[1] The term carried connotations of political funding by brewers, and reciprocal favourable treatment of the brewing industry.
In the late 19th century, there were a large number of brewers as Members of Parliament in the House of Commons and several of these were elevated to the peerage or awarded other honours.
The 19th-century Liberals included a strong contingent of temperance campaigners which created tensions with the brewing faction within the party.
[5] These references were used in 2005 to set the historical context in the course of debates in the House of Lords on a motion to withdraw the Licensing Act 2003.
In 1931 the term was used in the Commons during a "hotly debated"[6] bill by Scottish Prohibition Party MP, Edwin Scrymgeour, to prohibit commercial liquor sales in Britain: Mr. Scrymgeour: "Evidence given before the present Royal Licensing Commission showed that in four London brewing companies there were among the shareholders forty-six peers, twenty peeresses, 161 lords and ladies and honorables, forty-seven baronets, 106 knights and seventeen members of Parliament.