This film is one 38 films made by One to One Productions between 1998 and 2001 as a project with five other video companies and the Yorkshire Film Archive, which formed the Yorkshire Media Consortium.  The collection was titled the A4E (Arts for Everyone) Contemporary Video Collection.  The YMC was a partnership set up with support from Yorkshire Arts in 1998. This film, as well as seven others, was produced and directed by Judi Alston, some in conjunction with Steve Richards.  Judi and Steve...

This film is one 38 films made by One to One Productions between 1998 and 2001 as a project with five other video companies and the Yorkshire Film Archive, which formed the Yorkshire Media Consortium.  The collection was titled the A4E (Arts for Everyone) Contemporary Video Collection.  The YMC was a partnership set up with support from Yorkshire Arts in 1998. This film, as well as seven others, was produced and directed by Judi Alston, some in conjunction with Steve Richards.  Judi and Steve had worked together on some 100 programmes in the previous ten years.

This film was the second one that Judi submitted to the YMC project.  All the films are held with the YFA, as well as the rushes, director’s notes and background files including detailed records of the people, communities and filmmakers involved in each production. For more on Judy and One to One Productions see the Context for Home Grown, filmed nearby on Brickyard Farm, Ackworth in the same year.

Most of the films document contemporary life in the Wakefield area. In an article for the Guardian (see References), Judi compares the project with the Mass Observation books started by John Harrison in 1938. As Judi puts it: “Both recorded the speech and customs of the industrial northern class as if they were studying a lifestyle of some exotic and enchanted tribe.”  The film gained a lot of interest, not only locally in Wakefield, but nationally and internationally.

The film is a great example of the approach that Judy and Steve used on all their productions, which was to simply allow people to speak for themselves without being pushed in any particular direction by the filmmakers.   Filming was helped by steering groups from both pubs. The result is a real feel for pub life in two quite different settings: the Masons Arms in Ackworth, Judi’s local, was an old village pub, built in 1682; and in contrast the Firkin pub on Wakefield’s famous, or notorious, Westgate run was chosen.
 
Judi deliberately used the World Cup to provide a context for the film. It was a particularly exciting World Cup, with the hosts, France, deserving winners. England had failed to qualify for the previous World Cup, but after their good show in the Euro ’96, hopes were high, as usual. Needless to say, the hype around England possibly winning came to nothing – with David Beckham widely seen as the villain for his sending off against Argentina.  Judi deliberately avoided filming while England games were on to avoid the added exuberance. One of the games seen on the pub screen is from Group E, Holland playing S. Korea in Marseille on 20th June, with Holland winning comfortably 5:0 (S. Korea later got a draw with Belgium, and Holland were unlucky to get knocked out in the semi-final by Brazil on penalties).

The World Cup certainly brought a different kind of atmosphere to the Firkin pub, especially with the singing along to the World Cup song by Fat Les, ‘Vindaloo’. This was a more humorous alternative to the ‘Three Lions’, a song by the Lightning Seeds joined by Baddeil and Skinner, which had been re-worked and re-released from Euro ’96. Fat Les were a band formed in 1998 by the actor Keith Allen, the artist Damien Hurst and Alex James from Blur, who wrote the song. The song reached No 2 in the charts, to be piped, remarkably, by the official England World cup song "(How Does It Feel To Be) On Top Of The World" by ‘England United’, with Echo and the Bunnymen and the Spice Girls (David Beckham appears in the video, and we all know what happened to him in the World Cup!). Despite the speculation that the title for the song derives from Keith Allen’s rant on the BBC2 Late Show in 1989, he claims in his autobiography that it came to him in a flash as the nation’s favourite dish, and that, ‘I thought about the implications of vindaloo – the oompah of the song was custom made for the standard English right-wing lout, so putting in the standard dish of their enemy the Indians seemed to me absolutely perfect.’ (p. 347)

Other World Cup songs at that time were Dario G, ‘Carnival de Paris’, and Collapsed Lung, ‘Eat my goal’. The FA went on to choose Fat Les to make a version of Jerusalem as the official song for Euro 2000; Hubert Parry’s hymn adopted by many, and sang at England rugby union and cricket games – rarely with any relation to Blake’s radical intentions. 
 
The battle between official and unofficial England football songs continues – Vindalloo had the great virtue of being based on a football chant that everyone could sing along to, especially after a few drinks (it would have been nice for William Blake to be sung in pubs rather than the Proms, but how many would have?). Matches from the following World Cup in 2002 were also extensively shown in pubs; only because it was in Korea and China, they took place in the morning, leading to packed pubs before people set off for work (or took time off work). Although the games were usually before the legal opening time of 11.30am, punters would often have coffee and breakfast rather than beer.

Rather sadly, by the time the film came to be screened in the Masons Arms, the landlord and landlady had been squeezed out through high rent and pressure on prices by the Brewery who owned the pub. With their going so too did many of their loyal customers. Nevertheless, they, along with 50 other locals, watched it in the taproom, which was about to be refurbished. The film was shown rather differently in the Firkin, on a loop, but here too it had a good audience. Although the more elderly locals in the Masons bemoaned the changes they had seen – including one woman known locally as “Mrs B” or “Granny Spice” – still the pub in Ackworth had a traditional feel.  It is as if to some extent it had been frozen in time (although it appears this may not have lasted long). This is apparent in the response the regulars had to new potential customers, from the newly built houses; and the fact that the pub was a male preserve for so long.   

