Club Rules
There is an apparent contradiction, which has puzzled a number of commentators, between the strong individualism of the English and our penchant for forming and joining clubs, between our obsession with privacy and our ФclubbabilityХ. Jeremy Paxman notes that the supposedly insular, individualistic, privacy-fixated English have clubs for almost everything: ФThere are clubs to go fishing, support football teams, play cards, arrange flowers, race pigeons, make jam, ride bicycles, watch birds, even for going on holidayХ. I wonХt attempt a more comprehensive list Р it would take up half the book: just as every conceivable English leisure pursuit has a magazine or six, each one also has clubs, if not a National Society, with a whole network of Regional Groups and subdivisions. Usually there are two rival National Societies, with marginally different views on the activity in question, who spend most of their time happily bickering and squabbling with each other.
Citing de Tocqueville, Paxman wonders how Фthe English manage to be simultaneously so highly singular, yet to be forever forming clubs and societies: how could the spirit of association and the spirit of exclusion be so highly developed in the same people?Х He seems to accept de TocquevilleХs pragmatic, economic explanation, that the English historically have always formed associations in order to pool resources, when they could not get what they wanted by individual effort Р and he also emphasizes the fact that joining clubs is very much a matter of individual choice.
I would argue that clubs are more about social needs than practical or economic ones, but I agree that the issue of choice is important. The English are not keen on random, unstructured, spontaneous, street-corner sociability; we are no good at this, and it makes us uneasy. We prefer to socialize in an organised, ordered manner, at specific times and places of our choosing, with rules that we can argue about, an agenda, minutes and a monthly newsletter. Above all, as with sports and games, we need to pretend that the activity of the club or society (flower-arranging, amateur dramatics, charity, breeding rabbits, whatever) is the real point of the gathering, and that social bonding is just a secondary side-effect.
ItХs that self-delusion thing again. The English constantly form clubs and societies for exactly the same reason that we have so many sports and games: we need props and facilitators to help us engage socially with our fellow humans, to overcome our social dis-ease, and we also need the illusion that we are doing something else, that we have come together for some practical purpose, to pursue a specific shared interest, to pool resources in order to achieve something we could not manage alone. The pragmatic de Tocqueville/Paxman explanation of English clubbiness is a very English one: it perfectly describes this illusion, but fails to recognize that it is an illusion Р that the real purpose of all these clubs is the social contact and social bonding that we desperately need, but cannot admit to needing, not even to ourselves.
If you are very English, you may well choose to reject my explanation. I donХt like it much myself. I would much rather believe that I joined, say, the Arab Horse Society, and attended meetings of its Chiltern Regional Group, because I had an Arab stallion and was interested in breeding and riding Arab horses and participating in shows, events and discussions with other aficionados. I would like to think that at university I joined umpteen left-wing political groups, and went on countless demonstrations and marches and CND rallies, because of my firmly held convictions and principles55. And indeed, these were the conscious reasons. I am not saying that the English deliberately set out to trick themselves into sociability. But if IХm ruthlessly honest with myself, I have to admit that I also liked the sense of belonging, the ease of socializing with people with whom I shared an interest or a cause Р compared to the awkwardness of trying to make conversation with strangers in public places or at gatherings where the sole purpose is to gather, to be sociable, without any shared hobbies or horses or political hobby-horses to help things along.
