The Raccoon Arms and Other Cyber-Pubs.
A Frenchman who is taking a commendable interest in English political blogs asked me the other evening why so many of the blogs professed to be Libertarian. It was a good question, and one I struggled to answer for a while.
“Libertarian beliefs are very close to the ethos of the cyber world”, I stuttered (severely handicapped by having this conversation in French!) “The Internet was started by people who believed in freedom of information, and it was set up in such a way that there is minimal regulation, and that means people can speak their mind”, I continued lamely. (If you think you can do better and cook dinner at the same time – be my guest!)
“But there is regulation”, he countered, “self regulation, I found one blog that has just stopped comments because someone insulted his religion”.
“Yeah, but a blog is more like a pub, the landlord sets the scene”
“Like a café you mean, anyone can come in”
I knew the argument was lost at that point, for I would have to explain what a pub used to mean, how it was totally different to a café, how it had changed beyond all recognition.
Long ago, I was privileged to have as my local, one of the two or three remaining ‘medieval ale houses’ in the UK. Licensed only to sell wine and ale, it was quite literally Flossie’s front room. The décor was not designed to ‘attract customers’ nor to ‘make them feel at home’ – it was what appealed to Flossie, secure in the knowledge that her customers a) didn’t want to be at home – that was why they were in her front parlour, and b) it was her home and if they didn’t like it, they merely had to walk a mile or two further to find one they did like.
The conversation was started by Flossie each night, a subject that interested her. If cricket meant nothing to you, you wouldn’t have been there. It was the place you went when you didn’t want to have a conversation about your nippers – they were barred; when you didn’t want to mind your language – the wife was at home; and most of all, you accepted that – nay, expected – that others might have wildly differing points of view and a riotous argument was part of the appeal. The conversation would ebb and flow as tongues loosened with the ale, the air would grow staler, gossip would be exchanged, the font of local knowledge replenished, and if the discussion on the merits of far away town’s football team grew too heated, Flossie would smartly step in and change the subject.
Part of the appeal was ‘opening hour’ – a time dictated by mine host, the sense of anticipation, the bell heard only by those males of drinking age, when they were set free from the rigours of the workplace, unburdened by the social demands of a Sunday, entitled to a few hours of unbridled pleasure, still wearing the hob nailed boots that would never be allowed in the own front parlour, the soot stained trousers that would be chased away from their own comfy chair – the ale house was a private world in which they could let their hair down, metaphorically speaking, with only Flossie’s remarkably lax house rules to contend with, not the rigid world of home, work or church.
When the government started to mess with opening hours, it was the first salvo in a long campaign to gain control of the unbridled conversations taking place. Landlords were forced to hire staff to man the counters. Staff needed to be given set rules to impose, rather than Flossie’s ad hoc reaction to situations arising. A dress code was imposed. Rooms were set aside for the women, then – horrors – children, the very people the customers had sought to avoid in the first place. The longer hours demanded higher wage costs, which in turn demanded more profit – food was served, not the curled up cheese sandwich or packet of pork scratchings demanded by the working man to enable him to remain drinking, but the quiche and ciabatta that the women demanded and which returned higher profits. The children that arrived with the women – not everybody could stomp off down to the pub, someone had to mind the children – changed the nature of the conversation, subjects became forbidden, language had to be ‘minded’.
Murdoch reared his ugly head and commandeered the sport fixtures that used to empty the pub to be watched on television – only to refill it hours later as men gathered to discuss the stupidity of the referee. Sky television was expensive and so the sporting fixtures appeared on wide screens in every pub in the land, and when the sporting fixture was over, the wives demanded Eastenders, and conversation was silenced in the pubs for ever.
The final death knell of the pub was the anti-smoking legislation. A pub was supposed to be nicotine stained, so much so that the recreated Victorian pubs of the 1970s employed an army of specialist painters to make sure that the refurbished pubs still possessed a ceiling that appeared to have the glutinous residue of a thousand pipes still clinging to its ceiling.
The pub, that haven of peace away from the strictures of home, political correctness, work, children, had vanished. A new pub emerged. A back bedroom, a garden shed, a few feet seconded from the space under the stairs, that could hosue a computer, even a hand held device such as the Blackberry.
A place where you could mentally if not physically, leave behind the constrained world of home and work, ignore the children, express your views as you wished, secure in the knowledge that the other customers would argue with you, inform you, exchange gossip with you, be offended by you – and stomp off to another pub more to their liking, understand that sometimes you became tongue tied and couldn’t express yourself as well as you might, sometimes resorted to language that the wife didn’t approve of, sometimes had interests that the wife didn’t approve of.
The pub invented unfettered communal conversations. It terrified the government.
The government have killed the medieval ale house. In its place we have the blog. Mine host opens the shop by starting whatever conversation they damn well please, they let it ebb and flow as they wish. The décor is of their choosing. Language is of their choosing, where men and those women who understand the ground rules, can discus sfreely. You pick your blog in the same way that once you picked your ale house. If cricket is your mania, then you look for a host with similar interests. As you walk in the door, if you are assailed by the sight of a row of cricketing trophies, you either breathe a sigh of relief or beat a hasty exit.
In France, they still have the tradition of the Chasse, the essential chasse dinner, a place where women are tolerated, as was Flossie, but know their place, to serve, to enable, not to regulate. Where men, can discuss the important things in life. Where politically incorrect stuffed animal heads line the wall, where blood and gore do not reduce anyone to the vapours. Where guns and clay caked boots are an accepted manner of dress.
The French have kept their equivalent of the medieval ale house – and it is not the café. Perhaps that is why their political blogs have not become the refuge for the untrammelled mind that wishes to express itself as it damn well pleases in the same way that the British blogs have.
It is the only explanation I can offer.
