Tag Archives: CAMRA

Not a Good Beer Guide but a Great Source

Copies of the Good Beer Guide.

We’ve never been convinced of the benefits of CAMRA’s Good Beer Guide as a tool for finding the best pubs, and certainly not, in recent years, for finding the best beer. What we have come to realise, though, is its value as a source of historical information.

Our current project started with a 1978 edition of the Guide Bailey’s parents bought in a charity shop for 25p; we then bought a few more old editions, at exorbitant prices; before Boak’s uncle lent us well-used copies of the first five; and, finally, Ed Wray sent us a box containing nearly every GBG from the late seventies until 2006.

Quite apart from the pure data — numbers of breweries and beers, information on each brewery’s cask beers and any notable specialties — there are pages of editorial material which give a good indication of what was on the minds of beer geeks in any given year. The coming of ‘world beer’, beer tasting, nitro-keg and gastropubs are all recorded in short blog-post like articles. Anxieties over women in beer and the Campaign’s public image are played out.

Even the cover designs are telling — from Victoriana to twenty-first century cultural diversity, via idealised country pubs and real fires.

A schism over whether the 1989 Beer Orders were a good or bad thing rears its head: one edition says they are ‘universally popular’ while, the following year, they are described as disastrous.

Time and again, advances are heralded (new breweries, increasing sales of real ale) only to be undercut with a warning: beer and pubs are in trouble, so this is no time for complacency, comrades!

And here’s one small but interesting point of language: in the nineties, the GBG used the term ‘craft brewer’ frequently, without agonies over its definition.

We’ll be buying a copy this year, but will lay it down to mature.

More Dregs from the Drip Tray

Truman's London Stout.

These are a few bits and pieces that didn’t warrant a blog post of their own.

  • Mini book review: Beers of Britain by Warren Knock and Conal Gregory (1975). This oddity was recommended by Michael ‘Beer Hunter’ Jackson in the intro to his book The English Pub in 1976. A slim paperback, it takes the odd approach of reviewing pubs by region in prose, rather than, Good Beer Guide style, with alphabetical entries. Worth reading for (a) an informed but view that isn’t CAMRA propaganda; (b) to find out what beer in your town was like forty years ago; and (c) for the occasional nugget, e.g. St Austell didn’t pasteurise their keg bitter in the seventies. A little dry for our tastes, though.
  • An account of election time in the eighteen-thirties, from Recollections of Old Taunton by Edward Goldsworth (1883): ‘The elections in Taunton were a disgrace to all England. The first candidate’s arrival was made known by several hogsheads of beer being rolled on the Parade. It was then drawn off in buckets, pitchers, and jugs, and most of it consumed on the spot; the effect of which was soon both audible and visible, by singing, shouting, swearing, and fighting among the men, and screaming, cap-tearing and hair-pulling by the women… The second candidate would do as the first, and in addition would issue tickets for obtaining beer at public houses…’ As a result, when asked by the Poll Clerk how he had decided who to vote for, a local called Simon Duffer replied: ‘I hear they gives away the most beer.’
  • We were pondering the ages of CAMRA chairs in the early days. We don’t know how old Chris Holmes or James Lynch were, but the first, Michael Hardman, was 25 when he took the job in 1971. Christopher Hutt (1973) was 26. Gordon Massey (1974) was 27. Chris Bruton (1976) was 31, as was his sucessor Joe Goodwin (1979). Tim Amsden (1980) was 29. When did CAMRA last have a chair under the age of 35? It would take a pretty ambitious character to pull it off today.
  • You all saw this long post we wrote on West Country brewers Starkey, Knight & Ford, didn’t you? Good. Just checking.
  • We’ve been posting some things which are too short to blog but too long to Tweet over on Facebook, by the way.

Month of Mild: Origins

Make Mine Real Mild -- CAMRA, c.1980.For the last thirty-six years (with gaps) May has been the Campaign for Real Ale’s ‘Mild Month‘. This sub-campaign began life as an attempt to change CAMRA’s image, as much as to save and celebrate an endangered type of beer.

