An influx of workers to the important munitions-producing area around the England-Scotland border close to Carlisle during WW I caused some problems with drunkenness. The solution was to nationalise the breweries and pubs to bring them under state control.
For whatever reason, state-ownership didn't end with hostilities. But trundled on well past WW II. Only being brutally ended by Ted Heath's government in the early 1970s*.
Still, reading about the State Management scheme in WW II is still a bit odd. As an investment by the government, it certainly paid off. It mad a profit every single year of its operation. Which wasn't the case of every capitalist brewing operation.
These were their profits in the early war years:
| State Management Scheme net profits 1938 - 1942 | ||||
| Carlisle £ | Gretna £ | Cromarty Firth £ | total | |
| 1938-39 | 70,018 | 3,400 | 6,540 | 79,958 |
| 1939-40 | 101,897 | 3,800 | 12,148 | 117,845 |
| 1940-41 | 147,434 | 5,260 | 15,324 | 168,018 |
| 1941-42 | 176,371 | 10,359 | 20,983 | 207,713 |
| total | 495,720 | 22,819 | 54,995 | 573,534 |
| Source: | ||||
| The Brewing Trade Review, August 1943, page 261. | ||||
To put that into context, these are the profits of Barclay Perkins, a considerably lager operation that the Carlisle State Brewery:
| Barclay Perkins profit 1939-1942 | |
| Year | net profit |
| 1939 | £213,432 |
| 1940 | £225,000 |
| 1941 | £166,444 |
| 1942 | £199,246 |
| Sources: | |
| Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer - Thursday 22 June 1939, page 15. | |
| The Scotsman - Saturday 15 June 1940, page 4. | |
| Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer - Thursday 28 August 1941, page 5. | |
| Birmingham Daily Post - Thursday 30 July 1942, page 4. | |
| The Scotsman - Friday 13 August 1943, page 2. | |
* Back then, Ted Heath was seen as being one of the worst post-war Prime Ministers. He's fallen right back in the field in recent years. It's not his fault. Back in the 1970s, no-one could have anticipated just how crap politicians would get.
I have been learning about the state management scheme recently. Do you have any recipes from the state brewery? Would be interesting to see.
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ReplyDeleteno, not seen any of their brewing records. I have a few analyses, but that's it.
I have a sort of half memory of drinking Carlisle beer in the early 1970's. To my (as yet undereducated) taste it reminded me of Gold Tankard, a Vaux beer I used to drink in Durham at about the same time. I do remember there was much lamentation at the time of its closure.
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