Has anybody got a better explanation?
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September 24, 2010 at 09:02 -
Nope!!….except maybe to say that the various blog sites (pubs) clientel are a bit like the old real pubs darts/pool teams and do a sort of quick league tour every time they log in, chuck a couple of arrows (barbed or otherwise ) before moving on to the next venue!
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September 24, 2010 at 09:10 -
The analogy between a blog and a pub is very fitting. Despite the State’s attempt to destroy the pub as a meeting-place of kindred minds and a vehicle for free association and speech (how many are being closed down every week as a consequence of the smoking ban?), the internet remains as a bastion for independent thought and expression. But for how much longer?
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September 24, 2010 at 09:35 -
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September 24, 2010 at 09:51 -
Top article AR. The great American comedian George Carlin talks about the ‘pussification’ of the States, by liberals and the righteous. If you get a chance to listen to some of his shows then do so, as he was able to mix social comment with comedy without being overtly political. In many ways, the neutering of pubs has been part of the Pussification process in the UK, the result of which is that people find it very difficult to express their opinions in public with out being shouted down by outraged liberals and feel forced to find an outlet through anonymous blogs.
The Blogosphere is becoming very powerful though and it’s only a matter of time before our Overlords decide to call time on free opinion. Probably it will be an initiative from the EU, a body which holds freedom of speech and democracy in contempt at the best of time. They won’t mind making themselves even more unpopular if it provides them with an opportunity to quash us serfs. Some crisis will be engineered to enable the EU to close down blogs which it feels threatens security, and then we’ll probably all end up in what’s left of our pubs. That’s if they haven’t banned drink, conversation, eye contact, non-Halal burgers, etc by then. -
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September 24, 2010 at 10:00 -
What a lovely piece
I shall meditate upon this today
G the M -
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September 24, 2010 at 10:03 -
This is quite brilliant, Anna. A real head-nodder from start to finish.
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September 24, 2010 at 11:17 -
A thoroughly marvelous piece indeed. As somebody who has worked in the pub trade for many, many moons I find myself nodding in agreement with every word. Whilst we may get all sentimental over our pubs, the truth is that they serve a very real and valuable purpose. Hence their existence in the first place! Long live the pub!
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September 24, 2010 at 11:17 -
Perhaps the French have politicians and civil servants who actually represent and support the French people, opposing attempts by any pressure group or power bloc, be that the EU or anyone else, to worsen their lot in life. That is certainly not the case in the UK. I imagine the French too would blog a lot more politically if they were ruled by the same corrupt, self-serving, incompetent shambles we have here.
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September 24, 2010 at 11:51 -
Anna, should you ever decide to open a pub back in dear old Albion, do let us know where it is!
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September 24, 2010 at 12:02 -
Fantastic piece – really enjoyed.
And I guess I should thank you for an earlier link to my out-of-the-way blog. One or two folk have visited now which is rather pleasing!
Cheers!
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September 24, 2010 at 12:08 -
You have improved my day as usual Anna. Sadly I do not believe PT to be correct because politicians throughout the western world have become a thoroughly drab self-serving bunch. However, on the bright side, the French seem to be maintaining their excellent tradition of ignoring the political classes and the more extreme rules that they seek to impose.
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September 24, 2010 at 12:22 -
Well said Anna.
It is interesting also that the Labour government kneecapped its own bedrock meeting places, the Working Mens Clubs. After the local elections the national party was told, repeatedly, by local activists that the ban had hit them on the doorstep.
They were blamed for making people unable to go to the club for a fag, it annoyed the wives who also either liked a smoke there or, more often, were furious to find that hubby and his friends now wanted to smoke up the living room again when it had taken years to reach the equillibrium that the old man could smoke in his own house but didn’t for the sake of the paintwork.
There was no balancing political gain of people saying “I’m going to vote Labour now they’ve stopped people smoking in the WMC”.
Politically, it is one of the strangest ideas ever since it seems to be about social control but not even sensibly since it engenders resistance. If Brown had any sense – yeah I know – a quick bonfire of the smoking laws to make it purely a matter of “landlord’s gaff, landlord’s rules” would have had a measurable positive effect at the ballot box.
Bonkers.
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September 24, 2010 at 16:20 -
You’re right, Anna – there are definite and close parallels between the pub (proper, not poncy eaterie with a bar) and blogs (proper, not party political mouthpieces with a comment section). All sorts of people have written all sorts about pubs and their decline, so I won’t add. Except that we all need somewhere to mix with like-minded folk and set the world to rights. When you are feeling terminally bemused by the absurdities of life, the universe and everything, you need somewhere to go for reassurance that you’re not the only one. The pub used to do that; maybe blogging is partly taking up the slack.
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September 24, 2010 at 17:11 -
This sounds like my bedroom. The ceiling is caked with nicotine as I sit in bed puffing away and reading what ever Blogs I feel like, while munching on a packet of crisps.
The owner of the local Bar smokes in The Bar, but no one else is allowed to, so I don’t know what he knows that I don’t know. But his takings are definitely down due to the No Smoking Rule.
I don’t care anymore. It’s cheaper to drink at home anyway. And read Blogs.
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September 24, 2010 at 21:10 -
Scooper, it has already started, the NUJ is trying to get the E.U. to get the I.S.P.’s to pay for vouchers so that people will buy broadsheets, rather than look at blogs, that of course will spout the typical E.U. propagander, they say it is in the name of protecting democracy! However I think that there is a lot of discontent within the major countries of the E.U. and the times, they are a changing………..
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September 24, 2010 at 21:33 -
Lovely article, beautifully crafted, unsurprisingly provoking comments of a similar quality.
ΠΞ
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September 25, 2010 at 05:20 -
Where’s the dinner?
And you’re a story-teller, Anna.
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