Social History In 50 Objects Number 1. - Pioneers Of Total Abstinence

 


This beautiful little pin of the Sacred Heart came down to me from my Mum's Haggerty and McGarry side of the family, it once belonged to a Great Aunt who had been a member of the 'Pioneer Total Abstinence Association of the Sacred Heart'. PTAA members were known as pioneers and they had a special devotion to the Sacred Heart, pioneers wore a lapel pin just like this one.

Abstinence and temperance have always been a big deal in Greenock, John Dunlop established Britain’s first temperance society in Greenock in in 1829.

A few years earlier in 1820, the famous sugar baron Abram Lyle was born in Greenock, in the same year the Scottish radical James Wilson was executed for breaking prisoners out of Greenock jail during the Scottish Radical War.

Abram had been the grandson of a weaver and the son of an alcoholic cooper, who left his son in debt and it was Abram's deep Christian faith which drove him to promote sugar and confectionary as an alternative to alcohol. Lyle once stated that he'd rather his son come home dead, than drunk.

Similarly, in 1872 the great Cardinal Manning addressed a temperance meeting here in Greenock and the following year in 1873 a Catholic temperance organisation called the League of the Cross was established by Cardinal Manning. In October of that year, he formed two societies, one in Greenock, and the other at Maryhill, the League also had a presence in Helensburgh from 1905. These societies were eventually superseded by the Pioneers.

I find this development compelling because for Manning, temperance was directly linked to the restoration of a distinctly Scottish Catholic hierarchy. This is because Temperance was understood as being respectable and quite Protestant; it was also seen as a way to establish a Scottish Catholic middle class, breaking with the working-class Irish culture of nationalist politics, labourism, sport and public houses, making Catholics part of the British establishment. 

These days we might look back, with some cynicism, at well-meaning upper-class Victorian Christians trying to 'improve' the working classes but the well-known and popular activist and veteran campaigner Alice McCaughey, who has spent decades fighting for her community, speaks with great knowledge and authority on the temperance movement from her childhood, growing up in Greenock.  

Alice recalls that in Greenock, the temperance movement was a good thing and it wasn't entirety about prohibition or total abstinence or even moral judgements being made by affluent do-gooder Christians.

Rather, the temperance movement was needed to prevent very many men from receiving their entire pay packet from working in the shipyards on a Friday and then spending it all in the pubs, without giving a penny to their wives, forcing families into destitution and misery. In this sense, temperance can also be understood as a form of community organising and self-help. 

For my part, I deeply respect this tradition of moderation but I also like a traditional pub and I am partial to the occasional ale at the weekend. While my family background, like many families in Inverclyde, is a rich mixed Free Church Presbyterian teetotallers but also German Lutherans and Irish Catholics who also enjoyed a nice pint.

Cheers! (Or Prost!)



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