The march of the New Puritanicals or "Neo Croms" : More British people ready to accept tighter restrictions on fun and freedoms.
A new study by Model Reasoning and the Future Foundation has been revealing fresh trends in British public attitudes to certain types of pleasure : from eating sweets to drinking alcohol and from driving in town to touring in the countryside.
The study has been focusing on how we all react to a range of suggestions - coming variously from politicians, pressure groups, media - about how we ought to consume and behave, the balance of what should and should not be permitted in Britain today.
The most recent findings from the study strongly indicate that many British people are increasingly prepared to accept ever more restricted access to the kind of pleasures which until recently would have been regarded as normal and uncontroversial.
Also, many are now ready to propose a more thorough policing of our pleasures.
In relation to food and drink, the study has found that :-
The study also found that many of us are ready to endorse further constraints on our mobility.
And in perhaps the most surprising finding of all :-
Commenting on the results, Paul Flatters, Chief Executive and Editor of the Future Foundation's Assault on Pleasure study, said :-
"Only a few years ago, these results would have been unimaginable.
But these days, for whatever reasons, we are accumulating so many anxieties about our personal health and our public environment that ever more of us seem ready to accept new ideas about what we and our fellow consumer-citizens should not do - or not be permitted to do.
It's almost as if there is a new cromwellianism in the land, a new drive to regulate all manner of markets and behaviours. It is striking that support for so many regulatory propositions stretches across both age and income groups. In every sector of our society, there are now substantial pockets of what we have called the "neo-croms", those who are motivated to extend the definition of anti-social behaviour into new areas and themes.
This is the culture and the future that not just businesses but also political parties must face.
Every activity involving an element of fun or escapism is falling under new scrutiny from health professionals, green lobbies and pressure groups of all kinds. Perhaps it is this which is feeding these new attitudes, attitudes which might well be seen, for good or ill, as a kind of modern puritanism.
We can only imagine that this instinct to regulate-and-restrict will impact on more markets and more activities in the years ahead.
In five years time, will giving a Christmas box of chocolates attract the same odium as giving a pack of 200 cigarettes once did? Will all office parties be shandy-only? Will it be a dinner-party boast that one does not any longer go to the Lake District - for ecological reasons? How many other activities will go the way of smoking in pubs?
These are some of the fascinating questions our study is exploring".
Note : Fieldwork carried out by ICM in March 2005. Representative sample of 1,000 UK residents.