Being "tough on crime" was one of New Labour's firmest early pledges. But as our story this week about an incident involving McMullen's clearly shows, there's an alarming gulf between political rhetoric and reality when it comes to dealing with yobbish behaviour in Britain's pubs.
Peter Furness-Smith, managing director of McMullens, whose letter we publish below, is rightly appalled at police failure to act against mindless criminal behaviour. To be merely cautioned for smashing up a pub and physically harming members of staff sends a desperate message to society. It's an admission by police that violence against person and property is now just a minor, even trivial offence.
When contrasted with police heavy-handedness in fining a McMullen's barworker £80 for underage serving, the story shows a perversion of values that no civilised society should have to tolerate.
Mr Furness-Smith has done well to highlight this story, but his letter to the Home Secretary is unlikely to respond meaningfully. The Government has been bent on leniency towards anti-social behaviour for the past three years, quietly instructing police officers to issue penalty notices for disorder, with £80 fines, rather than tie-up police in court prosecutions.
The laudable idea was to speed up justice and allow the police to concentrate on the most serious crime. But reports suggest that there's a growing band of criminals who see these penalty notices as "pay-as-you-go hooliganism" and are completely undeterred by the fine.
As James Brokenshire, the Tory's Home office spokesman said in a newspaper over the weekend, "If you pay straight away, it's not an admission of guilt and you don't get a criminal record. And how many are serial offenders?"
The yobs who terrorised McMullen's staff were not even fined. And no doubt other MA readers could add similar stories of official negligence. Thousands of hooligans are behaving viciously and it is bar staff, not the police, who are trying to calm them down.
We all know the police have a difficult role, and are often under-resourced. But if we are all trying to stamp out violence on our streets, then the perpetrators need to know they will be treated firmly, with an appropriate punishment. Until yobs realise they cannot get away with casual violence, then the pub trade has a very difficult job on its hands.
Open letter to Home Secretary Rt Hon Dr John Reid MP from Peter Furness-SmithI am writing to ask you to help me and my team fully understand the purpose and objectives of the law enforcement agencies in the light of two recent incidents involving my employees.
I am the Managing Director of McMullen and Sons Ltd, an independent brewer and pub operator based in Hertford. We have always gone to great lengths to run our pubs responsibly and take care to recruit and train like-minded citizens who are law-abiding and share our values of honesty and common decency.
Last year I was very proud when we won an industry wide award for the quality of our management development training.
The first incident I refer to is the "sting" operation at the Lord Kitchener in Barnet, a well-run pub with a good reputation locally. Last summer law enforcement saw fit to send two young persons into this pub who appeared to be over 21 but were in fact only 17 to see whether or not they could succeed in being served an alcoholic drink.
Our barman thought that one of them was underage and refused to serve him. The other he decreed to be of legal age. The consequence of this charade was an £80 "on the spot" fine for our barman - a very decent young man.
In addition we, as the premises licence holder, along with the Designated Premises Licence holder were taken to court and prosecuted at great cost to both the tax payer and to my company. I am glad to say that we were both acquitted.
The second incident occurred on Friday 9th December 2006 at the Fishery, Elstree a destination food pub in the country. A middle-aged male customer who appeared to be drunk was refused service as were his friends in the same party. The response from this group was terrifying for both our team and our other customers. They were not only abusive to, but assaulted three of our staff, two of whom were young waitresses.
Staggeringly the punishment for their crime by the police was a caution!
I hope these two recent examples of incidents help to highlight how far we have gone in this country to redefine the principles of justice and out law enforcement priorities.
I find it incredible that you encourage your police force to commit resources to entrapping, and fining honest hard-working pub employees who make an error of judgement but take no action against a person who admits to assault and criminal damage.
Also underage persons who succeed in purchasing alcohol are rarely if ever fined or prosecuted!
How do you expect this industry to attract and keep the quality people we need when on the one hand we are constantly undermined by both our politicians and their law enforcement agencies and on the other hand we are not supported when assaulted?
Peter Furness-SmithManaging Director McMullen and Sons Ltd