The BBC has a good piece in its Magazine section on the British temperance scene today. Apparently:

the British National Temperance League (BNTL), as it is known, has two staff and a mailing list of 1,200 people including social workers, teachers and police.

What is the connection between temperence and beer? Most temperance activists were actually pro-beer until the "t-total" abstainers came along. It was not a fight against alcohol per se at first but a reaction to the flood of gin which was destroying the industrial work force of England around 1800. Beer as a source of nutrition when in the form of real ale supports the good health of labouring folk as all we here can testify. So take a moment to think of those good promoters of ale, the temperance societies.