It began in December 1974 when a letter from Tim Beswick appeared in What’s Brewing making the point that mild wasn’t getting the attention it deserved. This prompted a thoughtful article by David Hall, of CAMRA’s South Manchester branch, in the January 1975 edition, in which he considered why this might be the case and what should be done about it. Members were blinkered, he said, and, in London especially, should stop demanding new and interesting beers while overlooking what was on their doorstep. ‘To those trying an unfamiliar brew,’ he went on, ‘and to those organising future beer exhibitions… the message must be don’t neglect the mild.’

It can’t have helped, he also pointed out, that CAMRA had tended to obsess over the decreasing original gravities (OG) of beer. Celebrating the relative potency of, say, Fuller’s ESB, and using the ever-dwindling alcohol content of keg bitter as a stick with which to beat the Big Six, sent the message that only strong beer was good beer.

Joe Goodwin, who became CAMRA Chairman, and sadly died in 1980 at the age of 31.

Joe Goodwin, who became CAMRA Chairman, and sadly died in 1980 at the age of 31.

Gears ground and the conversation continued until, in January 1977, this announcement appeared in What’s Brewing, echoing the point above.

CAMRA is to launch a determined effort to promote mild ale… Joe Goodwin, the NE [National Executive] member responsible for organising the venture, told What’s Brewing: ‘CAMRA exists to preserve choice. Since mild ales represent a significant portion of the range of real ales available in this country and since several milds are under threat of extinction, this has become a vital national campaign… As a campaign, we’re in danger of becoming too frequently associated with the promotion of over-priced, high-gravity beers. It’s about time we did something positive to change that image.’

That’s interesting for a couple of reasons. First, that ‘over-priced, high-gravity’ accusation is something now applied to ‘craft beer’; and, secondly, because it also represents a sign of CAMRA’s often-criticised drift into the ‘responsible drinking’ camp.

Has Mild Month been effective? Perhaps in preserving mild as a seasonal special, but there are relatively few that are brewed year-round, and those that are can be hard to find. As one veteran brewer said to us: ‘Breweries aren’t museums, but all good products ought to have a place.’

The Challenge of Objectivity

Detail from a Watneys Red Beer Mat.

As we start lining up interviews with the current generation of British brewers, rather than those in retirement, we find ourselves reflecting on what we can do to make sure our book remains objective. We’re interested in them because they’re part of a bigger story, not because we think they’re awesome. What we don’t want to do is parrot their PR, puff them up, or get drawn into fawning. (Under an awning..?) There’s plenty of that about already.

We’ve already had our objectivity tested a couple of times. One of the things we are determined to avoid is merely repeating the established CAMRA mythology — ‘we saved beer’ — which has been polished to a sheen with years of repetition, but it’s hard when you speak to founder members and early activists not to get swept up in the excitement of it all. That’s especially true when they are nice fellers, and you’re sharing a pint.

What’s working so far, we think, is asking challenging questions, without malice, and as politely as possible.

It is also helpful to speak to ‘the enemy’. A chap who worked in PR for a big brewery in the seventies was very helpful in giving an alternative view of CAMRA in its heyday. We’ve also managed to dig out a few contemporary articles which set out how the Big Six felt about CAMRA at the time. (They didn’t like it.) It’s a shame that we missed the chance to grill E.C. ‘Ted’ Handel, head of PR at Watney’s in the early seventies, though.

What we need to do, for balance, is find the modern equivalent of Mr Handel — someone from AB-Inbev or Diageo perhaps — and ask them what they think of CAMRA and the current craft beer boom. But what would be in it for them?

How to Snare a Beer Geek

Real Draught Beer and Where to Find It

Fact: a geek will try to collect every item on any list he or she is given, and absolutely will not stop, ever, until it is ticked.

Since we spoke to CAMRA-founder Michael Hardman last year, we’ve been keen to get our hands on a copy of an influential publication he told us about — Young’s Brewery’s Real Draught Beer and Where to Find it. First published in the mid-sixties, it represents, we think, the first use of the term ‘real’ in connection to beer in this way, and perhaps begot ‘real ale’. Now, thanks to John Green, CAMRA’s first employee, we have a photocopy of the 1971 edition.

Green was discovered by CAMRA after he was featured in the local paper in St Albans after becoming a member of the 135 Association by drinking at every pub listed in the pamphlet. Graham Lees, another founder member of the Campaign, happened to be working on the paper in question and gave him a call. Like many such relics, it’s interesting not only in itself, but also because it’s covered in annotations — in this case, A to Z map references and crosses against the name of each pub.