If you are a member of an English club or society, you may also resent my lumping them all together like this, as though there were no significant difference between the Arab Horse Society and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, or between, say, a WomenХs Institute meeting and a meeting of a bikersХ club. Well, sorry, but I have to report that there is indeed very little difference. IХve been a member of many English clubs and societies, and gate-crashed a few others in the course of my research, and they are all much of a muchness. Meetings of regional or local branches of the AHS, CND, WI and MAG (Motorcycle Action Group) all follow more or less the same pattern. They start with the usual English awkward greetings and jokes and some preliminary weather- speak. There is tea, and sandwiches or biscuits (both if youХre lucky), a lot of gossip, a lot of ritual moaning and a lot of in-jokes. These are followed by a bit of throat-clearing and attempts to get the meeting started without seeming pompous or officious. The unwritten rules prescribe slightly self-mocking tones when using official meeting-speak terms such as ФagendaХ, ФminutesХ and ФchairmanХ, to show one is not taking the thing too seriously,
and eye-rolling at the long-winded speeches of the inevitable club bore who does take it all too seriously. There is some discussion of important matters, punctuated by jokes, bitching about enemies (or rival clubs
with the same interests Р MAG members bitch about the British Motorcycle Federation, for example), and polite territorial squabbling among members over largely irrelevant details. Occasionally, a decision or resolution is reached, or at least a consensus of opinion, with the actual decision deferred till the next meeting. Then more tea, with more joking, gossiping and moaning Р especially moaning (I defy you to find an English club or society whose members do not feel misunderstood or put-upon in some way), finishing up with the usual prolonged English goodbyes. Sometimes there is a guest speaker, who must be fђted and fussed over and politely applauded, however dull and unenlightening their speech. But the basic pattern is always the same. If youХve seen one meeting of an English club or society, youХve seen them all. Even an Anarchist meeting I attended followed the same sequence, although it was much better organized than most, and at the demonstration the next day the members were all dressed in uniform black, carrying professional-looking banners, chanting in unison and marching in step.
Pub Rules
YouХve probably got the message by now that I think pubs are quite an important part of English culture. Of all the Фsocial facilitatorsХ that help the inhibited English to engage and bond with each other, the pub is the most popular. There are around fifty-thousand or so pubs in England, frequented by three-quarters of the adult population, many of whom are ФregularsХ, treating their local pub almost as a second home. This national love- affair with the pub shows no sign of waning: overall, about a third of the adult population are ФregularsХ, visiting the pub at least once a week Р but among the younger age-groups, this proportion rises to 64 per cent.
I talk about Фthe pubХ as though they were all the same, but nowadays there is a bewildering variety of different types: student pubs, youth pubs, theme pubs, family pubs, gastro-pubs, cyber-pubs, sports pubs Р as well as a number of other kinds of drinking-places such as cafЋ-bars and wine bars. Much fuss has been made about these novelties, of course, much huffing and puffing, dire warnings and doom and gloom. Pubs arenХt what they used to be. ItХs all trendy bars now, you canХt find a proper traditional pub. The countryХs going to the dogs. The end of the world is nigh, or at least a lot nigher than it was.
The usual nostalgic moaning. The usual premature obituaries (I mean this quite literally: there was a book published about twenty years ago entitled The Death of the English Pub: I canХt help wondering how the author now feels every time he passes a Rose & Crown or a Red Lion and sees people still happily drinking and playing darts). But a lot of this precipitate mourning is just typical English Eeyorishness, and the rest is the result of a syndrome similar to Фethnographic dazzleХ: the doom-mongers are so dazzled by superficial differences between the new types of pub and the traditional sort that they cannot see the underlying, enduring similarities Р the customs and codes of behaviour that make a pub a pub. Even if the Eeyores were right, the new pubs they object to are still only a small minority, concentrated largely in city centres, and there are still tens of thousands of more traditional ФlocalХ pubs.
It is true that a number of village pubs are struggling, and some in very small villages have had to close, which is sad, as a village is not really a proper village without a pub. Whenever this happens, there are howls of protest in the local papers, and a morose group of villagers is photographed with a handmade ФSave Our PubХ placard. What would save their pub, of course, would be lots of them spending lots of money drinking and eating in it, but they never seem to make this connection. We have the same problem with the Death of the Village Shop: everyone wants to save their village shop; they just donХt particularly want to shop there. The usual English hypocrisies.
But the English pub, as an institution, as a micro-society, is still alive and well. And still governed by a stable, enduring set of unspoken rules. I have already described most of these in the chapter on pub-talk Р the pub is an institution devoted to sociability, which even among the English involves communication, so it is not surprising that most of its rules are concerned with language and body language. Some more pub rules were covered in the section on games, but that still leaves a few quite significant ones, such as the rules governing the consumption of alcohol. I donХt mean the official licensing laws, but the much more important unwritten codes of social drinking.
