Kmflett's Blog

Histories of the Present. Friday March 20^th 2020. Boris Johnson orders pubs to shut. The long hangover

On Monday March 16^th 2020 as cases of COVID spiralled, particularly in London, Boris Johnson suggested that people should swerve pubs, restaurants etc.

On Friday March 20^th 2020, exactly six years ago, he was back this time with Sunak and Deputy CMO Jenny Harries, and Johnson, or at least Government policy, went further and ordered pubs to shut.

They did not re-open until July 2020. Furlough was available for at least some in hospitality and COVID loans were offered to reflect the financial difficulties the decision clearly caused.

As an inveterate pub goer I was of course not happy but I’d already decided not to go to the pub. My last beer until July in a pub had been in the Cock Tavern Hackney on the 15^th March 2020.

I posted at the time that I thought it was probably a sensible decision (one of the few Johnson made or had made for him). It was not really known at this point how COVID was transmitted and no vaccine was available until early 2021.

Of course, and this is a comparatively little explored aspect of the decision, temperance campaigners seized on the matter. Claims that pubs were places where everyone got drunk and indulged in all kinds of excess, thereby spreading COVID, were to be seen quite frequently. They often seemed to be made by people that never went to pubs, regarding them as places proletarians were to be found.

Suffice to say that being primarily airborne COVID could spread wherever people gathered- transport, shops etc and not just pubs.

Six Years On, numbers of pubs and smaller breweries still feel the impact of COVID. In some cases  trade never really recovered, and, related to that, paying back COVID loans became problematic.

It’s a history of the present that is widely ignored, just the rise in those on ill health benefits, which primarily starts from 2020 (though it had risen in 2019) is at least in part likely to be due to the impact of Long COVID, a far from perfectly understood condition or sets of conditions.

In short histories of the present are important. We have a 24/7 media focused on NOW, and not too much concerned with history, even recent history.

We are collectively telling, telling cafes, pubs, bars, restaurants to close tonight as soon as they reasonably can, and not to open tomorrow.

Though to be clear, they can continue to provide take-out services.

We’re also telling nightclubs, theatres, cinemas, gyms and leisure centres to close on the same timescale.

Now, these are places where people come together, and indeed the whole purpose of these businesses is to bring people together. But the sad things is that today for now, at least physically, we need to keep people apart.

And I want to stress that we will review the situation each month, to see if we can relax any of these measures.

And listening to what I have just said, some people may of course be tempted to go out tonight. But please don’t.

Prime Minister’s statement on coronavirus (COVID-19): 20 March 2020 – GOV.UK