Mayo memories: PTAA opposed Sunday pub opening proposal in 1947

By Tom Gillespie

IN November 1947, there was uproar when a member of Castlebar Urban Council, Councillor Willie Cresham, successfully proposed a motion that public houses should be allowed open on Sundays.

The local branch of the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association (PTAA) reacted with the following statement:

“We, the members of the Castlebar centre of the PTAA, have learned with surprise and regret that our urban council has again passed a resolution requesting the Minister for Justice to allow Sunday opening of licensed houses for the sale of intoxicating liquors.

“It will be remembered that, when a similar resolution was passed by the body in 1946, we issued a statement which was published in the local press.

“We feel obliged to reiterate the views we then expressed, as they apply with equal force today (1947).

“It is our firm conviction that Sunday drinking would prove seriously detrimental to the social and spiritual well-being of the town.

“From the social point of view, and apart altogether from the fact that it would multiply occasions of spending hard-earned and, often perhaps, badly-needed money, such an innovation would provide opportunities for disgraceful exhibitions of drunkenness on Sundays.

“Worst still, it would give a definite impetus to the breakup of family life, a sad characteristic of our time which has been consistently noted and lamented by Church authorities and laity alike as the main cause of the evils of this world.

“Surely then, it would be a dangerous experiment to throw open the public houses on that day which ought to be, and, in Ireland at any rate always has been, dedicated to the home.

“But the matter has a more fundamental and a more dangerous aspect: A radical change of the kind contemplated in the Castlebar UDC resolution would tend to secularise the Sabbath and to undermine two of the greatest glory of our spiritual heritage, the fidelity of our people to the observance of the Lord’s Day and their traditional veneration for the Holy Mass.

“Let us not forget that the observance of the Sabbath requires not merely attendance at Mass but the sanctification of the whole day. It should hardly be necessary to observe that we ought to beware of seeking any change in our licensing laws which would make it more difficult to ‘keep holy the Sabbath Day’, and which would seem to be derogatory to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

“For it is not merely that it would be unseemly to have numbers of people going straight from the church to the public house every Sunday; the change would also tend to place the Church and the Mass in too close association with the public house.

“In view of this, we consider the action of Castlebar UDC, in campaigning for increased facilities for Sunday drinking, most injudicious and, we have no hesitation in saying, completely contrary to the wishes of most of our people.

“In conclusion, we feel bound to thank those who, in the council chamber or outside, have so ably and strenuously voiced their opposition to this resolution.

“We hope and pray that, for the greater glory and consolation of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, such a resolution will never receive support in Catholic Ireland.”

How things have changed in the intervening years.

Ireland's licensing laws have changed dramatically since the 1950s when pub opening hours were somewhat draconian. There was a time when pubs could not open on St. Patrick’s Day, now one of the busiest days of the year for publicans.

Likewise, there was a time when pubs had to close on Sundays from 2 to 4 p.m. Of course, some obliging bar owners allowed people on their premises to remain behind closed doors until the 4 p.m. reopening hour.

And some may remember the crazy rules going further back in time that saw bona fide travellers being entitled to get an alcoholic drink provided they were at least three statute miles from the place they slept the previous night.

An example of this was when, in the late 1950s, those seeking an alcoholic drink or two on a Sunday, with the local pub closed to locals, would going on their travels, walking or cycling from Castlebar to Turlough for a pint, while the Turlough natives headed in the opposite direction.

However, if you mounted your bicycle on a Sunday afternoon and cycled the statutory distance with the set purpose of obtaining intoxicating drink you were not a genuine bona fide within the meaning of the Act.

You were, in fact, acting mala fide - in bad faith - and were consequently a mala fide traveller. In other words, you were a fraud, a cheat, a masquerader.

Some complex legislation there to be overcome for your pint of plain.

Good Friday was also a day of shutters down on the bar trade until recent enough years, and you have to ask the question, when will it happen here that pubs will be allowed open on Christmas Day, if even for a couple of hours.

Hard to know if there would be an appetite among the public - and more importantly publicans, though in bars that also serve food it would no doubt be an attractive option for many people instead of labouring at home.