For a large part of the 20th Century, beer in three parts of Britain was nationalised. The Government brewed it and the Government sold it in Governmentowned pubs so that the people drank it in a Government-approved manner.

Beer became state controlled in 1916 in Carlisle and Gretna, Cromarty Firth in Scotland, and Enfield in London.

These were areas where munitions were made, so to keep the workers sober-ish, the Government took charge of all the pubs.

Because the landlord was earning a wage from the state, he was not incentivised by the prospect of additional profit to sell more beer to workers who were already the worse for wear. In fact, to stop the workers buying more beer than was strictly necessary, between 1916 and 1919, there was a “no treating” rule – you could not buy beer in a round.

On December 14, 1948, the House of Commons discussed a Bill presented by Home Secretary James Chuter Ede, the Labour MP for South Shields, to expand the scheme to the new towns. Mr Chuter Ede wanted a sensible number of clean pubs to be built in places like Aycliffe.

One speaker in the debate was the MP for Barnard Castle, Sydney Lavers, whom we met in Memories 109.

Mr Lavers was born in Devon in 1890. He contracted poisoning while working as a leadminer and came to the North-East to recuperate, becoming Barney’s Labour MP from 1945 to 1950. He was also chairman of the Federation Brewery in Newcastle.

“The Fed” started in 1921 as a co-operative brewery which supplied the working men’s clubs of the North-East. Mr Lavers’ big idea was to expand the brewery by building scores of new working men’s clubs.

When Labour proposed bringing state beer to Durham in 1948, Mr Lavers faced a dilemma; how could he support his party when it was introducing a rival to his brewery?

He went to Carlisle to investigate.

He reported to the House that he was impressed by the quality and the cheapness of the Government-beer and the Government-restaurants, although he found the Government- pubs rather dark.

“I should like the managers of the State scheme to come to Durham and see our working men’s clubs, with their bright colour schemes and new plastic furniture,” he said.

He was also concerned that the state pubs had no facilities for dominoes or darts, presumably because dominoes encouraged gambling and presumably because, from a safety point of view, sharp pieces of flying metal and excessive alcohol consumption are not ideal bedfellows.

Home Secretary Mr Chuter Ede also said he wished to promote darts. “It is not merely a game requiring great physical skill, but it is the one way I know of teaching the higher mathematics to the proletariat,”

he said. “When I think of the school records of some of these people who work out those subtraction sums so quickly, I am amazed at the value of this practical instruction.”

The Barnard Castle MP, though, went on to complain that the Carlisle pubs did not allow music or singing. “I must tell the Home Secretary that if Durham is provided with a State-managed public house in which people are not allowed to sing, the experiment will not be a success,” said Mr Lavers.

“In Durham there are tens of thousands of people who work in heavy industries, and they like a chance to ‘let go’ during the weekend; it is a sort of safety valve for them.

“In Carlisle I discovered there was not even a wireless set in any of the houses.

When I asked one of the managers ‘what about the broadcast of a big fight?’ he said that he would bring his own personal wireless into the bar.”

Mr Lavers’ long speech is recorded in Hansard, the Parliamentary record, and he finishes by telling the house of the success of the Fed brewery.

“We have 349 workmen’s clubs with 200,000 men engaged in industry by hand and brain and mostly in heavy industry,” he said.

“Since the inception of this brewery in 1921, the astounding figure of £3,307,272 1s 5d has been distributed in dividends, discount and interest in capital.

“Since 1921 we have been ploughing the profits back.

“When the new scheme comes to Durham, where the people have been educated on Socialist lines for a long time…it will have to buck up its ideas.”

Even so, Mr Lavers joined Mr Chuter Ede in voting for the 1949 Licensing Act, which set aside millions of pounds for pubs to be built by the Government in new towns.

At the 1950 General Election, the Barnard Castle seat was subsumed into Bishop Auckland and Mr Lavers retired from Parliamentary life and concentrated on his brewery. Labour won the election with a five seat majority, and could only continue in power until 1951. Then Winston Churchill’s Tories were elected, with Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe as Home Secretary.

In 1952, Sir David repealed the state-control of pubs in new towns and ordered that all of Aycliffe’s and Peterlee’s hostelries should be tied houses owned by breweries.

It is amazing to think of Whitehall beer in Carlisle until Edward Heath’s government denationalised it in 1971.

•  Raise a beer to David Walsh of east Cleveland who pointed us down this particular avenue LAST Saturday at Tennants auction room in Leyburn, a fascinating collection of 100-year-old grocer’s shop bric-a-brac came up from sale.

As the Echo reported, it came from Thompson’s shop in Osmotherley – a beguiling building, with its old, rounded shopfront windows, which stands on the left when you enter the village from the A19.

Thompson’s was founded in 1786 by Edward and closed in 2004 when his great-greatgreat- grand-daughter, Grace, retired.

One of the star lots in the auction comprised ten domed tin tea canisters which fetched £2,000. Although they were rusty and the exotic scenes painted onto them were fading, experts hoped they could be restored.

The gigantic 1910 tin HP Sauce bottle fetched £380, and a large circular Craven A cigarettes sign – with the slogan “will not affect your throat” – reached £220. Perhaps the biggest surprise was the lot of Cadbury’s items. It included display stands, tins and the two shaped mirrors you can just about make out at the top of the first and third wind o w s from the right. Tog e t h e r they made £2,500.

And to think that they were destined for a skip before the auction house was told they existed.