State Management Scheme
British state owned alcohol business
The State Management Scheme was the nationalisation of the brewing, distribution and sale of liquor in three districts of the United Kingdom from 1916 until 1973.
The main focus of the scheme, now commonly known as the Carlisle Experiment, was Carlisle and the surrounding district close to the armament factories at Gretna, founded in 1916 to supply explosives and shells to the British Army in the First World War. However, there were three schemes in total: Carlisle and Gretna, Cromarty Firth, and Enfield. In 1921 Carlisle and Gretna was split into two separate areas. Carlisle was the larger part and supplied some beer to Gretna. In 1922 the Enfield scheme ended and its public houses were sold back to private enterprise.
The scheme was privatised by Edward Heath's Conservative Government in 1971 and its assets were sold at auction in six lots, mostly to established brewing interests.
01Ethos
A central pillar of the scheme was the ethos of disinterested management: public house managers had no incentive to sell liquor, which supported the aim of reducing drunkenness and its effects on the arms industry. From 1916 to 1919 the scheme had a "no treating" policy, forbidding the buying of rounds of drinks.
02Architecture
The scheme also involved the refurbishment of public houses, and the demolition and replacement of substandard premises. Most of the new premises were designed by the scheme's chief architect, Harry Redfern in his New Model Inn style, which influenced the design of public houses in the rest of the UK.
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “State Management Scheme”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- Redfern Inn, Etterby.jpg by Unknown author, Cc-by-sa-3.0
- Theakston Carlisle Brewery - geograph.org.uk - 707574.jpg by Chris Allen, CC BY-SA 2.0
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