Even with CAMRA around we know that the process of consolidation in the brewing industry continued . Of the 80 odd breweries in Frank Baillie’s book only about 30 are still with us. As I said before I think CAMRA fostered the conditions whereby new entrants came into the market to pick up some of the slack. Without CAMRA we would today have a much diminished brewery industry and a lot less choice (even allowing for the fact that a micro brewing scene of sorts might have emerged later).

What beer would we be drinking? Before CAMRA came along there was a drift away from cask among quite a few of the family brewers – you only have to look at, say, the 1974 GBG to see that many of them produced very little cask beer Some (Gibs Mew for example) had abandoned it all together or were in the process of doing so (Fullers for example). I think it is safe to say this trend would have continued.

Thus even if we had subsequently seen a micro brewing revival the chances are it might not have been so exclusively cask as it is today. In fact the postiion could be a mirror image of what we have now with most of the micros producing keg beers and perhaps a handful of cutting edge punk brewers turning their backs on keg and proudly producing nothing but “craft cask”. Others would perhaps join in producing the odd “craft cask” beer to sit alongside their keg range.

Which of course is more or less what happened in the USA. Their brewing industry got far closer to ground zero than ours did and it is only now that micros there are starting to turn their attention to cask conditioning.

So, without CAMRA would there have been a beer apocalypse? Perhaps not. Would there have been a cask beer apocalypse? Almost certainly I would say. Did CAMRA stop that happening? Again almost certainly – perhaps not entirely unaided but it was definitely the catalyst.

I do get the feeling there are one or two out there who wish that wasn’t the case. But it was and is.

Isn’t there a middle ground between “without CAMRA there’d have been a beer apocalypse” and “CAMRA had no influence at all”? Our view is that it’s unfair to completely dismiss the SPBW, but CAMRA did much more, more effectively, than they ever would have.

It is interesting to see people say what may or may not have happened with the developmen tof micro breweries. What I think is overlooked is CAMRA’s role in fostering the conditions which prompted those early pioneers to take the plunge into brewing.

I know that some people seem to view CAMRA’s role here as a historical inconvenience and postulate what the SPBW may or may not have done (very little at the end of the day I suspect) but like it or not it was CAMRA that got the bandwaggon rolling.

It is easy to forget that small scale brewing was dying on its arse in this country and without CAMRA doing what it did the chances are that trend would have continued. It is also arguable I think that it was the UK that exported the concept of microbrewing to the rest of the world (the early pioneers in the USA were certainly influneced by what was happening here).

You can speculate what would have happened without CAMRA’s activities and we may well have seen a nascent micro brewery scene here and abroad by now but I’m guessing that none of them would be at the stage they are now without CAMRA coming along in the very early 1970s and stirring things up.

If cask did disappear and was later revived, it would probably have been as a ‘folksy’ relic and, as at Becky’s Dive Bar (or Duesseldorf/Koeln) served direct from creaky old wooden barrels ostentatiously perched on the bar.

You can revive even the most obscure style, like Lichtenhainer or West Country white ale, but you can’t revive a dispense method if none of your customers know what to do with the beer when it arrives.

Clearly, CAMRA was reflecting trends in wider society. How could it not? The question is whether these trends might have produced something like the situation we have now, without the presence of the campaign. It’s a man making time / time making man sort of question, wouldn’t you say?

As far as a “tendency to minimise CAMRA’s role” goes, I should say it falls on CAMRA to justify the assumption that CAMRA’s role has been (on balance) positive. And will continue to be. Not just take it as a given, simply because the lifetime of the campaign has coincided with welcome progress in some areas of concern to their members (I’m one).

It’s not sufficient to say CAMRA campaigned, and lo, it came to pass.
We interested in causation here aren’t we? Not mere correlation.

I’m with you on the comparison to the development of bilingualism in Wales (on the one hand) and Scotland (on the other). WTF?