Wasted (20 page)

Eventually, perhaps recognising that self-regulation is better than imposed rule, the industry set up an organisation called
MEAS
, which is an independent charity working
to engage in the area of consumer communications through brands such as Drink Aware. ‘The ultimate aim is to change behaviours and attitudes also,’ says spokesperson Jean Doyle.
‘At the moment as an industry we are in the midst of a five-year plan delivering a twenty-million [euro] fund dedicate[d] to the area of awareness and education. Everybody appreciated that
the industry needed to focus on this area. There were issues around how certain brands and certain types of things were being promoted. We believe that self-regulation and co-regulation is the best
way forward.’

It’s noticeable that in recent campaigns by
MEAS
, the focus has shifted from the individual drinker, regretting his/her actions on a night out, to looking at the
impact that person has on their direct environment. So the
A&E
nurse, the shopkeeper and the taxi driver all relay the impact problem drinking is having on their lives.
It’s an effort, then, for a collective response by society to a problem which reaches every sector.

As Jean Doyle notes: ‘At times the industry can be the whipping boy. We should of course be around the table when people are talking about alcohol misuse, but there are other areas of
responsibility, be it government policing and enforcement of existing legislation, or parents or the individual. Ultimately there is a strong need for individuals to take responsibility for their
own behaviour, and that’s one thing very relevant in the Irish context. If there is a cultural acceptance of getting drunk, and how much you drink and all that macho stuff around it continues
to be acceptable, then it is very difficult.’

Despite their endeavours, suspicion remains in some quarters that the drinks industry’s efforts in relation to responsible drinking are mere public relations exercises designed to soften
legislation. Advertising continues to be a bugbear of critics of the industry, and certain quarters call for a complete ban on alcohol advertising in Ireland, much like the French model. ‘In
relation to advertising we have the most strictly regulated advertising and sponsorship activity,’ says Jean Doyle. ‘The French model hasn’t proven a link between the reduction in
misuse and the ban on advertising. However, we are already very highly taxed and [governed] by stringent legislation.’

New controls mean that drinks companies are not allowed to advertise in any medium where less than 75 per cent of the audience are over 18 (most European norms are 70 per cent).

But does the use of stringent controls make it right that national sports, such as hurling and Gaelic football, are so heavily identified with brands such as Guinness?

‘If you take the
GAA
, Guinness came in behind hurling at a time when it wasn’t as popular. Everything that was done was considered appropriate by the
GAA
. We [see] that things like filling sports cups with alcohol is not on, that signage in the stadium is less than twenty-five per cent of any advertising that’s
there. The whole thing has been stripped back. As far as we are concerned it is absolutely appropriate if it is done right.’

Yet the drinks industry spends roughly €70 million in Ireland on advertising each year. Guinness is at the heart of several high-profile sports campaigns, including sponsorship of
GAA
and rugby.

Recently, the
Observer
Sports Magazine, when profiling Croke Park, had the following to say: ‘Guinness is the somewhat predictable sponsor of the Irish rugby union team.
Technically, “the black stuff” isn’t actually black, but a dark ruby red colour due to some of the malted barley being roasted. Ten million pints are bought worldwide every day; a
recent survey found that 70 per cent of Irish respondents “felt closer to Guinness” as a result of their sponsorship of the team. Heartwarming.’

In terms of general drinking patterns, Diageo, like most drinks companies, are at pains to point out that problem drinking does nothing for their business model and that advertising is aimed at
moderate drinkers.

‘It is in none of our interest[s] to see people being drunk, it damages our reputation and the environment in which we can legitimately operate,’ says Jean Doyle. ‘From a
business point of view, the responsible drinking agenda within Diageo is about investing in longer-term consumers of our brands—people who do themselves damage do other people damage also. We
don’t want to be trite, but Guinness is two hundred and fifty years old, and it’s not in our interest for people to abuse it and for it to become associated with the problem.’

