TMT Day 16 - The Final Pub Crawl

Having a few pints with a politician.

It's safe to say that getting drunk with a former member of the U.K. parliament wasn't on my bingo card for 2023.

And yet, here we are.

This was my last day on the tour through England and Wales—the last day of The Morning Tipple. And poetically, it ended with the same person who started this whole thing for me - Greg Mulholland.

"As a kid I remember seeing pints of Theakston Brewery's Best Bitter being poured and sitting on the bar. And there it was, this billowing cloud of white, and watching with absolute awe as it cleared from the bottom, with this lovely golden brown color. And I remember thinking, 'Wow, if that tastes anything like as good as it looks, it must be the nicest thing on earth.'"

For Greg, that was one of those formative moments that has lived in his mind since childhood. It's one of the reasons he got into beer and why he spent a large portion of his political capital in parliament fighting for the pub.

Greg is the Campaign Director for Campaign for Pubs and a former member of parliament (MP) for Leeds North West constituency. He was a massive champion for pubs while in parliament and integral to getting the Pubs Code Regulation of 2016 passed with Dave and Paul. A few weeks ago, I called him up to ask why the hell all the pubs in England were closing. He told me about the pub tie and introduced me to half the folks we met along this journey.

So basically, it's his fault that I've spent far too much time and way too many words on the state of pubs in England. It's also his fault you all have had to read my pub-related rantings for three damn weeks now.

He insisted we meet in Otley, an old market town just north of York. Otley has an incredible amount of pubs, he told me. Being a market town, Otley had some advantages for drinkers. Fridays were market days, where folks from around the area would bring goods and wares to sell. And since market workers were there all day and night, old licensing laws allowed pubs in Otley to be open all day to accommodate some thirsty people. At its peak, there were 30 pubs in a city of less than 15,000 people.

But to Greg, Otley is a microcosm for the current state of England’s pubs - evil pubcos closing shops, amazing publicans breathing new life into abandoned ones, a thriving community, and just damn good beer.

To see it all, Greg took me on a little pub crawl.

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We went to six open pubs and drove by at least as many closed ones. I don't know if it was the beer or just the sheer amount of pub history and knowledge that Greg was rattling off, but the day was one big, frothy blur. The man is a true walking encyclopedia of English beer and pub knowledge.

Throughout the pub tour, a few stories stood out to me.

The first was at The Bay Horse. It's a small pub run by a husband and wife team, one of the few still around. At one point, the owner pulled out a print of a Christmas card. It was a small painting of downtown Otley in the winter.

The painting was done by Bruce, an artist and frequent patron of The Bay Horse. Sadly, Bruce passed away a few months ago before he could finish the painting, so his daughter picked up the brush and finished the rest. Now, they’re selling them as Christmas cards to raise money for charity.

Greg knew Bruce. Hell, everyone at The Bay Horse knew Bruce. And even if you didn't know him, in the corner of the pub, above his favorite seat, is a painting of him that another patron (and skilled painter) did in his honor. His wife still comes in and has an occasional pint.

The second story was at The Old Cock, another small pub not too far away. We met a crew of seven old chaps on a pub crawl. Not just any pub craw, though. They started in the early 80s when those old licensing laws meant that pubs in Otley were open all day. So naturally, as some 20-somethings do, they all came into town to take advantage of their generous drinking opportunities. Since then, for 41 consecutive years, they've come to Otley on the first Friday in December. Every. Damn. Year.

They were hilarious and clearly a few stops deep into their pub crawl. I told them I wrote about beer, and they started squabbling and bantering about which pubs had the best beer, as you’d expect from a bunch of old geezers. At the first mention of tied pubs, they all looked visibly disgusted, "We don't go to those," one said, "the beer is dreadful and it's all the same." Though Greg quickly points out that tied pubs can be good, as long as the publican is allowed to steward it correctly. They seemed mostly amenable to that take.

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What has continuously surprised me about this trip is how many people continued to talk about pubs as if they had a soul. They would talk about each pub as this living, breathing entity. They all had different needs and needed to be attended to as such by the publican.

Do you think of your local dive bar as having a soul? What about your local brewery's tap room? Or hell, any restaurant/bar you've ever been to? Do you even know the name of the person pulling your pint?

I don't.

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So - why are pubs closing? Why would such a beloved institution, both domestically and abroad, close so many of its doors? It's the question that got me started on this project.

Tied houses? Free houses? Cask ale? The story felt so foreign and medieval.

But the story I found wasn't foreign at all, but rather one that is all too familiar. After enough of these conversations, you realize that it's not really a story about beer or pubs. It's about unfettered corporatism. It's about corruption and regulatory capture. It's a story about rapacious capitalists continuing to plunder the world as they see fit.

Of course, there's the argument that this is all inevitable. Cities change, people change, habits change, and I'm just being held captive by a rose-colored past that I was never really part of, anyway.

But then how, or better yet who, decides what's a part of our past and what's a part of our future?

According to Greg, it's pretty simple: all pubs deserve a chance.

-Skylar

P.S. - Greg is a true modern-day renaissance man. Besides being a politician and campaigner, Greg is also a musician/songwriter. He actually wrote a song called Last of England, which is about all the pubs closing around the country. Honestly, it’s pretty sad.