Pubs are the pillars of our communities and British culture is greatly influenced by it’s tens of thousands of wonderful watering holes. From the traditional boozer to the trendy micropub; friendships are formed over pints with foamy heads placed on damp, week old beer mats. As far as I see it, a pub’s primary purpose is to facilitate the forming of these relationships and to act as a nucleus around which vibrant communities can form and sustain. The alcohol is secondary and it’s role is that of a social lubricant which makes the coming together that little bit easier.

But what happens when the pillars begin to crumble? Pubs and breweries are closing at an alarming rate, buckling under the weight of a cost of living crisis and colossal energy bills. The government doesn’t seem particularly worried about this, if they’ve even given it a second thought. And we shouldn’t be surprised by this approach, community is the enemy of those in power. Communities organise, they fight back. Change is very rarely enacted by the individual, but as a collective we are powerful. This is dangerous to those who wish to wield power with impunity and to capitalist ideology which relies heavily on individualism. Without exploitation, there is no capitalism and our ability to defend ourselves from exploitation relies on our ability to come together and organise collectively. Are pubs perfect as community providers? Certainly not, but at the moment it feels to me as though they are one of the few remaining bastions of in-person community in the United Kingdom. 

Yet one by one the pillars are being chipped away at, the cult of capital that reigns supreme in our government hold the chisel, and with every ineffectual duty relief policy and refusal to reign in rampant energy companies yet another hammer blow is struck and the structure risks collapse. Our nation’s favourite watering holes are being sacrificed at the altar of stockholder profit and it is made from the rubble of the institutions that have already turned to dust at the hands of the cult of capital and their false sacrament of infinite growth.

Cobbling together the remnants that collect on the tiles surrounding the altar is the likes of Tim Martin, but the temples that he and others build from these scraps are not to be confused with the ones for whom community is the central tenet. They are shrines to profit, more focused on collecting tithe from the congregation than providing for them. The end goal for those at the top is that the kinds of pub that I have extolled in this piece, the ones that are pillars of their community will be replaced with these shrines to profit that are permitted to exist so long as they sing from the same hymn sheet as those in power. The psalm of capital reverberates between these hollow pillars that support little else but the preservation of a system that exists to keep those at the top exactly where they are and more distant from those at the bottom than they ever were.

I’m not trying to shun anybody who uses Wetherspoons or similar outlets. We are deep into a cost of living crisis and I begrudge nobody a cheap pint and a chat. I make the distinction because in the current climate I consider having a nice foamy pint at your local as an act of revolution. But it is only so as long as we are rejecting the siren song of cheap drink which edges us closer to the jagged rocks of capital, in favour of preserving valuable community assets, where people are placed above profit. 

Next time you’re in your local, laughing with your friends or listening to some old boy spin a tale, savour it. For with every pint you buy you stay the chisel, and for each and every sip you take and friendly word spoken you are contributing to the preservation of something of great cultural significance – our public house parthenon.