To some extent this will reflect differences between rural and urban pubs – Ackworth is apparently the largest village in the country.  The contrast between a small settled clientele and a large passing one points up the spectrum that pubs have. Yet at the moment of writing (August 2009) pubs in Britain are in serious decline, affecting pubs of both sorts but more so urban ones. In the last six months of 2008 pubs were closing at a rate of 39 per week; a closure rate that is seven times faster than in 2006 and 14 times faster than in 2005 (British Beer & Pub Association, see References).  However, during the same time the drop in beer consumption was slowing down – even so, pubs sold seven million fewer pints of beer in 2007 than they did in 1979.  The Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) is running a ‘Save Our Pubs’ campaign.

However, this isn’t the whole picture: between March 2007 and March 2008, the number of premises with licenses to sell alcohol increased by 4,200 – an extra 80 opening a week. But most of these aren’t classed as ‘pubs’. In a Mark Easton report for the BBC, the Chief Executive of CGA Strategy, Jon Collins, states: “If 80-90% of customers are going in to dine, then that is a restaurant. If you can stand at the bar and drink a pint, it is still a pub!" (see References)

Although the Forehorse and Firkin, as seen in the film, is a kind of designer pub catering for the mass weekend binging brigade, in fact the Firkin group of pubs started off as a real ale concern brewing its own beer. From its small beginnings with David Bruce in 1979, the pubs grew into a large chain, with 110 pubs eventually being sold to Bass (now Mitchell and Butler) and 60 to Allied Domecq, the tied estate of Punch Taverns, in October 1999, who also bought the brewery and the brand name. The brewing side was wound up and the Forehorse and Firkin is one of the few pubs which retained the name, although the brand name was wound up in 2001. The Firkin Group are now expanding in North America – though they are naming pubs with ‘Firkin’ first, rather than last.

Some hoped that the Licensing Act of 2005, which allowed for extended drinking hours, would give the industry a boost, but the countervailing factors clearly outweighed any positive effects this may have had. Apart from the recession, among the factors that have been cited for the decline are the smoking ban and the general change in cultural habits – i.e. more staying in or going to restaurants.  Andrew O'Hagan also cites the introduction of Happy Hours and drinks promotions in supermarkets (see References). Certainly pubs that offer food are the ones most likely to survive – as both the pubs in the film now do. 

Some have argued that the almost exclusive targeting of young drinkers of many pubs has meant that the cross-generational clientele witnessed in the Masons Arms is dying out.  And with this many of the older pubs have been refurbished and thereby lost their distinctive décor, layout and atmosphere.  Just how typical are the Rovers Return in Coronation Street or the Queen Vic in East Enders?  The divergent views that these changes have provoked can be gathered from the responses to Andrew O'Hagan’s piece in the Telegraph.

Pubs go back a long way. Older still is beer, or rather ale, a sweet and powerful drink brewed using malted barley, water and yeast. It was sweet and often very powerful. This was brewed at home as a cottage industry, usually by women, and was safer to drink than water. But ale didn’t keep well, and was replaced by bitter, which had the addition of hops, in the eighteenth century. Thankfully keg beers, which are much easier to keep and transport, are now not all dominating and CAMRA (the Campaign for Real Ale), founded in 1971, has made a huge impact in helping to create a situation where the choice and quality of beer has never been better. 

For a long time, there was a class difference between the alehouses where the poor congregated and the much more luxurious taverns. In addition, there were the coaching Inns and gin-shops (or palaces). Acts of Parliament, the Temperance Movement and even sanitation had an influence on the pubs we drink in today. Licensing laws, governing opening hours, the number and restriction of licenses, the size and shape of pubs, their proliferation and decline, were shaped by events over a century ago, particularly in London. Among the many changes that pubs have seen in the past twenty years or so are the coming of the big screens and the introduction of doorman (bouncers) beyond the nightclubs. 

At the time the film was made the ‘Westgate run’ had 27 pubs and 6 nightclubs, which isn’t far from what it has at the time of writing. It was, and still is, a popular place for those wanting a good night out drinking, from all over Yorkshire and beyond – on the night of one shoot Judi met a group of 35 women from Hull.  In fact Judi relates that, “We hardly met anyone from Wakefield. In fact most were from outside Yorkshire.” The Knowhere Guide (see References) provides, a somewhat subjective, guide to pubs along the Westgate. At the time of writing, Westgate is being transformed into a commercial quarter and the Masons Arms in Ackworth near Wakefield has a folk club.

References

 

Keith Allen, Grow Up, Ebury Press, 2007.

Chris Arnott, ‘Drinks to the Future’, the Guardian, 15th July 1998.

An excellent history of Ackworth

Mark Easton, Pubs aren't dying - they are evolving, BBC

The Benefits Of Moderate Beer Consumption, The Brewers of Europe, 3rdEdition, 2004

British Beer & Pub Association

The Knowhere Guide to pubs in Wakefield

CAMRA

Andrew O'Hagan, ‘Pubs are the last place I'd want to drink in’, the Daily Telegraph, 29th July 2008.

History of pubs

 

Further Information

 

Paul Jennings, The Local: A History of the English Pub, The History Press Ltd, 2007. 

http://www.onetoonedevelopment.org/