——

Established in 1998, the Guinness archive makes Diageo the only corporate body in Dublin to host their own public archives. With two staff, the facility is a mine of social and
economic history. But, to be perfectly honest and juvenile about it, I really only wanted to know two things—how many free drinks did workers get down through the years, and is Guinness
really good for you? Since its opening the staff have been gathering and amalgamating documents spread out over the site. Underneath the offices were 3,000 linear metres of paper records,
containing 10,000 images, a few hundred cans of film and all sorts of signage, instruments and oddities related to the brewing operation, including the original lease Arthur Guinness signed on the
St James’s Gate site in 1759 as well as brewing recipes from the 1790s. About one third of the collection has been catalogued to date, and aside from throwing light on Irish drinking
patterns, it also gives an insight into Irish economic and social history, with somewhere in the region of 14,000–16,000 employee files.

Prior to
WWI
, the workforce was almost 5,000 strong (mostly males), undertaking what was tough physical labour, and being paid 10–20 per cent higher than the
average industrial wage in Dublin at the time. Pensions were introduced in the 1880s, at least 30 years before the first National Pension Act came into being. A medical centre was also established
in the late nineteenth century for employees and their families. Dublin has always had a housing crisis of sorts, and recognising this, Guinness first started building accommodation for employees
in the 1880s with the Rialto Flats and nearby Thomas Court scheme. The company was, in many respects, akin to a mini-Statelet.

Or, as archivist Eibhlin Roche notes, ‘Guinness has been an all-inclusive company and such an integral part of the Irish story. We estimate that by about 1930, one in ten people in Dublin
were dependent on Guinness for their livelihood.’

When workers went into pubs to unwind after a day’s graft, their choice of beverage was slightly less complicated than it is today—there was whiskey or there was Guinness. That lack
of choice pretty much stayed that way until the 1950s and 1960s, when lager arrived in Ireland. Although thirsty Guinness workers didn’t need to stray all that far for the sup. Three taps
were located on site for workers, and instead of a tea break, they could opt for ‘time at the taps’. Men who lined up with their tankards were allowed fill once. For every hour of
overtime worked, the entitlement increased (each four hours’ overtime resulted in an extra beer—it would cripple the public service!). The taps closed down some time in the 1970s and
the policy changed to take-home beer, such as cans and bottles, a policy that remains to the present day.

Despite allegations from medical professionals that higher volume beers helped fuel today’s binge-drinking culture, the alcohol by volume (
ABV
) in the present-day
pint of Guinness hasn’t changed all that much since its inception. One product, foreign extra stout bottles, which is on sale in Africa and Asia, would have been brewed in the 1800s with a
very high
ABV
rate to enable it to withstand long sea journeys. This was done by adding extra hops into the beer, thereby increasing its longevity. It is still on sale today
at 7.5 per cent
ABV
. But the foreign stuff is the exception; today’s pint of Guinness is the baby of the family, only 50 years old and remaining at 4.2–4.3 per
cent
ABV
since its launch. The general trend for Guinness has been for a fall in
ABV
since
WWI
, when additional taxes were
placed on barley for beer use. After the war, the
ABV
never quite reached its pre-First World War years.

Pretty much since the beginning, Guinness was considered good for you. So much so, in fact, that mothers who had just given birth were given a glass of Guinness in maternity wards all over the
country as a matter of course. Is there a more insightful example of a country’s relationship with alcohol? ‘It was pretty much widespread for any woman who had given birth, because of
iron levels, to be given Guinness,’ says archivist Eibhlin Roche. ‘I mean, up until pretty recently, if you gave blood with any of the blood banks, you were given either a cup of tea or
a half pint of Guinness. The company would have provided stock to the Blood Bank and also the maternity hospitals free of charge.’

The association between Guinness and good health, or in other words between alcohol and vitality and robustness, has even deeper roots. The word ‘porter’ derived from the 1700s, when
this new dark beer was being produced for the first time and became very popular very quickly with market porters in places like Covent Garden. It had perceived strengthening qualities. The
adoption of the name of the beer, then, in the 1700s linked it to this idea that the beer had strength-giving qualities. When Guinness first advertised in 1929, the advertising agency went around
to bars in London, asking punters why they were drinking Guinness. Nine out of 10 said because it was good for them. Guinness wasn’t alone at the time, with products like Bovril and smelling
salts also advertising their supposed strength-giving dimension, yet somehow with Guinness the tag stuck.

