Introduction

Academics studying the British temperance movement tend to regard it as having had little effect. Warner asserts that ‘the most salient feature of the British temperance movement is how little it was able to accomplish’ and Nicholls’ history of the drink question seems to position the temperance movement as something that rose up before falling down, leaving little meaningful imprint on society. More popularly, Ian Hislop's recent BBC series, Age of the Do-Gooders, portrayed the Victorian temperance movement as a curious phenomenon that, despite the apparently continuing relevance of its message, sunk without a trace. But is this negative assessment of impact accurate? Did this well-supported, highly organised and discursively novel social movement really effect no changes in the way British people relate to alcohol?

Building on the argument in the previous chapter that the emergence of the British temperance movement represented the start of a potent and distinct movement to morally regulate the use of alcohol, this chapter begins an assessment of the impact of this project. The particular utility of the moral regulation approach is that it enables a concentration on the attitudes towards alcohol that are discernible in public discourse as well as forms of regulation, legal or otherwise, that affect people's behaviour. Hence, this chapter focuses on the legal impacts of the temperance movement as well as the subtler attitudinal changes it may have engendered. These attitudinal changes are investigated primarily through the study of newspaper sources and, for this chapter alone, approximately 350 articles have been analysed. Drawing on these sources, this chapter focuses on the more immediate effects of temperance campaigning in the Victorian period. Subsequent chapters examine public attitudes in the 20th and 21st centuries and so give some consideration to its longer-term significance.

‘A new moralising subtext’

The massive social and economic upheavals of the 19th century were accompanied by the expansion of government into new areas of social life. Many previously untouched spheres of social life, from working practices to education, became increasingly subject to government regulation. Moreover, as Emsley highlights, 19th-century laws tended increasingly to be countrywide rather than local; problems and solutions began to be conceived on a national level.