No politics, no religion! Part 2.

Following my post yesterday about forbidden topics of conversation in pubs, it occurred to me that there probably are some topics best avoided in certain circumstances.

In Merseyside, the Orange Lodge marches every year in Liverpool and Southport on 12 July, the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne when the forces of William of Orange defeated those of James II. In Liverpool, this used to be a much bigger matter than it is today.

My mother told me that as a little girl she'd been enjoying watching a parade marching down the end of her street in Kirkdale, Liverpool, a mainly Catholic area at the time, until her anxious mother dragged her indoors as it was an Orange Lodge march. Catholic and Protestant divisions in the city were much more pronounced and sometimes resulted in violence, no place for a little child. There was even a Liverpool Protestant Party until the early 1970s who usually sided with the Conservatives on the Council.

In such an environment, which I expect still prevails in parts of Northern Ireland, it may have been wise to remain quiet about religion and politics in any pubs where you couldn't be sure who was listening. On 12 July 1986, I think it was, I went to my then local in Southport for a pint, but when I entered, a row of people wearing lots of orange stared at me in a not especially friendly manner: I had picked up the top T-shirt from the pile that morning, hardly noticing the colour. I looked down, saw it was green and decided I wasn't thirsty after all.

In January 2016, I wrote about risky activities that anti-alcohol campaigners don't go on about:

There are many risks in life, most of which don't get the same attention as drinking: crossing the road, mountain climbing, sailing, pot holing, rugby, boxing, driving too fast or singing The Sash My Father Wore in a Sinn Fein pub.

Not that I know of anyone who's actually tried that.

I've no interest in sport, but I expect a similar attitude prevails in circumstances where football rivalries have a tendency to spill over into violence: in some parts of the country it would be foolish for a football fan to go into a pub favoured by the rival team's supporters. Yet, funnily enough, I've never heard anyone say you mustn't talk about sport in a pub. Mind you, if they did, some pubs would fall silent. My point is that it's just religion and politics, not sport, that are picked out for disapproval, which is inconsistent, to say the least. However, as Tandleman has informed me, consistency is overrated.

Except perhaps where tribalism - whether religious, political or sporting - prevails, I'd still maintain that generally there shouldn't be taboo topics in pubs.

A few asides:

• The video shows the Irish Rovers playing a humorous folk song written by Tony Murphy of Liverpool. It has the line: "My father he was orange and my mother she was green." This describes my background although, unlike the families in the song, neither of my parents were fanatical. 
• I was once playing in a folk club in Hampshire and the person immediately before me had sung this song, with everyone joining in enthusiastically. I got up and commented that, as it happened, my father was from the Orange and my mother from the Green. The sea of uncomprehending faces told me that they hadn't a clue what I - or the song - was on about; I didn't explain.
• In Northern Ireland during the late 70s, a young punk was cornered by a gang who demanded to know whether he was a Protestant or a Catholic (my mother told me this had sometimes happened to her as a girl - she'd try and guess what they were before answering). He said, "Atheist", to which they replied: "Protestant atheist or Catholic atheist?"

No politics, no religion!

The Fishermen's Rest in Birkdale, Southport

I posted this on Facebook this morning:

Our song session in the Guest House was invaded by a Jesus fanatic last night. He'd interrupt songs to say in a loud voice with an ecstatic look on his face,"Jesus!" repeatedly. I don't care what religion people follow, but I doubt that I would be welcome if I went to his place of worship to interrupt the proceedings with, say, trade union chants.
I ended up telling him he wasn't welcome to come back. In nearly 20 years of running such sessions, I've never had to speak that way to anyone before.

Then I got to thinking about the rules that some people think apply to pubs, such as don't discuss religion and politics. Last year, again in the Guest House, I was talking about two Jehovah's Witnesses who had come to my door. I wasn't talking about religion, just about how I had dealt with them, but someone whom I didn't know sitting on the next table said to me that you weren't supposed to discuss religion in pubs. As I think that's nonsense, plus I wasn't taking about religion per se anyway, I ignored him and a few minutes later he and his friend moved to another table. Personally, I think they were guilty of the greater faux pas of listening in to other people's conversations.

As for politics, as someone who's been actively involved in trade unions and political parties, I've often discussed political issues in the pub. I've known occasions when seemingly intractable disagreements at meetings have been resolved informally after a couple of beers down the pub. It is inevitable that groups of people who have come together for a specific purpose such as politics, campaigns or trade unions will, if they go for a drink together, talk about what they have in common. The back room of the Vernon in Dale Street, Liverpool, was well-known as the meeting place for Militant Tendency in the 1980s. Pub function rooms have often been used by political parties and other campaigning groups for meetings, and it is regrettable that we've lost so many of them, especially as they were also useful for non-political gatherings such as parties, family occasions, fundraisers, and so on.

I don't know where these so-called rules come from. It would, in my view, be wrong to stand up in a pub and start political campaigning, but I can't see how it's wrong to have a chat about politics in your own group. 

I'd take the same approach to preaching in a pub. In 1986 I went to a commemoration of the centenary of the Southport and St Anne's lifeboats disaster in the Fishermens Rest pub in Southport. In 1886, this building was the coach house of a nearby hotel and was where the bodies of the lifeboatmen had been laid out after they had been rescued from the sea, hence the name it was given when later it was converted into a pub. I wasn't very happy when a local clergyman called for silence to say prayers, getting the whole pub to stand. I expect quite a few of the customers felt as awkward as I did at that point.

I suppose a summary of my view is that religion and politics cannot be forbidden subjects - like it or not, both are a part of life - but if you start pushing either down the throats of other customers not in your group, then you're going too far. On that basis, the pious visitor to our song session was way out of line.

An aside: I once heard someone at a local CAMRA meeting refer to a controversy about the name of the pub: Fishermans Rest or Fishermens Rest? There is no controversy: the latter is correct, being what it says on the outside the pub, and in view of the origin of the name, the former makes no sense. The local CAMRA pub guide published twelve or more years ago got the name wrong.