From the early 1930s up until the outbreak of
WWII
, the company actively encouraged doctors to advocate Guinness for their patients. The archive has hundreds of letters
of correspondence from
GPS
across the
UK
and Ireland lauding the medicinal properties of the beer and telling how it transformed the lives and
ailments of their patients. This kind of begs the question: if that was the attitude of the medical professionals, what chance had wider society to keep tabs on its drinking?

Or maybe it’s perfectly normal for alcohol to be prescribed as medicine and Guinness really is good for you? Dr Chris Luke, consultant in emergency medicine at the Mercy Hospital in Cork,
takes a benign view of Guinness. ‘I liken it to Rowntree’s or Quaker Oats, to be honest. I think Guinness have a long and very noble philanthropic tradition, in terms of the Iveagh
Trust and providing accommodation for workers and so on. My understanding also is that one of their first medical officers travelled to Germany at the turn of the nineteenth century and visited
their systems, bringing a lot of the efficiency there back with him. In addition to that Guinness also had a huge reputation in areas like training in first aid and safety and [in] funding the St
John’s Ambulance service.’

When asked, though, whether the product itself was good for you and whether it would still be appropriate in Ireland of 2009 to offer it to patients, Dr Luke said:

‘I would like to think that in 2009 we are beginning to leave behind powdered vitamins and distilled chemicals. I am firmly of the belief that foods can be much better than medicine and
Guinness is a foodstuff. It comes down to this, really—how would you prefer to get your iron, vitamin[s] and needed calories into a patient? By pill or injection or by a pint of the black
stuff? The bottom line, same when prescribing any medicine, is that if you stick to the right dose, then a patient will get the required iron and vitamins. In the early nineteen-eighties, I
remember when I was an intern in St Vincent’s Hospital in County Wexford and we prescribed whiskey and brandy at night to patients. I think it was a very valuable tradition. For example, if
your seventy-five-year-old grandmother is used to a sherry at night before admittance, then in my experience it’s much better to continue with that small glass in hospital than to give a
Valium. Many people have learned the hard way that chemical substitutes can be a lot more addictive than a glass of sherry. I’m not encouraging or recommending a free-for-all, but if
you’re asking me if a glass of Guinness can be medicinally useful, then I think yes, it can.’

——

Following the conversation by phone with Dr Luke, I was interested in the wider role alcohol plays in society, and how alcohol and health impact on a day-to-day basis in one of
Ireland’s hospitals. So I arranged to meet Dr Luke at the Mercy Hospital. When I got there, at 11 a.m. on a Tuesday morning, he began our meeting by taking me through a labyrinth of
corridors, past makeshift waiting rooms, canteens turned into consulting areas, overstretched staff and impatient patients. While he wanted to set in context his thoughts on drink, Irish society
and its implications on health, he also wanted to show what the second
A&E
unit in Ireland’s second city looks like at what should be a relatively quiet time. He
says whatever past impression there may have been of the medicinal properties of specific brews, 55 per cent of all patients who pass through the Accident and Emergency doors are there because of
alcohol-related illnesses or incidents. Having said that, he’s not fully discarding the general medicinal properties of alcohol and its benefits for society.

‘About ninety per cent of us drink,’ he says. ‘We love to drink and regard it quite rightly as a divine gift and I have a lot of sympathy for that idea. I’m interested in
toxicology. I’m interested in herbal medication and drugs, both clinical and illegal, because they have such an impact on my work in lectures to parents. So you have cocoa leaf in the Andes
and you have cannabis in Afghanistan. Wherever you go, particularly where the landscape is hostile, you often get tucked away in the undergrowth a divine emollient, which eases the grim predicament
of existence, to quote Beckett. I’ve absolutely no problem with the fact there are natural entities that have a God-given purpose to be there. If you are a native Andean Indian struggling in
the low-oxygen height of rugged terrain in the Andes, lifting granite blocks to build Aztec temples—why not chew cocoa leaf?’