Drinking Rules
You can learn a lot about a culture by studying its drinking rules. And every culture has rules about alcohol: there is no such thing as random drinking. In every culture where alcohol is used, drinking is a rule-governed activity, hedged about with prescriptions and norms concerning who may drink how much of what, when, where, with whom, in what manner and with what effects. This is only to be expected. I have already pointed out that one of the distinguishing characteristics of Homo sapiens is our passion for regulation Р our tendency to surround even the most basic, essential activities such as eating and mating with a lot of elaborate rules and rituals. But even more than with sex and food, the specific unwritten rules and norms governing the use of alcohol in different cultures invariably reflect the characteristic values, beliefs and attitudes of those cultures. The anthropologist Dwight Heath put it more eloquently when he wrote that: Фjust as drinking and its effects are imbedded in other aspects of culture, so are many other aspects of culture imbedded in the act of drinkingХ. So, if we want to understand Englishness, we need to look more closely at the Englishness of English drinking.
The Rules of Round-buying
Round-buying is the English form of a universal practice: the sharing or reciprocal exchange of drinks. The consumption of alcohol, in all cultures, is a quintessentially social activity, whose ritual practices and etiquettes are designed to promote friendly social interaction. There is certainly nothing uniquely English about reciprocal drink-giving. What is distinctively English, and often baffling or even frightening for foreigners, is the immense, almost religious significance attached to this practice among English pubgoers. Obeying the rules of round-buying is not just good manners, it is a sacred obligation. Failing to buy your round is not just a breach of drinking etiquette: it is heresy.
When I talked to foreign visitors about this, during the research for the pub etiquette book, they found it all a bit extreme. Why, they asked, is round-buying so desperately important to English pubgoers? In the book, I said that round-buying is important to us because it prevents bloodshed. Realizing that this might sound even more extreme, at least to non-anthropologists, I explained a bit further. Reciprocal gift-giving has always been the most effective means of preventing aggression between groups (families, clans, tribes, nations) and between individuals. Among English drinkers, more specifically English male drinkers, this peacekeeping system is essential. This is because the socially challenged English male has a tendency to become aggressive. Male pub-talk, as we have seen, is often highly argumentative, and there is a need for an antidote to these verbal fisticuffs, a means of ensuring that the argument is not taken seriously, and does not escalate into physical aggression. Buying your ФopponentХ a drink is a kind of symbolic handshake: it proves that you are still mates. A particularly shrewd (female) publican told me ФIf the men didnХt buy each other drinks, theyХd be at each otherХs throats. They can be shouting and swearing, but as long as they are still buying each other drinks, I know I wonХt have a fight on my handsХ. I have personally witnessed many apparently heated slanging matches which were amicably concluded with the phrase Фand anyway, itХs your round!Х or Фand I suppose itХs my bloody round again and all, right?Х or ФOh, put a sock in it and get the beers in, will you?Х
As well as preventing carnage and mayhem, round-buying is also vitally important because it is an EnglishmanХs substitute for the expression of emotion. The average English male is terrified of intimacy, but he is also human, and therefore has a need to bond with other humans, particularly with other males. This means finding some way of saying ФI like youХ to other males, without, of course, actually having to utter anything quite so soppy. Fortunately, such positive feelings can be expressed, without any loss of masculine dignity, by the reciprocal buying of rounds of drinks.
The importance we attach to round-buying is also yet another indicator of our obsession with fair play Р round-buying, like queuing, is all about taking turns. But, like every aspect of English etiquette, the unwritten rules of round-buying are complicated, with all the usual sub-clauses and exceptions, and ФfairnessХ is a somewhat slippery concept Р it is not just a simple matter of ensuring roughly equal expenditure on drinks. The rules of round-buying are as follows:
In any group of two or more people, one person must buy a ФroundХ of drinks for the whole group. This is not an altruistic gesture: the expectation is that the other member or members of the group will each, in turn, buy a round of drinks. When each person has bought a round, the process begins again with the first person.
