Welsh Journals

The cause of teetotalism made remarkable progress in Wales in the 1830s and '4θs. l Religious revivalism was a strong motivating force; a temperance movement was attractive to industrialists and manufacturers because it was in their economic interest to have a sober, disciplined work force and to extend the home market for consumer goods; while drunkenness became unfashionable in the face of the growth of religious respectability among the middle class and the working class, and the establishment of voluntary organisations of self-help among the working class. In the early 1850s the temperance movement in Britain took a new course. Many temperance advocates believed that the era of temperance reform by 'moral suasion'­by the provision of education and of counter-attractions to the public house, both aiming at individual reclamation of the drunkard-had failed. In June 1853 a group of Mancunian nonconformists founded the United Kingdom Alliance for 'the total and immediate legislative suppression of the liquor traffic'. The battle was now joined within the temperance movement between 'moral suasionists' and 'legislative compul- sionists'.9 Whereas the suasionist temperance societies had sought to suppress drunkenness and drinking, to stop the supply by stopping the demand, the Alliance sought to suppress intemperance by suppressing the traffic in drink-preventing the effects by preventing the supply. The Alliance wanted the State to declare for sobriety by means of a public act which would not prevent any man drinking- membership of the Alliance was open to abstainers and non- abstainers alike-but which would prevent all men engaging in the sale of liquor. The recourse to legislation was justified by the assertion that individual freedom must give way to the requirements of society.10 Legislative restriction was necessary in order to avert social disorganisation, as intemperance had become so great a problem that it had ceased to be under the 'moral control' provided by society.11 Thus, as the Cardiff and Merthyr Guardian put it: The Temperance Movement is now assuming a new phase, a bolder and a much more practical character. The question now assumes a political aspect and it must be treated in accordance with the first 7 See W. R. Lambert, op. cit., pp. 74-77. United Kingdom Alliance, First Annual Report, 1853-54, p. 2. For this schism, see H. Carter, The English Temperance Movement: A Study in Objectives, 1830-1899 (1933); B. H. Harrison, Drink and the Victorians. The Temperance Question in England, 1815-1872 (1971), pp. 197-98, 211-18, 257-59. 10 Cambrian, 14 September 1860; W. H. Darby, Reasons in favour of a Maine Law for Great Britain (Wrexham, n.d.), p. 3. 11 See Caernarvon and Denbigh Herald, 12 February 1870.