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Consumption of Tennent's lager, brewed in Glasgow, served as an important means of expressing Scottish national identity from the 1960s. The role it came to play in the Scottish psyche ensured that this was no ordinary alcoholic beverage. It soon commanded more than half the lager market in Scotland, a dominance unrivalled among English breweries of lager south of the border. Given this ascendancy in Scotland, Tennent's, consumed in pubs with males as patrons, became linked closely with masculinity. Cans of Tennent's lager began featuring Scottish women in provocative poses from the late 1960s, much to the delight of male drinkers. In the marketing of this beverage, the brewery broadened the basis of Scottish national identity, which now became intertwined with Tennent's lager, masculinity and, soon, football. Sponsorship of Scotland's World Cup Football teams in the 1970s and later the Scottish Cup placed the brewer of Tennent's lager in the forefront of how Scotsmen saw themselves and defined their Scottishness.
Acknowledgements
I want to thank Trevor Lloyd and David Fahey for their helpful comments and suggestions.
Notes
1. Jeffrey Richards, ‘Football and the Crisis of British Identity’, in Stephen Caunce, Ewa Mazierska, Susan Sydney-Smith and John K. Walton (eds), Relocating Britishness (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), 96; Matthew Taylor, The Association Game: A History of British Football (London: Pearson Longman, 2008), 295–9.
2. Richards, ‘Football and the Crisis of British Identity’, 100; David Russell, ‘Associating with Football: Social Identity in England, 1863–1998’, in Gary Armstrong and Richard Giulianotti (eds), Football Cultures and Identities (London: Macmillan, 1999), 17.
3. Anne Coddington, One of the Lads (London: Harper Collins, 1997), 26–7, 36; David W. Gutzke, Women Drinking Out in Britain Since the Early 20th Century (Manchester: Manchester University Press, forthcoming), ch. 3.
4. Ben McFarland, ‘Power of Scotland’, Publican Newspaper, February 19, 2001.
5. Thomas M. Wilson, ‘Drinking Cultures: Sites and Practices in the Production and Expression of Identity’, in Thomas M. Wilson (ed), Drinking Cultures: Alcohol and Identity (Oxford: Berg, 2005), 6–7. See also Dwight B. Heath, ‘Anthropological Perspectives on Alcohol: An Historical Review’, in Michael W. Everett, Jack O. Waddell and Dwight B. Heath (eds), Cross-Cultural Approaches to the Study of Alcohol: An Interdisciplinary Perspective (The Hague: Mouton, 1976), 43. For one early example of an historical interpretation linking alcohol and national identity, see W.J. Rorabaugh's excellent study, The Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979).
6. Gutzke, Women Drinking Out in Britain, ch. 1.
7. Fellowship of Freedom and Reform, A Monthly Bulletin 22 (April 1952), 61; Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick, British Beer & Pub Association, MSS. 420/BS/7/1/9, S.H. Benson Ltd., The Brewers’ Society 1957 Advertising Campaign Market Research Charts (July 1956), chart 7. More than twice as many women drank weekly in the Midlands and south-west/Wales.
8. Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick, British Beer & Pub Association, MSS. 420/BS/7/1/5, Daily Herald Readers and the Market for Beer and Stout, Aug. 1960 (1960), 12, 26, 33.
9. Glasgow University Archives Services, Tennent Caledonian's The News, 16 (December 1969) and 24 (December 1971).
10. T.R. Gourvish and R.G. Wilson, The British Brewing Industry, 1830–1980 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 458–9.
11. Tennent Caledonian's The News, 26 (May 1972).
12. Scotland accounted for 8% of the UK's total population, but 20% of the total spirits market. McFarland, ‘Power of Scotland’; ‘Thirsty Scots Kept on Move Till Opening Time’, The Times, April 26, 1971.
13. Wendy Bristow, ‘Tennents Makes the Going Easy as the Lager Boom Rolls on’, Publican, March 27, 1980.
14. Gourvish and Wilson, The British Brewing Industry, 278–9; McFarland, ‘Power of Scotland’.
15. Charles Schofield and Antony Kamm, Lager Lovelies: The Story Behind the Glamour (Glasgow: Richard Drew Publishing, 1984), 26, 28–33, 38; Gourvish and Wilson, The British Brewing Industry, 177; Ian Donnachie, A History of the Brewing Industry in Scotland (Edinburgh: John Donald Publishers, 1979), 236. For the emergence of lager brewing in Britain, see Richard G. Wilson, ‘The Introduction of Lager Brewing in Late Victorian Britain’, in Thomas Riis (ed), A Special Brew … Essays in Honour of Kristof Glamann (Odense: Odense University Press, 1993), 189–210.
16. Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick, British Beer & Pub Association, MSS. 420/BS/7/1/18, Public Attitude Surveys Ltd., The Lager Market in Scotland (June 1967), 6–10, tables 2–3.
17. Bristow, ‘Tennents Makes the Going Easy’; Donnachie, A History of the Brewing Industry in Scotland, 220.
18. Bristow, ‘Tennents Makes the Going Easy’.
19. W. Rupert Watts, ‘Why Lager's Winning the Popularity Battle’, Publican, April 11, 1985.
20. Adam Withrington, ‘Holdings its Own’, Publican, March 26, 2007.
21. Bristow, ‘Tennents Makes the Going Easy’.
22. Bristow, ‘Tennents Makes the Going Easy’. Watts, ‘Why Lager's Winning the Popularity Battle’; Gourvish and Wilson, The British Brewing Industry, 177.
23. Roger Protz, ‘Why I Think Lager is Over-Priced and Under-Powered’, Publican, March 27, 1980; Watts, ‘Winning the Popularity Battle’; Brewers' Guardian, June, 1959; Publican, March 27, 1980.
24. Tony Collins and Wray Vamplew, Mud, Sweat and Beers: A Cultural History of Sport and Alcohol (Oxford: Berg, 2002), 59.
25. See Gutzke, Women Drinking Out, chs 3–4.
26. J.A.P. Charrington, ‘Trends in Taste Reflect Ways of Life’, The Times (Beer in Britain Supplement), April 22, 1968.
27. Watts, ‘Why Lager's Winning the Popularity Battle’; H.D. Watts, ‘Lager Brewing in Britain’, Geography 60 (1975), 142.
28. Schofield and Kamm, Lager Lovelies, 29, 47–9, 52–9, 62–5.
29. Schofield and Kamm, Lager Lovelies, 70–89; Scottish Brewing Archive, Tennent Caldonian Breweries, T 12/4/13, The News, May 1969, and T 12/4/68, The News, June 1979; T 12/4/87, Tennent's Times, Spring 1984.
30. The sole exception, Ann Johansen, was English: Oban Times (special supplement), August 1984.
31. Scottish Brewing Archive, Tennent Caldonian Breweries, T 12/4/80, Tennent's Times, Summer 1982.
32. Bristow, ‘Tennents Makes the Going Easy’.
33. Schofield and Kamm, Lager Lovelies, 97.
34. Scottish Brewing Archive, Tennent Caledonian Breweries, T/12/4/89, Tennent's Times, December 1984 and T/12/14/95, Tennent's Times, Autumn 1986.
35. Scottish Brewing Archive, T/12/14/95, Tennent's Times, Autumn 1986.
36. Scottish Brewing Archive, T/12/63, Tennent Caledonian Breweries, The News, August 1978, 1, T/12/69, Tennent Caledonian Breweries, Aug. 1979, 7; Schofield and Kamm, Lager Lovelies, 95.
37. Scottish Brewing Archive, T/12/4/80, Tennent Caledonian Breweries, Tennent's Times, Summer 1982, and T/12/4/ 86, Christmas 1983.
38. Taylor, The Association Game, 295.
39. Bristow, ‘Tennents Makes the Going Easy’; Elisabeth Baker, ‘Lager Bubble Not About to Burst’, Publican, Apr. 12, 1984; Watts, ‘Winning the Popularity Battle’; Public Attitude Surveys Ltd., The Lager Market in Scotland (June, 1967), 10.
40. Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick, British Beer & Pub Association, MSS. 420/BS/7/1/26, IPC Marketing, The UK Beer Market (September 1977), 73; Bristow, ‘Tennents Makes the Going Easy’.
