We must keep new prohibitionists at bay

There must be lots like me who are sick to death with having our industry blamed for the social and health problems caused by alcohol abuse by the very kind of people who in the past 30 years or so have presided over the making of the dysfunctional

society that has allowed the problem to arise .

Worse, not only do they expect us to toady to their dopey, woolly, liberal prejudices about the evils of drink, but they expect us to bankroll projects designed to undermine us even further. What really gets to me is the knowledge that so many members of our industry actually subscribe to these misbegotten initiatives under the mistaken impression that by paying Danegeld they will keep enemies at bay.

How long is it going to take us to realise that we are confronted with an insidious neoprohibitionist movement that is getting its hands on the levers of our business

almost unnoticed and unopposed?

Anti-democratic, antisocial and essentially anti-human, it wants our whole industry dead. Everybody seems to have forgotten how much we contribute to the economy, not to mention via pubs and bars - to the nation's psychological and social health . This is because our opponents, invariably people who for the most part haven't got a clue about our business, like to play this down.

Czech president Vaclav Klaus described their kind recently as being enemies of both market and democracy, because they always thrived best in communist societies here, as members of the nomenklatura (chattering classes in English), they got paid for just talking.

We have forgotten what happened the last time these lunatics took over the asylum, in the mother of market economies, the US, when they introduced Prohibition. There are

still the descendants of gangsters living in style on the proceeds their ancestors made then, and good luck to them.

Of course the British nomenklatura is one sector that is doing well out of its new sport of harrying our industry.

I received an invite recently to a seminar, "Alcohol - the Next Step", for which I was expected to pay to attend to discuss "minimum pricing and constraints on alcohol

availability". Talk about turkeys being asked to vote for Christmas.

What is really annoying is that all this is a diversion from the truly crucial mission our

business is engaged in with Government at the moment in sorting out the future shape of our industry. Whatever else we don't do we must keep our eye on this particular ball and make sure the neo-prohibitionist lot don't get a look in.