Last Orders
Ron McCormick
The hospitality industry was particularly hard hit and pubs had to pour thousands of pints of beer down the drain as they faced closure for several months. Staff were laid off or placed on 'furlough’ with a reduced income, and many businesses closed permanently. When allowed to open once more, pubs and restaurants had restricted hours imposed on them and social distancing regulations that reduced their customer base by 75%. The changed pattern of social behaviour and constantly changing rules imposed by the government affected the economic viability of many small businesses. The future looked increasingly uncertain for many and there was a real fear that the small local pub, places like the Red Lion would close for good.
Last Orders chronicles how one traditional Newport pub responded to the Coronavirus restrictions of lockdown, reduced hours and fewer customers. The Red Lion, Stow Hill welcomes a cosmopolitan mix of middle-aged working men, devotees of real ale and traditional pub games, younger rugby football fans, retired pensioners and local families. The traditional spirit of the pub as a centre of community engagement lives on despite Covid but now with a liberal sprinkling of anti-bac sprays and hand sanitiser, and until very recently, mandatory registration of all visitors, obligatory face masks, and no standing at the bar. For many months it was “table service only”, at socially distanced tables and customers were still confused by the constantly changing regulations.
To date, there have been no reported cases of Covid infection linked to The Red Lion.
About Artist
Ron McCormick
Ron McCormick’s photographs have been exhibited and widely published for five decades. Since the early 1970's he worked as photographer for a range of book publishers and magazines including New Society, Time Out, Design Magazine and Socialist Worker Press and was Artist in Residence at Newport College of Art and taught on the celebrated Documentary Photography programme throughout the 1980s & 90s. He was the founding director of the Newport Survey a series of photo-books documenting the social and economic life of Newport during the 1980s.
A founding member of the Baneswell Community Group in Newport, for many years he published the local Echo magazine, a quarterly A4 periodical devoted to local issues in the Baneswell and city centre area, and was a founding member of the SOS campaign to save the Newport Medieval Ship. At the end of 2019 he presented a major exhibition of his South Wales Valleys photographs How Green Was My Valley at the Newport Museum & Art Gallery.
During the late 1970's he sat on the Arts Council of Great Britain Photography and Community Arts Panels. He was also instrumental in the development of a number of photography galleries nationally including The Half Moon Gallery, London (later Camerawork), Side Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne and Ffotogallery Wales, Cardiff.
His photographs are represented in the collections of Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris; The Arts Council of Great Britain; The Crafts Council GB; The National Library of Wales; Contemporary Arts Society for Wales; The Martin Parr Foundation; Ffotogallery Wales; Newport Museum and Art Gallery and Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia.
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