In the 19th century the banner of temperance was raised not by politicians but by private citizens, many of them animated by a ferocity that is seldom witnessed today, now that social problems are usually bequeathed to Nanny State. What disturbed the do-gooders of Victorian England was not only the sight of ruined alcoholics on the city pavements but also the knowledge of the far greater number of drinkers who were happily raising their glasses at home, their vice invisible to the public eye.
The temperance campaigners illustrate H L Mencken's definition of puritanism as "the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, might be happy". When we read of their rallies and pledges, and of their busybody policing, we are apt to breathe a sigh of relief that then was then and now is now.
Let it be said in favour of puritanism, however, that not all pleasures are innocent. Every society - ours included - divides sexual pleasures into the innocent and the guilty. The temperance movements arose from the tendency to transfer that natural moral reaction to a realm where it has no clear meaning. It is not excess that makes for sexual guilt but the wrong choice of object; all drinking is innocent unless it is overdone. At the same time, as Mencken reminds us, it is anxiety over "what others are up to" that animates puritanism in all its forms. We have recently witnessed the effect of this in laws banning hunting, and forbidding smoking in private clubs. Look at the parliamentary debates and you will see that concern for animal welfare or human health had far less effect in producing those laws than the burning desire to extinguish some allegedly "immoral" pleasure.
This desire is unlikely to target drinking, even though alcohol is a huge threat to health, safety and society. Drink is part of our culture, an input into every important gathering, from parliament to the family Christmas. The teetotaller is looked on with suspicion, as someone standing outside the fold, in an attitude of judgement. In reaction, however, we risk forgetting the distinction between virtue and vice, and this can only exacerbate the "clash of civilisations" through which we are living. To the puritanical Muslim, the sight of drunken crowds on the streets offers vivid proof of the sinfulness of our culture.
The sinfulness resides, I would suggest, not in drinking, but in the divorce that has occurred in our society between pleasure and virtue. Every culture thrives by permitting some pleasures and forbidding others. And those pleasures that underpin the culture must be governed by good habits. In our Christian inheritance, good habits are those that express the spirit of charity. The virtuous drinker is the one for whom "the ferment of love possesses the wine". Incidentally, those words of a Muslim poet (Rumi) tell us that civilisations needn't clash.