41. Rupert Watts, “‘Not so Real Ale”–Report’, Publican, July 10, 1980.
42. Elisabeth Baker, ‘Real Ale: As Big a Boom as Lager?’ Publican, June 14, 1984.
43. Bill Jones and Wendy Bristow, ‘The Refreshing of Whitbread’, Publican, March 27, 1980.
44. Watts, ‘Why Lager's Winning the Popularity Battle’.
45. Nanette Mutrie, ‘Scotland on Sunday’, April 5, 1992, quoted in Alan Bairner, ‘Football and the Idea of Scotland’, in Grant Jarvie and Graham Walker (eds), Scottish Sport in the Making of the Nation: Ninety Minute Patriots? (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1994), 21; also see Richard Holt, ‘King Across the Border: Denis Law and Scottish Football’, in Jarvie and Walker, Scottish Sport in the Making of the Nation, 72; Richard Weight, Patriots: National Identity in Britain, 1940–2000 (London: Macmillan, 2002), 462, 556.
46. Bairner, ‘Football and the Idea of Scotland’, 15–16; Neil Blain and Raymond Boyle, ‘Battling along the Boundaries: The Marking of Scottish Identity in Sports Journalism’, in Jarvie and Walker, Scottish Sport in the Making of the Nation, 126–7.
47. Gordon Williams, ‘Walking Backwards to Wembley’, Sunday Standard (Glasgow), May 17, 1981; Donnachie, A History of the Brewing Industry in Scotland, 240.
48. Bairner, ‘Football and the Idea of Scotland’, 11–12, 23; H.F. Moorhouse, ‘Shooting Stars: Footballers and Working-Class Culture in Twentieth-Century Scotland’, in Richard Holt (ed), Sport and the Working Class in Modern Britain(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990), 182–4; H.F. Moorhouse, ‘Scotland Against England: Football and Popular Culture’, International Journal of the History of Sport 4 (1987), 190–5; Weight, Patriots, 412, 553–5.
49. Joseph M. Bradley, Ethnic and Religious Identity in Modern Scotland: Culture, Politics and Football (Aldershot: Avebury, 1995), 46–9, 70–1; Bairner, ‘Football and the Idea of Scotland’, 16–17.
50. Moorhouse, ‘Scotland against England’, 199–200; Bairner, ‘Football and the Idea of Scotland’, 11–12, 23.
51. Bairner, ‘Football and the Idea of Scotland’, 23; Richard Holt, Sport and the British: A Modern History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 257.
52. Bairner, ‘Football and the Idea of Scotland’, 23; Denis Law quoted in Richard Weight, Patriots, 464.
53. Scottish Brewing Archive, T/12/4/43, Tennent Caledonian Breweries, J. Denniston to Editor, The News, April 1975.
54. Weight, Patriots, 556–7.
55. Taylor, The Association Game, 295.
56. Bairner, ‘Football and the Idea of Scotland’, 12; Gerry P.T. Finn and Richard Giulianotti, ‘Scottish Fans, Not English Hooligans! Scots, Scottishness and Scottish Football’, in Adam Brown (ed), Fanatics! Power, Identity and Fandom in Football (London: Routledge, 1998), 193–4.
57. Bairner, ‘Football and the Idea of Scotland’, 23; Holt, Sport and the British, 23; Graham Spiers quoted in Scotland on Sunday, June 28, 1992; Finn and Giulianotti, ‘Scottish Fans’, 191–2; H.F. Moorhouse, ‘One State, Several Countries: Soccer and Nationality in a “United Kingdom”’, International Journal of the History of Sport 12 (1995), 65.
58. Finn and Giulianotti, ‘Scottish Fans’, 190; H.F. Moorhouse, ‘“We're Off to Wembley!” The History of a Scottish Event and Sociology of Football Hooliganism’, in David McCrone, Stephen Kendrick and Pat Straw (eds), The Making of Scotland: Nation, Culture and Social Change (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press in conjunction with the British Sociological Association, 1989), 216, 222.
59. Scottish Brewing Archive, T/12/38, Tennent Caledonian Breweries, The News, June 1974, 1, 4–5, 8; McFarland, ‘Power of Scotland’.
60. Scottish Brewing Archive, T/12/62, Tennent Caledonian Breweries, The News, June 1978, 5–6.
61. Watneys had sponsored the Watney Cup football competition from 1970, and the next year the concept of sport sponsorship arrived in Scotland with the Drybrough Cup (Collins and Vamplew, Mud, Sweat and Beers, 60).
62. Scottish Brewing Archive, T/2/4/104, Tennent Caledonian Breweries, Bass Brewers 4 (June 1991), 16; Tennent's Scottish Cup News 12 (May 1993), 1; Withrington, ‘Holdings its Own’, Publican, March 26, 2007.
63. Publican, March 31, 1997.