This kind of thing is great PR, and a tactic still in use: only last week, we noted that the Post Office Vaults in Birmingham were offering a ‘beer passport’ for £2, listing 200 of their bottled beers. On drinking one bottle of each, and getting a stamp, the holder is entitled to a case of beer. (Sadly, there is no embroidered tie.) There were two students earnestly working their way through the Schlenkerla Rauchbiers on our visit.

What’s Brewing? Same as 40 years ago.

Header for CAMRA's What's Brewing letters page, mid-70s.

Tom Stainer, editor of the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) newspaper What’s Brewing?, once pointed out, while under fire, that there aren’t many arguments about the Campaign’s policy that haven’t already been played out, often repeatedly, over the course of forty years. Going through old issues of What’s Brewing, we suddenly saw what he meant: there were entire letters pages from the mid-seventies that, if printed in the next issue of WB, wouldn’t seem incongruous.

Some people would drink oil served by handpumps. November 1974. ‘In view of CAMRA’s strong emphasis on the mode of dispense of beers should it not be renamed the Campaign for Unpressurised Ale? Surely the major emphasis should be on what goes into the beer and what it tastes like?’

Why I’m thinking of leaving CAMRA. March 1976. Correspondent feels the Campaign is drifting away from its founding principles of battling keg. Refers to CO2 as ‘tear gas’.

It’s not muck. Same issue. ‘Fanatics of all kinds always annoy me and I must therefore comment on your correspondent… who wrote of his CAMRA colleagues drinking “pressurised muck” at their local as if they are on a level with Judas Iscariot.’

A narrow-minded approach to beer. April 1976. Chairman of Ruddles brewery says: ‘There are times when I feel that all draught beer [cask] is automatically good and all keg, bottled and canned beer is automatically bad, in the eyes of CAMRA. This is surely a very narrow-minded attitude.’

Purism wins. Same issue. ‘I didn’t think I’d ever see the day when I would read a spirited defence of fizz from a CAMRA member ['It's not muck', above]… I despair at the idea of any CAMRA member regularly drinking fizz because it is sometimes inconvenient to drink real ale… It is the very fanaticism (purism would be a better word) of many CAMRA members that has held back the tide and retained real ale for us.’

And who started the endless bloody sparkler debate? Two chaps from Sheffield, with the following letter from March 1979.

‘Tight head’ give same results as air pressure. ‘To add a new dimension to the air pressure debate, we would like to argue that a difference in taste comparable to that produced by air pressure is produced by the universal Northern practice of pulling beer through a tight sparkler, thereby thoroughly agitating the beer and mixing it with air, resulting in the characteristic northern “head”… This has the effect of disguising the flavour of the beer, of obscuring the distinction between real ale and bright beer, and of giving the average Northern drinker a spurious criterion by which to judge a good pint…. when we have been able to drink local beer “flat”, is has seemed to excel in body and flavour.’

One Pub to Tell the Story


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We’ve been considering, for the purposes of this here book we’re working on, whether there’s a single pub in which the whole story of British beer since 1963 is encapsulated. We haven’t hit on one yet, but we’ve found a couple of interesting candidates. Consider, for example, the Nag’s Head in Hampstead, which tells at least part of the story.

Though some sources say there was a pub here from 1698, the present building seems to have appeared in the early nineteenth century (further research could pin this down), and it was not especially genteel at that time.

MARYLEBONE.– Highway Robbery.– Henry Cannon, John Surety, and Thomas Willoughby, three labouring-looking men, were yesterday placed at the bar before the sitting Magistrate… charged with assaulting on the King’s highway a middle-aged woman, named Mary Keal, and taking from her person a shawl and seven shilling in silver… Inspectoer Aggs, of the S division, said that from information he received he went on Wednesday evening, accompanied by one of his men, to the Nag’s Head [on Heath Street]. On entering the taproom he saw the two first Prisoners, who were sitting down. He said to Cannon, “I want you;” and then turning to Shurety said, “I want you also.” Cannon said, “Very well,” and they both got up and finished what they were drinking and left the house with him and the constable. (Morning Post, 22 November 1833)

More than a century later, however, the pub’s name had changed: it had become The Cruel Sea, after Nicholas Monsarrat’s 1951 novel about the Battle of the Atlantic during World War II, and was the quintessential ‘theme pub’, popular with actors. Our guess is that the name change came with the renovation in 1958, but we could be wrong. Here’s what our old chums Martin Green and Tony White had to say in 1968:

