The Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) is 50 today, and for many, this will be a reason to look back and certainly reflect on what CAMRA has or hasn't done. Either way, making it to 50 years, in an organisation, as much as in life, is an achievement to be celebrated and hopefully in this case admired. We have had our ups and downs, high points and low as a group, but we still have a dog in the fight, and we are (mostly) still out there campaigning for real ale.
This brief note to mark the occasion won't outline the rights and wrongs, the successes and disappointments, or even the changing face of CAMRA - hopefully Laura will do that. Nor will I try to explain how it was in the early days so long ago, except to say it has been, for the most part, a great pleasure to have been a part of it, from my first meeting, back in my Liverpool days, and for the last 40 years. Hopefully too, while unlikely to have another forty, there might just be a few more years left to do my bit. I certainly look forward to resuming my personal crusade in keeping many more cask pints from going sour.
So raise a glass - even if an ironic one - to those campaigners, past and present, who have helped shape today's beer scene one way or another. I'll leave this blogpost with a brief recommendation to have a look here at what publican and blogger Jeff Bell has to say about the Campaign. He has the right of it on balance and is a fitting and optimistic note on which to finish.
Like many CAMRA members I was persuaded to join by an existing member while on a work course in Blackpool in 1980. One day I'll run across him and thank him properly.
Back to business tonight. We'll be meeting as a Branch Committee on Zoom and planning for the full resumption of local CAMRA activities. The show goes on.
12 comments:
You can do no more than drink cask (or whatever you fancy) in pubs, Peter, and I'm sure like me you'll be itching to do your part.
Now living in Sheffield, I applaud their work with publicans in publicising their re-opening plans for April and May.
Still seems a long time off Martin.
Has anyone read this book? Is is any good? CAMRA biography or hagiography? I'll treat myself if it's the former, swerve if its the latter.
Though the first action must be to look up Tandleman in the index.
I'll let you guys work out how a campaign can be successful and simultaneously be 50 years old. Succeeding is negating the need for a campaign. That applies to any campaign for anything.
I must admit that the re-opening of pubs is not top of my list of priorities - the re-opening of my local hairdressers is currently keeping it in second place.
Depends on how long you think 50 years is Peter!
According to the CAMRA BEER magazine it's been "half a decade". See the index on page 3 under the heading - 15 Roger Protz.
Methinks a proof reader might be due a slap. :-))
Well a quiet word would likely do.
Entirely agreed, Fred. Was due a haircut at the beginning of January, and by now I make DoC Brown look well-groomed :o
There has been a touch of smug self-congratulation saying "the battle for real ale has been won" which, if you look at large swathes of post-industrial Britain, certainly isn't true.
Take my original home town of Runcorn. Forty years ago, although there wasn't a huge amount of choice, most of the pubs had real ale, and most had mild. Now, 21 of the first 30 entries on WhatPub, including most of the remaining traditional pubs, are "no real ale".
Replying to both above. Yes absolutely true, but not only do many of the outlying area pubs not sell real ale, many are no.longer there and the footfall is nothi g like it was in the 80s.
In my Liverpool days real ale in Tetley, Higsons, Bass, and to a lesser extent Greenalls was the norm. John Smith and Whitbread less so, though JS rejoined the party late.
I know many of my old LLiverpool haunts no longer exist or are now keg, but then while everyone drank cask, not so many really knew they did.
Times have changed.
Difficult times Prof.
No proper end in sight, though they may just let us have a slightly longer lead, for a few weeks in the summer, but I won't be banking on it.
It's an interesting point that Cooking Lager makes that an organisation cannot simultaneously be both a campaign and a success.
Is this true? I don't think so. There has certainly been success in ensuring that real ale is still available, but nothing in society remains static. New challenges and new threats arise that need to be tackled. Pubs are for the most part the only places where you can buy real ale and they are currently under serious threat from:
• Excessive beer duty.
• Excessive business rates.
• Rapacious pub companies.
• Anti-alcohol campaigners.
• And, currently, COVID-19 closures.
If any or all of these close pubs down permanently, then real ale will be under threat again simply because there'll be fewer places to sell it. I suspect that CAMRA's campaigning work will be required for years to come.
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