Unless the group is drinking at the bar counter, the person who buys the round must also act as waiter. ФBuying your roundХ means not only paying for the drinks, but going to the bar, ordering the drinks and carrying them all back to the table. If there are a lot of drinks, another member of the group will usually offer to help, but this is not compulsory, and the round-buyer may have to make two or three trips. The effort involved is as important as the expenditure: it is part of the ФgiftХ.
ФFairnessХ in round-buying is not a matter of strict justice. One person may well end up buying two rounds during a ФsessionХ, while the other members of the group have only bought one round each. Over several ФsessionsХ, rough equality is usually achieved, but it is extremely bad manners to appear overly concerned about this.
In fact, any sign of miserliness, calculation or reluctance to participate wholeheartedly in the ritual is severely frowned upon. For an English male, saying that someone ФdoesnХt buy his roundХ is a dire insult. It is thus important to try always to be among the earliest to say ФItХs my round,Х rather than waiting until the other members of the group have bought ФtheirХ rounds and it is quite obviously your turn. Perhaps surprisingly, I found that on average ФinitiatingХ round-buyers (those who regularly buy the first round) actually spend no more money in the long term than ФwaitingХ round-buyers (those who do not offer a round until later in the session). In fact, far from being out-of-pocket, ФinitiatorsХ often end up rather better off than those who wait, because their popularity and reputation for generosity means that others are inclined to be generous towards them. One should never wait until all oneХs companionsХ glasses are empty before offering to buy the next round. The correct time to say ФItХs my roundХ is when the majority of the glasses are about three-quarters empty. This rule is not so much about proving oneХs generosity, more a matter of ensuring that the flow of alcohol is continuous Р that no-one is ever left without a drink for even a few minutes. It is acceptable occasionally to refuse a drink during the round-buying process, as long as you do not attempt to make an issue or a moral virtue out of your moderate intake, but this does not exempt you from the round-buying obligation. Even if you are drinking less than the others, you should still Фbuy your roundХ. It would be very rude, however, to refuse a drink that is offered as a Фpeace-makingХ gesture, or that is clearly a significant, personal friendship-signal.
There is usually no excuse for failing to perform the sacred round-buying ritual, but there are a few exceptions to the round-buying rules, relating to the size of the drinking group and the demographics of its members.
THE NUMBERS EXCEPTION In a very large group, traditional round-buying can sometimes be prohibitively expensive. This is not, however, usually seen as a valid reason to abandon the ritual altogether. Instead, the large group divides into smaller sub-groups (nobody suggests or organizes this, it just happens), each of which follows the normal round-buying procedure. Alternatively, the principle of gift-giving is maintained by having a Фwhip roundХ Р collecting a relatively small sum of money from each person to put into a ФkittyХ, which is then used to buy rounds of drinks for the whole group. Only as a last resort, perhaps among students or others on very low incomes, will members of a large group agree to purchase drinks individually.
THE COUPLE EXCEPTION In some social groups, couples are treated as one person for the purposes of round- buying, in that only the male half of the couple is expected to Фbuy his roundХ. This variation is rarely seen among younger people, unless they are deliberately adopting old-fashioned courtly manners for some special occasion. In normal circumstances, you will only see this practice when the males in the group are over forty. Some older English males cannot cope with the idea of women buying them drinks at all, and extend the couple exception to cover all females in a group, whether or not they are accompanied by an attached male. When out alone with a female, these older, old-fashioned males will also insist on buying all the drinks, whereas younger males will usually expect a female companion to take turns buying rounds in the usual manner.
THE FEMALE EXCEPTION Women generally have considerably less reverence for the round-buying rules than men. In mixed-sex groups, they play along, humouring their male companions by following the prescribed etiquette, but in all-female gatherings you see all sorts of odd variations and even outright flouting of the rules. They do buy each other drinks, but round-buying is just not such a big issue for them Р they donХt keep track of whose round it is, or have endless friendly disputes about who has or hasnХt bought their round, and they tend to find the male obsession with round-buying somewhat tedious and irritating.