…the pub contains nautical gear and prints of whaling ships and the sea, as well as murals by Robert Lenkiewicz. Placed bang in the middle of Hampstead,  it does a brisk trade, though it is seldom too crowded for comfort, like many other pubs near-by. It serves wine by the glass, or by the bottle… as well as draught Guinness and Worthington… The clientele is predominantly young, second-generation Hampstead, whose parents moved here when it was beginning to be fashionable without being too expensive… (Guide to London Pubs, 1968 edn.)

We hadn’t realised that the Cruel Sea, well-known in its day, was the same pub as the Nag’s Head, until Christopher Hutt told us so. As head of CAMRA Real Ale Investments (CAMRAIL), their pub-owning spin-off, in the mid-seventies, one of the first things he did on acquiring this property in 1975 was ditch the theme and revert back to the old-fashioned, properly ‘pubby’ moniker. It was the cause of some anxiety for CAMRA — why were they opening a pub here in competition with several other existing ‘real ale pubs’ rather than in, say, Norwich, which had hardly any decent boozers? And it was frightfully middle class, not to mention expensive. At any rate, it was a runaway success during the years of the ‘real ale craze’.

Between CAMRAIL (which fizzled out in the eighties) and today, the Nag’s Head ceased to be a pub. It is now an estate agent’s office. Which, we suppose, does tell a story of the British pub, albeit one with a rather downbeat ending.

Back to the Future

Pub: the Hole in the Wall, Waterloo, London.

By Bailey

Last week, I interviewed Terry Pattinson, who, while not a founder member of CAMRA, joined in October the summer of 1972, and was elected to the National Executive in 1973 October the same year.

I’m never sure whether veterans from the world of beer and brewing will want to meet in a pub — what if they’re recovering alcoholics or just bored of beer? — but Terry wanted to meet at Waterloo, so I suggested the Hole in the Wall.

When we asked last year which were the first specialist real ale pubs, several people named it as an early example, and so I was keen to check it out. Semi-coincidentally, Terry was able to tell me how it got its cult reputation:

This place used to be a shit hole, with one small bar in the front room. This whole back room was my doing. The landlord then was Irish and had one leg and a stick. I told him about CAMRA and said, go on, get one hand-pump in – get Young’s Special in and see how it goes. When I came in a while later, he wouldn’t let me pay for my pint: the place was packed, he’d done very well out of it, and it became a sort of real ale destination.

Terry Pattinson, c.1975.

Terry on the cover of CAMRA’s What’s Brewing, March 1975.

Terry, who still has a Gateshead accent, worked as a journalist from the nineteen-sixties until his retirement a few years ago, and is best known for his investigation into Arthur Scargill’s financial affairs in the early nineties. Once we’d finished talking about CAMRA, the conversation wandered on to Fleet Street’s drinking culture in the nineteen-seventies. ‘I was probably drinking…’ He paused to think. ‘Seventy pints a week? Eighty?’ A quick count followed, with fingers held up: ‘Four at lunch, then back to my desk. Another four after work, that’s eight. Then down here to get my train, and I’ve have another while I waiting. Then another, or maybe two, while I waited for my wife to pick me up at the other end.’

For a moment, I felt both transported in time, and slightly inadequate as I played at journo with my notebook and ‘shorthand’ (terrible handwriting).

These days, the beer at the Hole in the Wall is hit and miss, and I wondered whether my pint of Young’s Special, sour and buttery, was perhaps the dregs of the original c.1975 cask. Still, it’s always nice to find a pub with a place in Britain’s beer history that remains standing, and remains a pub.

Boak couldn’t join me on this trip to London, which means I get to elbow her out and put my byline on all the posts I write off the back of it. See — I’m getting the hang of this Fleet Street stuff!

Beer bellies or blazers?

Fat CAMRA member cartoon.In a 1975 issue of its newsletter, What’s Brewing (WB), The Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) ran an advertisement: T-shirts bearing their logo were being made available in extra large for the benefit of ‘members like the poor bloke on the left’. So, it seems, one of the earliest digs at CAMRA members and their supposed tendency towards beer bellies came from within the Campaign itself. (Note, though, that he has no beard…) But that wasn’t the only stereotype in play at the time.

