HAS LIQUOR IN BRITAIN A BEARING ON PRESENT CRISIS?

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 27, 5 March 1948, Page 3

HAS LIQUOR IN BRITAIN A BEARING ON PRESENT CRISIS?

“We make no apology for referring to the Economic Crisis through which Britain is now passing,” says “The Vanguard.” “Temperance reformers —especially those who worked and voted for the return of the present Government, are keenly disappointed and sadly disillusioned by the failure of Parliament to relate the wastage of the Liquor Traffic to the crisis. Every effort should be made by our Members and Lodges—by resolutions, personal letters and interviews—to press our point of view. With more than a million employed in the liquor and gambling traffics, surely the problem of manpower is one, of misdirection rather than of shortage. The problem of food would be eased if foodstuffs now allocated to brewing and distilling were diverted to more desirable purposes. Agriculture would more assist the nation’s need if land now used to grow barley and hops for brewers, was used to produce food for human and animal consumption. How can the “dollar” problem be precarious, when the “drink bill” amounts to £6BB millions and money is found to import millions of bottles of rum?

At the recent General Assembly in Edinburgh distinguished Church leaders spoke against the use of grain in the making of alcohol. In every hotel notices requested guests to eat less bread, but nothing was said about the alleviation of hunge'r and relief from famine by abstinence from drinking alcoholic beverages. “Is the eating of bread a more sinful action than the drinking of whisky and beer?” Last year the people of the United Kingdom spent on liquor £685,000,000. In the same year they spent on bread, cereals, meat, bacon, fruit and similar foods £635,000,000 or £50,000,000 less than the amounts spent on intoxicating liquors. The amount spent on beer alone was many millions more than that spent on rents and rates. In 1945 Scotland spent £60,000,000 or £1,150,000 every week. “From a socialogical standpoint we are compelled, by incontrovertible evidence, to acknowledge that it (alcohol) is, of all causes, the most frequent source of poverty, unhappiness, divoree, suicide, immorality, crime, insanity, disease and death,” says the “Catholic Encyclopaedia.” It just doesn’t make sense—this traffic in liquor while the cry of the hungry is for bread. How long must this drink cancer be allowed to eat into the moral fibre of our national life? Dare a nation pray “Lord give us our daily bread”?