This is mainly because English females have much less need for the Фliquid handshakeХ of reciprocal drink- buying than English males: the argument is not their primary form of communication, so there is no need for peacekeeping gestures, and they are quite capable of conveying that they like each other and achieving intimacy by other means, such as compliments, gossip and reciprocal disclosure. English women may not be as free-and- easy with their disclosures as women from other, less inhibited cultures: they do not tend to tell you all about their divorce and their hysterectomy and what their therapist said within five minutes of meeting you. But once English females become friends, such discussions are commonplace, whereas most English males never get to this stage, even with their best and closest friends.
Even the word ФfriendХ is a bit difficult, a bit too touchy-feely, for some English males: they prefer to use the term ФmateХ. You can be ФmatesХ with someone without necessarily knowing anything at all about his personal life, let alone his feelings, hopes or fears Р except where these concern the performance of his football team or his car. The terms ФmateХ, Фgood mateХ and Фbest mateХ are ostensibly used to convey varying degrees of intimacy, but even your Фbest mateХ may know little or nothing about your marital problems Р or only as much as can be conveyed in a jokey-blokey, mock-moaning manner, to which he can respond, ФWomen! Huh! Typical!Х You would, of course, risk your life for him, and he for you. Your Фbest mateХ may have a better idea of your golf handicap than the names of your children, but you actually care deeply about each other. Still, that goes without saying, right, so thereХs no need to cause unnecessary embarrassment by saying it. And anyway, itХs your round, mate.
You Are What You Drink
Another Фhuman universalХ is important here: in all cultures where more than one type of alcoholic drink is available, drinks are classified in terms of their social meaning, and these classifications help to define the social world. No alcoholic drink is ever Фsocially neutralХ. In England, as elsewhere, ФWhatХs yours?Х is a socially loaded question, and we judge and classify people on their answer. Choice of beverage is rarely just a matter of personal taste.
Among other symbolic functions, drinks can be used as indicators of social status, and as gender differentiators. These are the two most important symbolic functions of alcoholic beverages among the English: your choice of drink (in public at least) is determined mainly by your sex and social class, with some age-related variations. The rules are as follows:
Working-class and lower-middle-class females have the widest choice of drinks. Almost anything is socially acceptable Р cocktails, sweet or creamy liqueurs, all soft-drinks, beers and so-called ФdesignerХ drinks (pre- mixed drinks in bottles). There is really only one restriction: the size of glass from which lower-class women may drink beer. Drinking ФpintsХ, in many working-class and lower-middle circles, is regarded as unfeminine and unladylike, so most women in this social group drink ФhalvesХ (half-pints) of beer. Drinking pint glasses of beer would classify you as a ФladetteХ Р a female ФladХ, a woman who imitates the loutish, raucous behaviour of hard-drinking males. Some women are happy with this image, but they are still a minority.
Next on the freedom-of-choice scale are middle-middle to upper-class females. Their choice is more
restricted: the more sickly-sweet drinks, and cream-based liqueurs and cocktails, are regarded as a bit vulgar Р ordering a BaileyХs or a Babycham would certainly cause a few raised eyebrows and sideways looks Р but they can drink more or less any wines, spirits, sherries, soft-drinks, ciders or beers. Female pint- drinking is also more acceptable in this social category, at least among the younger women, particularly students. Among upper-middle-class female students, I found that many felt that they had to give an explanation if they ordered a ФgirlyХ half rather than a pint. The choices of middle- and upper-class males are far more restricted than those of their female counterparts. They may drink only beer, spirits (mixers are acceptable), wine (must be dry, not sweet) and soft-drinks. Anything sweet or creamy is regarded as suspiciously ФfeminineХ, and cocktails are only acceptable at cocktail parties or in a cocktail bar Р you would never order them in a pub or ordinary bar. Working-class males have virtually no choice at all. They can drink only beer or spirits Р everything else is effeminate. Among older working-class males, even some mixers may be forbidden: gin-and-tonic may be just about acceptable in some circles, but more obscure combinations are frowned upon. Younger working- class males have a bit more freedom: vodka-and-coke is acceptable, for example, as are the latest novelties and ФdesignerХ bottled drinks, providing they have a high enough alcohol content.
