Chris Maclean: For all the sabre-rattling, will people stand fast when their businesses are at stake?

Thirty years ago, when I was at university, I wrote the dullest paper ever. It was called "Obstacles to trade union development in the hotel and catering industry". It got a poor review. It now gathers dust in a storeroom in the library basement. Oddly it has come back to haunt me.

Much of the debate currently raging about the perceived problem of the tie, and the hideous contracts people find themselves trapped in, is steering towards the idea of collective action. People need to stand up and do something. Talk is of marches on Parliament, withdrawal of co-operation, withholding rents and so forth. Angry stuff.

What I wrote of, thirty years ago, was that, despite having much in common collectively, many of those who worked in this industry perceived themselves as "individual entrepreneurs". Not only licensees and innkeepers, but staff as well. You think you run your pub but your head bar person believes it's their fiefdom too. It is this that hinders collective action. People won't join.

Increasingly I am devolving power to my bar staff. Some may regard this as lazy. I disagree. It encourages involvement and participation. It develops custody of situations. What I get in return is staff loyalty, motivation and trust. My staff turnover is negligible. They like their little kingdom and will work hard to develop it. They aren't going to join with anyone.

Collective action, in this climate, is difficult to say the least. Everyone will support the principle but few are prepared to put their head above the parapet.

I, for example, have signed up for Pub Revolution. I believe many peoples rents are unfair. I think some very unsavoury. Yet for many licensees, filled with enthusiasm, very damaging agreements have been signed. They are locked into Faustian contracts which are impossible to bear.

I know many good licensees who have been broken in this manner. Any protest they make I would support. I confess here my deal isn't bad but I would still like lower rent.

But for all the posturing, for all the sabre-rattling and the noise, I know people will not stand fast when their businesses are at stake.

When you are in a business where the agreement is impossible, where the future is inevitably doomed, I can understand entirely why your protest is made. Better to die fighting on your feet than live on your knees. But if there is a glimmer of hope, if there is some possibility you can turn around the deficit, pay back your debt, make the business viable, the chances of you supporting direct action are limited.

Please understand that I support licensees who's livelihoods are in jeopardy. But it is unlikely I'll sacrifice my business in the process.

So I signed up. I agree with the objectives. I support the direction. But I'm not about to stop trading.

Worse still is the idea that you can profit from another's demise. People believe that if their nearest competitor is destroyed in this process somehow they'll be able to mop up the additional business. How wrong can they be? A closed pub seems to blight the area. It seems to me that, if you drive through an area, if one pub is shut then the others nearby are struggling.

Collective action, commendable as it is, will be doomed. I wish it were different but I'll try to support it.