Drink and the City: Alcohol and Alcohol Problems in Urban UK, since the 1950s

In the 1950s pub going and drinking were viewed by city inhabitants as essential activities, just as now. For the majority of people, drinking and occasional drunkenness were accepted and tolerated aspects of everyday life.

However in the 1950s, the idea of the 'alcoholic', a medical as well as moral phenomenon, surfaced in society. The book describes how it became associated locally with poverty, and viewed in the extreme terms as a problem of the vagrant alcoholic. The vagrants' ever-presence in the city, coupled with his unsanitary drinking, gave the place an unwholesome look of poverty.

In the early 2000s Nottingham became a national flashpoint over binge drinking at a time when alcohol licensing reform was being debated in Parliament and for the first time, the local definition and national one properly combined. This book thus suggests local definitions are important, and should be taken account of in the process of policy making. The book also offers insights into the changing nature of Britain's drinking culture in recent times.

Table of Contents

Drink and the City · Medicine as Part of Social Concern, 1950s & 1960s · Medical Responses to the Vagrant Alcoholic, 1970s · Youth in Public View, 1970s · Combining Drink and Drugs: Alcohol Treatment in the 1980s · Drunken Yobs and Aggressive Beggars': the 1980s · Politicisation and Fragmentation: Alcohol Treatment in the 1990s · 'Liberty's' and Licensing: Responses by the Police in the 1990s · 'Cldt Give a 4xxxx for Lst Ordrs': The National/Local Problem of Binge Drinking · UK Alcohol Policy: National-Local Interaction · Reference Sources