The Rules of Drunkenness Р and the ФBecome Loud and Aggressive and ObnoxiousХ Method
Another ФuniversalХ: the effects of alcohol on behaviour are determined by social and cultural rules and norms, not by the chemical actions of ethanol. There is enormous cross-cultural variation in the way people behave when they drink alcohol. In some societies (such as the UK, the US, Australia and parts of Scandinavia), drinking is associated with aggression, violence and anti-social behaviour, while in others (such as Latin/Mediterranean cultures) drinking behaviour is largely peaceful and harmonious. This variation cannot be attributed to different levels of consumption or genetic differences, but is clearly related to different cultural beliefs about alcohol, different expectations regarding the effects of alcohol and different social norms regarding drunken comportment.
This basic fact has been proved time and again, not just in qualitative cross-cultural research but in carefully controlled proper scientific experiments Р double-blind, placebos and all. To put it simply, the experiments show that when people think they are drinking alcohol, they behave according to their cultural beliefs about the behavioural effects of alcohol. The English believe that alcohol is a disinhibitor, and specifically that it makes people amorous or aggressive, so when they are given what they think are alcoholic drinks Р but are in fact non- alcoholic ФplacebosХ Р they shed their inhibitions: they become more flirtatious, and males (young males in particular) often become aggressive.
Which brings me to the third method the English use to deal with their chronic, incurable social dis-ease: the Фbecome loud and aggressive and obnoxiousХ method. I am certainly not the first to have noticed this dark and unpleasant side to the English character. Visitors have been commenting on it for centuries, and our habit of national self-flagellation ensures that not a week goes by without some mention of it in our own newspapers. Football hooligans, road rage, lager louts, neighbours-from-hell, drunken brawling, delinquency, disorder and downright impudence. These infelicities are invariably attributed either to a vague, idiopathic Фdecline in moral standardsХ or to the effects of alcohol, or both. Neither of these explanations will do. Even the most cursory scan of English social history confirms that our current bouts of obnoxious drunken disorder are nothing new and, even leaving aside the placebo experiments, it is clear that many other nations manage to consume much larger quantities of alcohol than us without becoming rude, violent and generally disgusting.
Our beliefs about the behavioural effects of alcohol are certainly at least partly to blame, as they act as self- fulfilling prophecies. If you firmly believe and expect that alcohol will make you aggressive, then it will do exactly that. But this still leaves the question of why we should hold such strange beliefs. The notion that alcohol is a dangerous disinhibitor is not peculiar to the English: it is shared by a number of other cultures, known to the anthropologists and other social scientists who take an interest in such matters as ФambivalentХ, ФdryХ, ФNordicХ or ФtemperanceХ cultures Р cultures with an ambivalent, morally charged, love/hate, forbidden-fruit relationship with alcohol, usually the result of a history of temperance movements. These are contrasted with ФintegratedХ, ФwetХ, ФMediterraneanХ or Фnon-temperanceХ cultures Р those for whom alcohol is simply a normal, integral, taken-for- granted, morally neutral part of everyday life; generally cultures that have been fortunate enough to escape the attentions of temperance campaigners. ФIntegratedХ drinking-cultures, despite usually having much higher levels of per-capita alcohol consumption, experience few of the ФalcoholrelatedХ social and psychiatric problems that afflict ФambivalentХ cultures.
These basic facts are, among my fellow cross-cultural researchers and other dispassionate ФalcohologistsХ, so obvious and commonplace as to be tedious. We are certainly all very weary of repeating them, endlessly, to English audiences who either cannot or will not accept their validity. Much of my professional life has been spent on alcohol-related research of one sort or another, and my colleagues and I have been trotting out the same irrefutable cross-cultural and experimental evidence for over a decade, every time our expertise is called upon by government departments, police conferences, worried brewers and other concerned agencies.
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