I promise that this will ne the last post on the subject of pubs for a while, but one explanation for what seems to be manym to be the state's war on pibs is that, if people are discouraged from going to pubs , it removes an area of public life where people can gather and agitate against government policies.
Although this is an attractive idea to the conspicy minded, I have yet to see any evidence that pubs are hotbeds of subversion, Certainly, in the 70s and onwards I remember pubs with a left wing clientele in most of the big cities that I visired, less time was spent p[lotting to advance the final overthrow of capitalism then listening to endless rows about the relevance, or otherwise, of Trotsky;s Transitional Programme anongst the 57 varieties of followers of 'The Old Man' or, whether Tony Cliff was right in describing the soviet union as state capitalist rather then communist,
Historically , the real subversive activity in Britain through the 18th and 19th centuries went on in the coffee houses through groups like the London Corresponding Society and and The Chartists and whilst its true that Karl Marx spent a good deal of time in London pubs he was there for the beer rather then for the revolution. Its also worth remembering that large parts of the emerging socialist movement were militantly teetotal.
So, rather then the government persecuting pubs for political reasons I suspect that their agents are spending their time in the likes of Costa Coffee and Starbucks, drinking overpriced Latte and playing 'Spot The Subversive'.
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