by Dermot Mccabe

Created on: July 03, 2008

My mother suffered from nerves. That's what they called any mental or psychological problem in the 'old days.' Looking back on it now, one might say she was a manic-depressive. She was prescribed tablets, which helped. She attended a psychologist every now and then, which helped. But what gave her the greatest comfort of all was an outing to one of our local pubs. She was in her eighties and did not drink very much and never had. When I would call to take her out, her eyes would light up with pleasure. The awful anxiety and mental anguish would dissipate when she sat in the comfortable surroundings of a pub. Why was that?

Life, I believe is governed by fear. We are fearful of not having enough to live on, of what others think of us, of dangers to our children, of illness, of exams, of not being clever and a myriad of ordinary everyday cares. What ameliorates these fears more than anything is the realisation that we are not alone; that there are others facing the same fears, the same problems. "For man is lonely when he is cut off," John Steinbeck wrote to George Albee in 1933 when he articulated his ideas of the "Phalanx." Man "arranges himself into larger units, which I have called the phalanx. The phalanx has its own memory ... memory of starvation ... memory of history itself." Steinbeck goes on to explain that a person can lose their individual identity in the phalanx. The phalanx in a mysterious ways allows one to dilute their own individuality and with it their own anxieties and cares. An individual can be part of a number of different phalanxes. The phalanx can he good or bad.

The British Community Pub is a special place where a phalanx naturally gathers. It is the place where you can join a community with no stringent entry requirements other than a willingness to be part of it. It is a place where you are not cut off. All you have to do is be there; sit in the gathering of members and partake of the hospitality and comradeship. What a warm and pleasant feeling it is to enter a pub and with the merest hint of a nod you greet and are greeted by the bartender and he or she utters the immortal words, "the usual," the response to which is another barely perceptible nod. How pleasant to sit and talk or simply be quiet amongst your fellows, absorbing the sounds and sights, knowing that you belong.

How many millions of lonely people might there be, living in quiet desperation, if not for the pub? The community pub is an expression of a deep seated desire to belong, to share the tribulations of life and shed, at least in part, the burden of everyday living. The community pub is where, in a strange way, we become unknown, shed our individual identity and our individual worries for a brief while to become part of the phalanx. Eric Hoffer, social critic and writer said, "The desire to belong is in part a desire to lose oneself." I think , I understand now why the local pub was so important to my mother. May it always be with us.

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