Rory Hanrahan

Takings were falling. Regulars were drifting away. Our pub was in a bad way. It was clear that things needed to change. But, paralysed by fear of an employment tribunal in a legal system tilted against employers, we felt trapped. If we sacked the managers and replaced them, we could find ourselves embroiled in a messy legal case that could cost us everything. So, drowning in paperwork, warnings, hearings, improvement plans, and risk assessments, we endured. Running a pub felt less like hospitality than surviving a siege of bureaucracy. That was when I saw it. This wasn’t just one bad incident. Our beloved pub was being strangled in red tape. We're not alone. It's as if publicans can't be trusted to behave like adults. No wonder so many pubs are closing.

It was a drizzly Tuesday evening in the 17th-century Oxford village pub I manage, the kind of night when regulars huddle close to the bar, pints glowing amber under low lights. An old chap in a flat cap, nursing his third ale, grumbled about the council’s latest parking scheme. The village curate, leaning on the bar, sparred with the local councillor over the steep cost of saving the church roof. A young couple, new to the area, weighed London against Oxford, sneaking glances at the football on the telly. For a moment, the pub hummed with life – a microcosm of England, where strangers turn mates and the day’s weight lifts in shared chatter. At their best, pubs are living rooms for the nation.

It was a quiet lunch shift at the pub in Oxford where I work, the kind of day when the bar feels more like a confessional than a business. A lone customer, a woman with a light accent I took for Dutch, had just finished her meal and approached to pay. Playing the host, I made small talk. How bad have things become for Israelis here? “Where are you from?” I asked, expecting the usual tourist’s reply. Her face tightened, her voice dropped to a near-whisper. “Israel,” she said, bracing herself as if I might leap over the bar and chase her out into the street. I reassured her – I support Israel, I said, and I’m ashamed of how Jews are being treated in Britain today.