Sunday closing for pubs and end to the spirit-grocer trade envisaged in new legislation for NI

Belfast, 12 May 1923 - The end to Sunday pub openings and the effective closure of the spirit grocer are two of the most striking features of wide-ranging legislation that was yesterday introduced to the Northern Ireland Parliament.

Measures outlined in a new Intoxicating Liquor Bill, introduced by Sir James Craig and read to the parliament for the first time this week before crowded public galleries that included clergymen and temperance leaders, provide for, amongst other things, the abolition of off-licenses in premises where other business is carried on, restrictions on the sale of methylated spirits, heavier poteen penalties, and total closure of pubs on Sundays.

Although a few off-licenses are expected to survive once the measures comes into operation on September 30th this year, the disappearance of the spirit grocer trade is widely anticipated.
By way of compensation, traders are to receive the aggregate of 3 years profits on their intoxicating liquor trade, to be funded by levy on the trade.

Introducing the Bill, Sir James Craig, Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, claimed to cheers that ‘We in Ulster have been brought up to regard Sunday as a day of rest, and I am sure the House will agree with the clause which we place first in our temperance measures to provide for the total closing of public-houses on Sunday.’

Sir John Lavery portrait of of Sir James Craig (Image: The Illustrated London News, 12 May 1923)

The new legislation has not received a universal welcome, however, and there are many interested groups in Northern Ireland who don’t share Mr. Craig’s outlook. The anti-Prohibition Council held a meeting, at which various clauses of the Bill were discussed and at which it was claimed the northern administration had no mandate for such a radical measure. ‘I consider it is perpetrating a fraud on the spirit trade, and the measure of a cowardly Government who wants to curry favour with both sides’, the chairman of the Council, Mr. H.L. Garrett remarked.

One prominent member of the trade, known to be a supporter of the Unionist Craig, went so far as to tell a reporter that the ‘day of reckoning.’ was coming for Craig’s party. ‘We will vote Sinn Féin at the next election, as we would be better under a Dublin Parliament than as we are..’ 

It is understood that as many as 200 spirit grocers will not receive any compensation, the number of those - out of a total of 430 - that had been forced to sell up or close temporarily as a result of sectarian attacks in recent years.

[Editor's note: This is an article from Century Ireland, a fortnightly online newspaper, written from the perspective of a journalist 100 years ago, based on news reports of the time.]