Introduction

In April 2011, French riot police threatened to go on strike in response to government plans to ban officers from consuming alcoholic drinks while on duty. The riot control force – Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité – were accustomed to consuming wine, beer, cider or perry with their lunch and unions reacted furiously to attempts to alter this hitherto acceptable practice. In July of the same year, the Russian government passed legislation that vastly increased restrictions on the sale of beer. Previously, most types of beer were classified as foodstuffs rather than alcohol and subject to little legal regulation. The British press covered this event in a bemused fashion; the Daily Telegraph reported that Russian President Dmitry Medvedev had ‘signed a bill that confirms what the rest of the world has known for centuries: that beer is in fact alcoholic’. Similarly, the threatened strike by the French riot police was depicted in a humorous manner, which reproduced the popular stereotype of the French as a people whose love of wine is matched only by their passion for industrial action. But once the amusement subsides, some intriguing questions remain. Must all alcoholic drinks be legally regulated? Is drinking necessarily antonymical to proper public conduct and the maintenance of good social order? And more generally, how do we understand alcohol and how do these understandings shape its regulation?

While the raising of quizzical eyebrows in the direction of our European neighbours makes for entertaining news stories, the clear waters of the English Channel can also be used to reflect on British attitudes towards alcohol. Part of the value of these stories, particularly in the French case, comes from the strangely permissive relationship with alcohol that some other countries appear to possess. This situation starkly contrasts the British context in which alcohol is a consistent and prolific source of public anxiety. In 2005, the relaxation of statutory controls on opening times for licensed premises provoked widespread alarm about national drinking alleged to be already ‘out of control’. More recently, health professionals have waged a high-profile campaign against the ‘collateral damage’ of ‘passive drinking’, which includes violence, vandalism, accidents and ill-health.