My fears for our police officers as pubs open doors

WILD HORSES couldn’t drag me into a pub when they reopen this weekend, dearly though I’d like a few pints of hand-pulled bitter.

I’m not alone in resolving to avoid pubs for a while yet. Friends who’d like to get back together and put the world to rights over a few drinks don’t fancy the idea either. It’s not just that we share a wariness about stepping back into a social setting that might prove to be a breeding ground for coronavirus, though that’s certainly part of the reason.

But what really puts us off is that opening pubs for the first time in three months on a summer Saturday as the restarted football season draws to a climax is a formula for mayhem. Who’d be a police officer this Saturday night? Of all the difficult tasks our men and women in uniform have been asked to carry out during these past weeks, this sounds the hardest of all.

Town and city centres that have been shut will suddenly be awash with drunks – and sweeping up the injuries that result from accidents and fights will fall on the police and hospitals, as it always does. Does anybody in Government really think that at least a substantial minority of people able to go out on the lash for the first time in months won’t go mad?

The police know it’s likely to happen, and that’s why some forces are reportedly cancelling leave, a sure sign that they are braced for trouble.

It isn’t remotely difficult to picture the scenes on the streets as crowds gather and attempts by officers to persuade people to keep some sort of sensible distance are met with hostility.

There have already been indicators of what a thankless task the police face, in the disgraceful attacks on officers who have tried to tackle illegal raves in Manchester and London. If we get through the weekend without more injuries to police, it will be little short of miraculous.

Boris Johnson’s assertions about trusting great British common sense have some merit when it comes to reopening shops and workplaces, but not in the case of bars and pubs. Booze doesn’t boost common sense, especially amongst young revellers who might well start early in the day. Reopening pubs and bars was never going to be like allowing restaurants, hairdressers or holiday accommodation to get back to business, and should have been approached in a completely different manner.

Instead of having the big bang of picking the traditionally busiest day and evening of the week – especially against a backdrop of football fans either celebrating or drowning their sorrows – pubs should have been reopened on a weekday. How much more sensible it would have been to start slowly, on a day when the pubs are quieter, drinking less likely to start early and the demands of work the following morning – even if it is from home – acts as a brake on people’s intake.

That would have taken the pressure off both the police and pub staff, who are also facing a difficult day and night even though they are keen to get back to work. A landlord I know would have welcomed a much more softly-softly approach. He really isn’t sure how Saturday is going to work as he is obliged to take contact details of people entering his pub and effectively enforce social distancing. He’s resigned to people being stroppy when told they can’t approach the bar and must wait for their drinks to be brought over.

Keeping customers at tables and telling them they can’t mingle with others could also be problematic once they’ve had a few drinks. There’s the difficulty that his pub is quite small, and it’s possible he’s going to have to refuse admission to maintain

Towns and city centres that have been shut will suddenly be awash with drunks.

social distancing, another potential source of conflict.

Seeing how it’s all going to work would have been much easier for him on a quieter weekday, instead of being chucked in at the deep end on a Saturday. Like so many aspects of the way coronavirus has been managed by the Government, the reopening of pubs has a sense of not having been thought through. Yes, to save the hospitality industry and the jobs that depend upon it, bars and pubs need to reopen. But nobody seems to have considered the way that too many British people binge-drink on nights out.

Even in normal times, the streets of towns and cities are littered with falling-down drunks, the fighting-mad and the injured at weekends. Now, substantial numbers are likely to make up for lost time on Saturday. Britain is going to wake up with an almighty hangover on Sunday morning. The hope must be that it doesn’t come with an accompanying toll of injured police officers.