The transformative power of a single cup of tea

I’ve long marvelled about the power of tea, but it was only this week that I understood how it could be used as a weapon against the police. The London coppers had raided a Quaker meeting room, believing that a protest over the use of fossil fuel was being planned.

More than 20 officers, some armed with Tasers, broke down the front door and arrested six women, who they handcuffed and took in for questioning – probably the first time in history that British police have forced their way into a Quaker place of worship.

And here’s where we come to the role of tea.

We already know that tea is the natural beverage of consolation.Credit: Istock

Mal Woolford, 58, an elder of the famously pacifist organisation, was on site during the raid, and described the police response as “ridiculously heavy-handed”. He told The Times: “I had all kinds of conflicting feelings of outrage of why they were here, why there were so many of them, but I wanted to keep the situation calm. The only resistance I could put up was to make tea and drink it in front of them without offering them any.”

This may be peak-Quaker. It’s certainly peak-British.

It takes us once again into the mysteries of tea, surely the best drink in the world and one which – in this world of slavish devotion to coffee – deserves its fair measure of praise.

We already know that tea is the natural beverage of consolation. When someone suffers a calamity, you don’t go around and offer to whip them up a cappuccino. You don’t – unless they are under 12 years of age – offer a Milo and milk. A Bundy and Coke to soothe the nerves is a particularly poor choice. No, what’s always offered is “a nice cup of tea”, the words themselves as soothing as the drink they describe.

The provision of tea, first thing in the morning, is still the glue that holds many a marriage together.

More miraculous still, tea possesses seemingly contradictory powers. It can sharpen you up when you need to be alert, but – when required – will instead calm you down. It warms us up when the weather is cold, and cools us down when the weather is hot.

There’s also good evidence that it reduces the risk of chronic diseases like heart disease, diabetes and cancer, while also reducing blood pressure.

Only occasionally does tea produce a rise in blood pressure – and that’s when it’s poorly prepared. Every tea drinker has experienced this rollercoaster of hope and disappointment. First the menu talks of “a pot of tea”. Better still, when it’s served, you spot the tea strainer, sitting neatly in its metal saucer. “Oh, boy,” we tea drinkers whisper, “this is going to be good.”

Tea has long had a role in politics. Then opposition leader Anthony Albanese and his partner Jodie Haydon enjoy a cup in 2022.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

It’s then you open the lid of the pot and see a teabag floating in the gloom. The tea-strainer was just a bit of set dressing, a performative gesture as to how they would have done things if only they could have been bothered.

Or there’s the wretched habit of serving a cup of hot water with a teabag perched on the saucer, the customer left to dunk it into the now-tepid water. I’m not saying such establishments should be burnt to the ground, but the proprietor does need a period of serious self-contemplation.

Tea, of course, has long had a role in politics. American independence – declared in 1776, and only now turning out to be a terrible mistake – might never have happened without the Boston Tea Party, a protest over the tax on tea.

And it’s always had a big role in literature. Henry Lawson called his book of short stories While the Billy Boils because the stories matched the length of time it takes to prepare a perfect cup of tea.

The provision of tea, first thing in the morning, is still the glue that holds many a marriage together. Even the most wrinkled of husbands looks like a knight in shining armour when he’s standing by the bed holding a steaming cup of tea.

So rich is the association of tea with a good marriage that Dylan Thomas subverts the notion in Under Milk Wood.

“Mr Pugh, in the School House opposite, takes up the morning tea to Mrs Pugh, and whispers on the stairs:

Mr Pugh: Here’s your arsenic, dear.
And your weedkiller biscuit.
I’ve throttled your parakeet.
I’ve spat in the vases.
I’ve put cheese in the mouseholes.
Here’s your . . . [Door creaks open] . . . nice tea, dear.”

There are also the great songs that mention tea – Tea for Two, or Tea for the Tillerman or, better still, the fabulous Earl Grey Tea by Australia’s Enda Kenny:

“Is it perfume? Is it wee?
Whatever it’s supposed to be, it doesn’t taste like tea.”

Compare that to coffee, which can offer almost no decent songs, save perhaps for Frank Sinatra’s Coffee Song – a comedic commentary on the Brazilian coffee surplus, and the government’s attempt to force citizens to drink the stuff.

Back at the Quaker meeting house, there’s no record of the impact on police of Mal Woolford’s lovingly prepared cup of tea.

I like to imagine they noticed the sledge and that it hurt. It would provide further proof of tea’s magical powers: a single cup calming down the fellow who consumed it, while enraging those forced to watch.

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