Coincidentally, there was a programme on the other day about the Kinks (early British rock/pop combo, contemporary with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones), where they did a song extolling the virtues of tea drinking (I forget the name, but the chorus included the words "Rosie Lee", which is Cockney Rhyming slang for "Tea"), although I think it may have been inspired by a relative of Ray and Dave Davies of the Kinks, who lived to a fair old age and was a great believer in the virtues of tea drinking. And why not - I am sure most world problems could be solved if we could get the warring factions together over a nice cup of tea!

Not sure why the working man drinking tea helped to kick-start the Industrial revolution - was this because he was sober?

I have heard one theory that the era of drunkeness and gin palaces, etc (as pictured by William Hogarth in "Rakes Progress"), was as much due to the fact that the only liquid which was reasonably pure was the water used to brew beer and other alcohol, so it was actually healthier (at least in the short term)to drink beer rather than water, which would have been crawling with germs, waste, etc. An infection could kill you pretty quickly (in days or weeks) whereas even if you drank alcohol to access (and not everyone did even then), it would probably take some years (or something else might get you). Life expectancy was much shorter than nowadays (especially among the urban poor).