​Get ready for drink the town dry February, Musselburgh style - Susan Dalgety

​If you are enduring Dry January, take heart. You only have three more days to go before you can pour yourself a glass of Prosecco or rip open a can of IPA.

A typical poster used by the Temperance Movement, which started in Scotland in 1829 and rapidly grew in reaction to the hard drinking of the working man

​ I never bother with these self-imposed periods of drought. I am sure I would be healthier and definitely better off if I stopped drinking for a month, but I savour an ice cold, very dry martini too much to give up, even for a few weeks.

And my Friday fish fry wouldn’t be the same without a glass of red – and don’t believe the hype about red wine and fish. I can assure you that a glass or two of Malbec goes perfectly well with chunky cod fish fingers, skin-on oven chips and mushy peas.

I have just emerged from a medically imposed period of abstinence – nothing major, just a course of antibiotics to kill off (hopefully) a tummy bug. By the end of the ten days I was desperate for a soothing glass of wine.

But not as desperate as the Edinburgh drinkers who invaded Musselburgh in search of pint back on December 1920 as local historian Andy Arthur (@cocteautriplets) revealed last week in a series of fascinating posts on X, formerly Twitter.

Just after the First World War, the Temperance Movement managed to persuade the city council to hold a ballot on whether Edinburgh should ban pubs. The choice offered to citizens, by council ward, was: no change; a 25 per cent reduction in licences; or no licences at all. Pubs were forced to close on voting day, so thousands of thirsty city folk made their way to Musselburgh to drink the Honest Toun dry.

As the Evening News reported at the time, the town was the scene of a “more sordid spectacle than any hitherto witnessed, race days included.”

So it was hardly a surprise that Edinburgh voted for no change to its licensing laws and again in 1923 when the ballot was re-run.

The Temperance Movement eventually ran out of steam, but not before a 1938 ballot in the Corstorphine & Cramond ward, where 76 per cent voted for no change in the number of licensed premises in the area.

Dry January notwithstanding, Edinburgh folk have always enjoyed a tipple.