The country's largest munitions factory had been built between Gretna and Longtown and it relied on a high proportion of itinerant labour from across the Irish Sea. With little to do with their wages and free time other than drink to excess, absenteeism was a major problem. As Carlisle was the nearest big town, just 9 miles away, it suffered the worst of the drunkenness, with groups of men fighting and women passing out in the streets.

"Some 5,000 of the said navvies nightly removed themselves from the scene of their labour to Carlisle, with the result that a once respectable city, chiefly notable for its castle, its cattle market and its hanging of rebels, has become a city of dreadful Saturday nights" ran a typical report of the time. Another railed that "the spectacle of healthy young women rendered senseless by their manifest depravity can only be described as obscene".

So the Government nationalised all the pubs and breweries, setting up "the State Management Scheme" to run them. A key principle was "disinterested landlords" whose earnings came from a salary, rather than being related to sales - though they DID get commission on food and soft drink sales.

For a while drinkers were limited to one drink each, but some got round that by ordering a round and then downing the lot. So a "No Treating" rule came in, and the sign "Treating Strictly Prohibited" became a familiar sight in Carlisle pubs.

If all that, and the title "State Management Scheme" sounds a bit dreary, the reality was anything but. The public houses were often among the best in the country, they served food and hot drinks at a time when private pubs were often just alehouses, and the beer itself was good. An architect employed by the Scheme, Harry Redfern, made a name for himself for his varied and imaginative designs for new and refurbished pubs. During his lifetime, a pilgrimage to Carlisle became de rigeur for any serious pub designer.

Most of all though, these measures worked - drunkenness in Carlisle dropped from 1000 convictions in 1916 to just 80 in 1918, and there was no great pressure to return to private management when the war ended. Moreover it made a steady profit, never requiring Treasury subsidy, and its breweries were in the forefront of technical innovation. A Royal Commission in 1932 examined the Scheme and concluded that "public ownership should be applied elsewhere" but this was never implemented.

Perhaps it was that success that meant, rather surprisingly, successive Tory governments didn't repeal the Act for over five decades. Labour ones regarded it as a useful ongoing experiment in the years when nationalisation was still a key principle of party policy. For fifty-five years every mention of the scheme was headed "experiment" - but it was only in 1971 that the government of Edward Heath finally released the Carlisle alcohol trade from state control in an early act of privatisation, almost a decade ahead of Thatcherism.

Introducing the "Abolition of State Management" Bill, the then Home Secretary, Reginald Maudling, claimed "we are now far from the original problems that caused state management to be introduced ... no one could reasonably suggest that there is any risk there today of outbursts of drunkenness promoted by the publicans". A claim perhaps easier to sustain in 1971 than 2005.