It’s not as well known but before the UK had a national health service, it had a national restaurant service. British Restaurants were state-supported restaurants serving affordable meals to the general public.Glasgow used to have at least 10 of these restaurants... Now there is a call to bring them back.

By Abigail McCall | Images supplied by Nourish Scotland

What were British Restaurants?

British Restaurants were originally called ‘communal feeding centres,’ and were designed to get fit and fighting bodies ready for war. The name change was ordered by Winston Churchill who wrote to the Minister of Food, Lord Woolton in 1941 to say:

“I hope the term “Communal Feeding Centres” is not going to be adopted. It is an odious expression suggestive of Communism and the workhouse. I suggest you call them “British Restaurants”. Everybody associates the word restaurant with a good meal.”

By all accounts, they lived up to their new name – art on the walls, warm lighting, tablecloths, ambient music. At their peak in the late 1940s, there were more British Restaurants than there are McDonalds in the UK today.

They were ubiquitous public infrastructure in the same way our libraries, parks, hospitals are today. The state supported this infrastructure with subsidies to start up and scale up the restaurants. This support system meant the restaurants could keep prices low and, importantly, continue serving good food in bad times. However, the subsidies did not cover the running of the restaurant – this was a local operation.

Restaurant running decisions were local. The state did not decide the location, décor, opening hours, or even whether the name had to be ‘British Restaurant.’ Decisions were also open to democratic scrutiny. As publicly funded infrastructure, these restaurants were owned by the people and this created a mandate for community participation in their operation. This allowed for things like voting on the names of things like the restaurant and public accounts.

British Restaurants did not end when the war did – the last one closed in the 1970s. They lasted because affordable restaurants made sense with or without a war.

The case for revival

Despite their numbers and influence, you would be forgiven if you’ve never heard of British Restaurants. Rationing usually takes the cake when it comes to remembering wartime food policy. In Liverpool, historian Dr Bryce Evans has been bringing attention to this forgotten history.

His work has inspired a major project here in Scotland, with more than 80 researchers now looking into these British Restaurants. Thirty alone are focussing on the Glasgow story. The organisation leading this charge, Nourish Scotland, admits that this effort is not all about the history – they see British Restaurants as a legacy to build on, stating:

“Remembering is not about replicating British Restaurants today – but it is about “normalising” this history of publicly funded restaurants. This history says: we have made affordable restaurants possible before, we could do it again.”

Nourish is using the research into British Restaurants to help create the case for new publicly subsidised restaurants across the UK: ‘public diners:’

“We have built infrastructure for so many other aspects of our wellbeing: water, transport, healthcare, housing, even wifi. But we haven’t done the same for food. Public diners would fill this infrastructure gap.”

Public diners in Govanhill?

An interesting picture emerges when you insert these British Restaurants into the Govanhill picture…They enter a place with multiple other examples of the neighbourhood eating together.

The practice of langar in the Sikh community comes to mind. MILK now runs a community meal on Tuesday evening, and Kin Kitchen organises community meals and food projects in partnership with other organisations. Communal eating practices like this have a lot to offer the design of public diners today.

But Govanhill also has a history of people fighting for democratic infrastructure which is something to build on – whether its tenement housing blocks, the library, park and most famously, the Govanhill Baths.

The 140-day long sit-in protesting the council decision to close the baths in 2001 is still the longest occupation of a public building in the UK. It didn’t convince the state to keep running the Baths, but it did pave the way for them to be transferred to Govanhill Baths Community Trust. This was a testament to community conviction, and it was a win in the sense that the Baths were not sold off or closed – but it isn’t necessarily the justice that protestors set out to defend.

The occupation was about stopping the state from abandoning a piece of public infrastructure that the neighbourhood valued in their everyday life – it wasn’t about running the Baths themselves.

After 20 years of restoring what was a glorious bathhouse on funding cycles and donations, the fight to fill the pools continues. Above all else, this fight speaks to the resilience of the community – but it also shows the big gap in state-supported infrastructure in the neighbourhood.

British Restaurants were not perfect but they were public infrastructure. In theory, they extended people’s democratic control into their food environment. Public diners could do that again – and Govanhill would be the perfect place for them to start.

How did the public diners operate in the UK?

Public diners were state-subsidised. The Treasury and the Ministry of Food ran a grant programme open to businesses and local authorities. A quarter of the capital grant could be used for start-up costs, such as equipment.

Public diners had a clear economic model. Although grants were awarded to get these enterprises off the ground, any future funding was conditional on the venues breaking even or tuning a profit. The diners also benefited from a central procurement of food, reducing the costs.

Public diners struck a balance between what people ‘should’ eat and what they would like to eat. The grants offered by the government were conditional on certain nutritional criteria, corresponding to the current Eatwell Guide. But, there was a tension between the government’s nutritionists, who were keen for people to eat more veg, and restaurateurs whose priority was to offer customers what they wanted to eat (meat and pudding!).

Public diners were desirable places to go to. They saved time and energy spent on cooking, making life easier, particularly for women. The diners were designed as places where anyone – that is ‘you and I’ – might dine. They were well decorated, inviting, contemporary. Food historian Bryce Evans describes them as “centres of civilization where people looked forward to go and dine”.

Taken from nourishscotland.org