An article entitled ‘Class Conscious CAMRA Must Use Every Available Weapon’, from WB in April 1975, was illustrated by in-house cartoonist John Simpson. His drawings depict two ‘types’ of CAMRA member — a bearded, apparently foul-smelling hippy on the one hand; and a bunch of middle class, blazer-wearing, loud-mouthed ‘connoisseurs’ on the other. (Yes, CAMRA pretty much invented the Real Ale Twats, getting in well before VIZ.)

The article itself, by Dave Bennett, addresses anxieties over CAMRA’s middle class membership:

The plain fact is that working-class drinking patterns are on the whole different from the various strands that make up the middle class. CAMRA members, especially the students among us, are resisting the middle class trend of drinking, if at all, in one’s own home… resisting the trend does not, however, make our drinking habits identifiable with those of the working class.

John Simpson's depiction of middle class student CAMRA members, 1975.

John Simpson’s depiction of middle class student CAMRA members, 1975.

A correspondent in the October 1977 issue wrote disdainfully of a number of CAMRA members as ‘trendies who seem to believe that they belong to some sort of Freemasonry’, and complaining of a real ale destination pub in Durham where ‘a suit and an Oxford accent are a must’.

There was something in that generalised view: Chris Bruton, CAMRA’s chairman from 1976 to 1978, was always pictured wearing a suit. With his dark hair cut short and neatly styled, he resembled a spare member of Kraftwerk. Bruton made a point of being reasonable and diplomatic at every turn: ‘There’s nothing nasty about keg ale, it’s just characterless.’ Not everyone bought into his clean-cut ‘brand’, though. Speaking to us recently, a long-time CAMRA activist rolled his eyes and growled disdainfully ‘Oh, you mean DOCTOR Bruton.’

Updated 28 March 2013. In November 1980, What’s Brewing ran the results of a survey which included the following summary of how CAMRA members were perceived.

The most popular model of a CAMRA member was the ‘poseur’ type, which centred around the idea that CAMRA was a trendy club, comprising mostly of young (under 25) smartly-dressed types with plenty of money to spend on beer, and plenty of spare time to spend it in. Most were called James, many drove W-reg cars and frequented free-houses which charged “exorbitant prices”… The second popular model was of ‘beer bores’ or ‘beer swilling oafs’. These are a little older than the ‘poseur’ model, less well dressed and with beard and beer gut.

The problem is, well-spoken, moderate, neatly-dressed people don’t make front pages, and CAMRA’s publicity machine couldn’t resist exploiting images like this portrait of a branch treasurer from October 1976.

Garth Nicholls, Sheffield branch treasurer, What's Brewing, October 1976.

The beards, beer bellies and and Morris Dancing image eventually won out but, if it hadn’t, members and activists would probably now spend their whole time saying ‘Oh, we’re not all clean-shaven, suit-wearing professionals you know — many of us have novelty waistcoats and facial hair!’

With thanks to CAMRA, and Tom Stainer in particular, for allowing us to access the What’s Brewing archive at head office in St Albans.

Life on the margins

From the 1974 CAMRA Good Beer Guide.

One of the best things about old books is finding inserts — scribbled notes, bus tickets, clippings — and annotations.

Recently, Boak’s uncle very kindly let us borrow several early editions of the CAMRA Good Beer Guide. They are well used and, like many copies of the GBG we’ve seen, feature ‘ticks’ against the names of pubs and breweries in Biro ink. There are also numerous scraps of paper containing detailed handwritten updates — a sign, perhaps, of the speed with which new breweries and ‘real ale’ pubs were appearing between editions in the mid- to late seventies?

The annotation pictured above, from the 1974 GBG, caught our eye, though, because it tells a story in three words: LIKE THE PLAGUE.

This was the first commercial edition of the GBG which, at the last minute, was censored by its publishers, Waddington’s, who feared a legal challenge from Watney’s. After some angry exchanges, CAMRA agreed to rewrite the text to read ‘at all costs’, but, clearly, members on the ground were annoyed at the idea of being bullied by the loathed Red Empire, and some preferred the text as intended.

The word PUKE written across the entire entry is Uncle’s own contribution, and is a fair summary of how ‘serious drinkers’ felt about Watney’s at the time.