An open letter to my friends and peers in Bermondsey.

Please, don’t open your doors to the public as bars next Saturday.

We’re all struggling through the most extreme business times we’ll probably ever experience, and we’re all finding our own ways to survive. I’ve never experienced anything like the highs and lows of the last three months, and I know full well that we’re nowhere near out of the woods yet and things may get worse before they get better.

But being part of the hell that is going to befall the licensed premises of this country next weekend is going to do much more harm than good. We’re simply not ready.

If we’ve learned one thing from this pandemic it’s that similar approaches around the world have resulted in similar outcomes. New Zealand and South Korea: fantastic. The United Kingdom, the United States and Brazil: catastrophic.

On May 12, Anthony Fauci, the leading infectious disease expert in the US, said the following:

“There is a real risk that you will trigger an outbreak that you may not be able to control by reopening too quickly, leading to some suffering and death that could be avoided.”

Over the next fortnight, bars and restaurants began to open.

Yesterday, the US set a new record for new Coronavirus cases for the fifth consecutive day.

Two days ago, Robert West, a member of the SAGE group which is supposed to be advising UK government policy, said of Boris Johnson’s plans for next weekend, “On the one hand it’s saying, ‘Let us be clear, we’re not out of the woods and we need to be cautious’, but on the other hand they’re using language which is intended, I presume, to be very reassuring because it’s saying, ‘Go to the shops, go to the pub, enjoy yourself, it’s Independence Day’.”

Yes, we are different countries with different populations and different motivations. But aren’t the similarities here too scary to simply pass off as possibility rather than probability?

One thing that I’m finding very hard to reconcile is business owners, peers and in many cases friends of mine, attempting to absolve themselves of responsibility, and using the “government guidelines” as an excuse to open. Just because Boris Johnson says it’s OK to do so, does not make it so. Again, to use the US as an example — Donald Trump advised his citizens to take hydroxychloroquine and put detergent into their bodies. Would you also follow that advice, just because it’s “official”? Playing into these people’s hands gives them their ready-made scapegoat. And the public, unfortunately, are consistently displaying their lack of the “common sense” to which Johnson is so eager to refer.

Remember the government’s five tests to justify opening up the country?

· Making sure the NHS can cope

· Consistent and Sustained fall in Death rate

· Rate of Infections decreasing to Manageable Levels

· Be confident that Protective gear and testing are in hand

· Be confident that any changes will not risk a Second wave

At least two of those tests have fundamentally and unambiguously not been met. I’ll leave it up to you to pick faults with the other three.

There is absolutely no effective track and tracing system in place, which has always been said to be the single most important qualifier for opening up the country. The laughable “take people’s names and addresses” is paying lip service to a failed strategy, and will simply put more pressure on the poor teams being asked to implement it.

Most troubling for me, and specific to Bermondsey, is the effect on the local community. We know very well that a huge percentage of people who drink in the breweries in Bermondsey are not from the local area. We’ve never managed to nail this engagement, and I am as much at fault as anyone else for this. Punters travel in from different areas of London, often from different parts of the country. This is not your local pub with people who haven’t seen each other for ages and are meeting for a socially distanced pint; this is encouraging people to travel from miles away to congregate in enclosed, unprepared spaces. To stumble into local shops and takeaways. And let’s not forget, to then travel back again probably in far greater numbers at a time, drunk, putting huge pressure on an already overworked and very nervous transport infrastructure.

It doesn’t end there though. The hugely inadequate toilet facilities across Bermondsey will be put under even greater strain on July 4th, which will inevitably lead to what we’d hoped had been consigned to history; people pissing in the streets and, even worse, in the local estates. When I ran The Bottle Shop bar in 2013, Christ there were some brilliant times. But the toilet situation at busy times was an enormous problem and led to several run-ins with local residents. Progress has been made since then, but the rush to open up next weekend will threaten all of this. The fact that we as breweries will be seen to allow this to happen again could easily irreparably damage relations with the local community, and worst case scenario, could lead to confrontations which could threaten every single one of our licenses. Is one day’s trading really worth this?

Now there is, of course, a chance that absolutely none of this will happen and everyone will wear masks in the venues and socially distance outside, nobody will get sick as a result of their outings or take the virus home to their families and our bars will have nothing to do with contributing to a second wave of infections that may not even happen.

But looking at what has happened in America, which has been using exactly the same “freedom” rhetoric, and been encouraged to put money and economic revival above common sense and caring for your fellow human beings — isn’t that enough of a risk to decide that it simply isn’t worth it yet?

For us, and for several of our friends, that’s exactly the decision we’ve made. This doesn’t make us better than anyone else. I’m not looking for brownie points here. I simply don’t think it’s been thought through, and it seems that desperation has got the better of everyone.

We have a unique chance to demonstrate to the people of Bermondsey, to whom we owe so much, that we care about their welfare and wellbeing, and as a result will take a more considered approach to reopening than that being used by so much of the licensed trade.

Do we want to align ourselves with Tim Martin, with Brewdog, the big chains that we’re supposed to be so far removed from? Do we want to have a day of dealing with the people fighting on the beaches and throwing fireworks at buildings with no thought or respect for anyone else? People with that mentality will be there. They won’t make up the majority of the punters, but they’ll be there. We’ve seen it week after week in Bermondsey. The people we’ve had to bar from our premises because they simply don’t know, or don’t care about, how to conduct themselves in a decent manner. They’ll be there, and they’ll be the headline makers the following day. In our spaces.

We can’t control what happens next Saturday if we open, and so in the middle of a pandemic that’s still killing hundreds of our citizens a day we should, as a community, be taking the only safe decision open to us.

I’ve been called many things over the past few weeks. A scaremongerer, ill-informed, a politiciser are some of the more polite words. People always use these phrases when they don’t like what you’re saying because it’s veering uncomfortably close to the truth. The last one always makes me laugh, because what people arguing to get things open are doing is the very definition of politicising, being led by a man without any care for anyone but himself and his warped, dictatorial party.

It all comes from a simple place of caring about human life above all else. About the people who would come to our bars. About our teams of workers who have no idea what they’re letting themselves in for. About the health workers on Saturday night and beyond. About the local community who never asked for any of this, and have never been consulted. And yes, about us. We’re a pretty unique bunch of talented, creative, imaginative people who have always done things for the right reasons. Look what we’ve created. But as a result, think what we have to lose.

Bermondsey holds a unique place in the British beer landscape. But the things that make it so special are also the things that make it completely unsuitable to deal with what will happen next Saturday.

It’s not too late to do the right thing, and it doesn’t have to be forever.

But please. Please, don’t open on July 4th.

Ben Duckworth

Co-founder/Director, Affinity Brewing Company

Almond Road, Bermondsey, London.