Re-opening of pubs in England. I wont be boycotting Wetherspoons (I wont be going in either)
Pubs can re-open in England from July 4th with social distancing and other measures in place.
Some will be. Certainly chains such as Greene King, Brewdog and of course Wetherspoons.
You can find on social media calls to boycott Wetherspoons on the basis that Tim Martin is a bad employer.
Indeed he is, just as bad as many other pub operators in fact.
The hard line pro-Remain paper the New European has published a piece claiming there is a boycott campaign. I’m not so sure since their evidence was a number of tweets from (of course) anonymous people. The New European don’t like Martin in reality because he is pro-Brexit. I don’t like his Brexit position either but I like even less his refusal to recognise trade unions, pay good wages and in the current context agree safe working conditions with staff (although Spoons pubs have taken safety measures for re-opening).
Someone on social media who is certainly keener on Tim Martin than I have recently been, (though I’ve known him since the Muswell Hill days and have taken flack for suggesting that his influence on the UK pub scene has been far from all bad), has suggested, rightly I think, that a call for cashless transactions only, hits less well off customers. It is an issue much wider than Spoons-many retailers are currently cashless- but it certainly needs to be looked at.
Its worth keeping in mind that while other Pub Cos have not been as high profile as Martin on the matter of Brexit you’ll struggle to find one that didn’t back Brexit as they are nearly all Tory supporters
What one can find is a genuine campaign by Wetherspoons workers who are unionised calling on people not to boycott their pubs but instead pressure Martin to address their demands. That is more positive than a boycott here.
I wont be going in a Spoons pub on 4th June or indeed any other though. I’ll be waiting to see how things are working and also calm down a bit. Even then it’d be much more likely that I’d visit a local independent pub selling good beer.
One issue is that 40 years ago Martin’s pubs fitted that description perfectly. They were not full of old white blokes complaining that the Daily Mail is a bit left-wing these days. Rather they were socially inclusive. No doubt some still are but instead of being a model of the progressive pub they are now likely to be quoted by people who are not enthusiasts for pubs anyway as an example of why they are bad.
As Keir Starmer asked of Tim Martin’s friend Boris Johnson, how did it come to this?
I’ve argued for a possible solution which is here:
https://kmflett.wordpress.com/2020/05/20/the-new-normal-for-pubs-time-to-nationalise-wetherspoons/
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