Viewpoint: CAMRA's Ted Bruning defends the GBBF

Ted Bruning (pictured)​, editor of the Campaign for Real Ale's newspaper What's Brewing​, hits back against Jeremy Baker's slamming of the Great British Beer Festival.

As a marketing expert - a senior lecturer in it, no less - Jeremy Baker must know what he's talking about. But seldom have I read anything so riddled with factual errors and false assumptions as his critique of the Great British Beer Festival (GBBF).

The very first paragraph is wrong. The GBBF is not the "public face of the British beer industry". It is the public face of the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA), which has serious differences with the British beer industry. Nor is the CAMRA image "a disaster for everyone else in brewing". Virtually the only two growth sectors are micros, which are soaring both in number and average output, and regional cask beers, which the Independent Family Brewers of Britain says were 9.5 per cent up last year. Both of which we enthusiastically promote!

Then there's this nonsense about the floor at Olympia. Olympia is an exhibition hall. It therefore has an industrial-grade floor. If Mr Baker thinks the whole place should be carpeted, he can jolly well do it himself.

"This would not matter," he says, "if the GBBF was a private event." It is a private event! It's ours! We stage it. We promote it. We staff it. It exists to promote CAMRA, and it is not "a major determinant of beer's public image today". It might be a major determinant of cask beer's public image - subtle difference, Jeremy! - but its main purpose is to be CAMRA's shop window, not anyone else's.

But it's the core of Mr Baker's argument that is most flawed and, to me, most repugnant. "Key words are sandals, beard, and beer belly," he says, as if CAMRA existed to promote some sort of "lifestyle" and as if anyone in CAMRA agreed with him that "Zara clothes, metrosexuals...Robbie Williams and Bluewater" were in any way a role model.

Actually, Zara clothes, metrosexuals and so on are exactly what we're against. We reject the importance of style over substance, of packaging over product. The consumer may have "moved from products to lifestyle", but this is precisely the trend CAMRA exists to oppose. The integrity of the product is CAMRA's very raison d'etre; and as for "the battle between clutter and minimalism" - this sounds to us like a weaselly translation of "restricting consumer choice".

More insidious still is the implication that if someone is fat and bearded, his (or her) opinions, choices and values are somehow rendered worthless. I am fat and have a beard; I also have a sound education, a broad experience of life, a questioning mind and my opinions, choices and values are worth as much as anyone's.

Indeed, to make idols of Zara-wearing metrosexuals who like Robbie Williams and shop at Bluewater is to approach Fascism, for once you start putting image above all else you necessarily belittle anyone who doesn't fit. Who's next to join fat bearded people on the list of those who are outside the pale and therefore of no worth?

You may think I am exaggerating the potential dangers implicit in Mr Baker's attitudes and assumptions. But every journey, said Mao, starts with a single step, and that includes the journey towards Fascism: I can tell you that as a fat bearded person I feel seriously uncomfortable about the way I am increasingly despised and discriminated against.

But back to Mr Baker's facts - or lack of them. The mainstream industry is not guilty of "sheer laziness".

There is no alternative to CAMRA festivals not because of the "meanness of the old establishment", nor because it's "cunning" to exploit CAMRA volunteers. It boils down to cost. If the 1,000 volunteers at GBBF were paid even the minimum wage, you would have to add £300,000 to GBBF's already huge overheads. And why stop there? GBBF is only one of 200 CAMRA festivals, albeit the biggest (Peterborough is almost as big). Replacing volunteers who work for love with staff who work for wages would easily cost £4,000,000 - which, for any accountants who might be reading, is one way of putting a price on love.

Finally, says Mr Baker, "CAMRA must be made to modernise and move in the direction of today's consumers". Made? Made! CAMRA is an independent and democratic organisation: only its 70,000 paying members can "make" it do anything, and they utterly reject the notion of moving "in the direction of today's consumers". On the contrary: we exist to persuade today's consumers to move in our direction: to recoil from Mr Baker's silly, shallow, lifestyle nonsense and to embrace the real, the good, and the true. And on the evidence of the increasing percentages of women and younger people among our membership, we think we're doing rather a good job.

The views stated in this piece are Ted Bruning's own and not those of The Publican. Mr Bruning is responding to the views of marketing expert Jeremy Baker, who last week explained why he believes the Campaign for Real Ale's GBBF is a disaster for the trade. Click here​ for the full article.

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