Last orders for Langley

Richard Butt
25/ 4/2008

WHEREVER I go these days I see boarded-up pubs.

It’s hardly surprising. They’re going at the rate of 27 a week nationally, according to the British Beer and Pub Association.

The rate of closure is accelerating, it says. And, of course, Alistair Darling, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, is getting some of the blame.

They were closing well before he got the keys to No.11, though, and well before the smoking ban.

No matter what the reason, we are losing something quintessentially British.

I’m not simply talking about consumption of alcohol. I’m talking about places where people gather, where they get to know each other and communities are built.

I find it hard to admit that Coronation Street isn’t true, but where would it be without the Rovers? What would Ambridge be without the Bull?

One of our cameramen, Mark Hilton, took me around the estate where he grew up for a story about the changing pub scene.

Built as part of Manchester’s post-war slum clearance programme, Langley in Middleton is the kind of place you might euphemistically call ‘earthy’.

When Mark began drinking legally 14 years ago, the estate had eight pubs. Now it has one (and that re-opened only recently).

Mark took me to places that are now simply empty plots of land or boarded-up shells. Uncle such-and-such had his 21st there, there was a wake here, a christening party there. They were places full of memories – and memories are all that’s left of them now.

Mark is one of those people who knows everyone. He certainly bumped into a lot of acquaintances on our tour. In fact, there’s still some graffiti on the wall of one of the pubs – ‘Hilly and Nicky’ – which he wrote the best part of 20 years ago.

He went to school with a lot of the people we met, including the son of Langley’s last licensee. Incidentally, a number of schools on the estate are now also earmarked for closure, so the community is under attack elsewhere too.

I wonder how Mark would have got to know so many locals without the shared experience of the pubs – the big meeting place for so many.

There are lots of reasons for pubs shutting. Violence and drugs probably play some part. But changing working-class culture is probably the biggest root cause.

Men – and pubs were traditionally the haunt of men – don’t go off to the local pub together for a drink together after work like they did in the industrial past. For a start, there are not many of the big industries that employ hundreds of people left. Some factory pubs lined the pints up on the bar for the end of every shift, knowing a lot of thirsty men would soon descend on them. Not now.

And people live further away from their workplaces than they used to. They’re likely to have cars and drink-driving laws are (quite rightly) more vigorously enforced than they used to be. Then there are wives, girlfriends, partners, squeezes (I struggle to get all the modern nomenclature right). They have a right to expect their other halves to do their bit with children and around the house.

All this doesn’t really square with all those horror stories about binge drinking and 24-hour licensing, does it?

So where does Mark drink now? A great pub-cum-tapas restaurant overlooking Langley. It’s somewhere that has adapted to the times and offers a lot more than spit and sawdust. I scoffed a decent nosebag with the love of my life there last week. Many of its customers (including Mark) also go to a big, upmarket gym next door.

There might be fewer pubs, but we still have the human urge to socialise and there are places where people gather still. It’s just that nowadays, they might have better food, they might be further away and they might even have treadmills.

Richard Butt edits Channel M’s early evening news – every weeknight from 5pm