole near Carlisle station, they would line up 500 whiskies along the bar, ready for the first after-work customers off the train.’ 10 This proto-antisocial behaviour together with a fear of low productivity in the munitions factory permitted the State’s takeover and reformation of all the pubs and breweries in the area. At this point the State controlled the housing, the factory, the pubs and the breweries, a heightened nationalisation that certainly heralded the rise of the welfare state decades later.

The pubs under the State Management Scheme saw substantial reformation into what they called ‘Improved pubs’ and ‘New Model Inns’ 11. These new types of establishment were built to the design of the State’s newly appointed pub architect, Harry Redfern. Improvements included the removal of snugs and back alley entrances to create an open plan, surveyable, public bar. The introduction of more sober ‘counterattractions’ 12 such as cafes and games rooms aimed to introduce a new clientele to the pub who previously found it to be too intimidating or disreputable.

Figure 1 Gretna Township, Clayton Greens in Sarah Harper, The Gretna Bombing: When War Came to Gretna 7th April 1942 (The Devil’s Porridge Museum: Eastriggs and Gretna Heritage Group (SCIO), 2018). 8 Christopher Brader, ‘Timbertown Girls: Gretna Female Munitions Workers in World War I’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Warwick, 2001). 10 Phil Mellows, ‘Nationalize the Pubs’, Jacobin, 21 October 2017 <https:// jacobinmag.com/2017/10/pubs-drinking-nationalization-state-ownership>.

11 Emily Cole, The Urban and Suburban Public House in Inter-War England, 1918-1939, Research Report Series (Historic England, 2015).

Figure 2 - State managed pubs in the Carlisle area. Carlisle in grey.

Figure 2 Joseph Ridealgh, Map of public houses acquired or built by the State Management Scheme between 1916 and 1973 in the Carlisle and Gretna Districts, 2021, based on data plotted by Petra Wade in Clare Howard, Countering the ‘Deadliest of Foes’: Public Houses of the Central Control Board and the State Management Scheme, 1916-73, Research Report Series (Historic England, 2018).

These extensive amenity offerings meant that pubs and their gardens were open and busy all through the day, with women, children and the middle classes moving in to claim their piece of the pub.

This detachment from the commercial world could be visualised in the removal of advertisements from the front of pub facades (Figures 3, 4). This gave pubs a new sense of institutional professionalism which deliberately cut ties with the celebratory drinking culture.

Whilst there were more visible spatial changes, one of the most significant reforms to the pub was a new type of management style. The introduction of the Gothenburg model of ‘disinterested management’ 13 changed pub landlords into salaried civil servants. The intention of this change was to remove the incentive to make profit from flogging beers to already inebriated patrons. This could be seen as the absolute demarketisation of the space, allowing the pubs to function in a social capacity without viewing its users as customers. Yet this heightened authority and surveillance enabled the State to enact what Foucault might call biopolitical control. 14

Figure 3 - The Golden Lion pre-reformation. Figure 4 -The Golden Lion stripped of advertising.

Gutzke.

14 Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978-79, ed. by Michel Senellart, trans. by Graham Burchell, Michel Foucault’s Lectures at the Collège de France, Paperback edition (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). Figure 3 Cumbria Image Bank, The Golden Lion, Botchergate, façade before state management. <https://historicengland.org.uk/research/current/discover-and-understand/military/the-firstworld-war/first-world-war-home-front/ what-we-already-know/land/state-control-of-pubs/> [accessed 23 March 2021] Figure 4 Cumbria Image Bank, The Golden Lion, Botchergate, façade after state management. <https://historicengland. org.uk/research/current/discover-and-understand/military/the-first-world-war/ first-world-war-home-front/what-we-already-know/land/state-control-of-pubs/> [accessed 23 March 2021]