Cask ale: the phoenix from the Ashes

By the time you read these words I shall be sitting at the Oval on the first day of the last Ashes Test match, hoping the weather holds and England wins back the little urn. The scenes this summer at the five Tests have been remarkable: packed grounds, full-throated cheering, standing ovations, and an atmosphere that has lifted the England players and must have been mightily intimidating for the Australians.

Cricket has come back from the dead. I recall a time 30 years ago, when I was working on the London Evening Standard, nipping into what was called the Television Room to watch a few overs of a Test between England and Australia at Edgbaston.

The ground was half empty. 'Blimey, another journalist commented, 'there's nobody there! Cricket appeared to be dying on its feet.

But this summer cricket has wiped football off the front pages while Channel 4 has recorded its highest-ever viewing figures for the last days of the third and fourth matches in the series.

The lesson of this tumultuous summer of high drama on the cricket pitch is that you should never write off something that enjoys deep roots in our society, history and culture. At roughly the same time as I watched that Test 30 years ago and counted the stands and terraces empty of spectators at Edgbaston, the Campaign for Real Ale was founded in what seemed a doomed attempt to save cask beer.

Across the country, beer engines and handpumps were being ripped out of thousands of pubs. The 'Big Six national brewers the result of ruthless takeovers and brewery closures were replacing much-loved cask ales with new, massively-promoted keg beers. No longer could drinkers enjoy the likes of Nimmos, Tamplins or Fremlins: the new beers of the moment were Tavern Keg, Flowers, Double Diamond, Worthington E and if you were really unlucky Watneys Red. The knock-on effect was horrific. With the honourable exception of a few diehards, such as Young's in Wandsworth, regional brewers went down the keg route. Fuller's, now a revered cask-beer specialist, took a boardroom decision to go over to filtered and pressurised dispense. The decision was rescinded at the last moment when the Chiswick company noticed that its near neighbour in Wandsworth was doing rather well with cask and that Camra was punching well above its weight.

The campaign had just four founding members, but they touched a nerve. When they called a conference, several hundred people turned up. When Camra was mentioned in The Guardian, the postman delivered several sacks of mail the next day to its 'office the Salford home of the mother of one of the founding members.

All over the country there were thousands of beer lovers who detested what the big brewers were doing to their beers. They flocked to join an organisation that was prepared to challenge the corporate might of the Big Six. Camra didn't just rubbish keg beer but wrote detailed and well-researched reports on the way in which the nationals were killing off brands, destroying choice and dominating the 'free trade with cheap loans and discounts.

When I joined Camra in 1976, it was a power in the land with 30,000 members. It had considerable clout. When it persuaded Allied Breweries to launch and promote Ind Coope Draught Burton Ale, the beer took off like a proverbial rocket. Pubs were drunk dry within hours and the manufacturer of beer engines employed by Allied had to put its workers on permanent overtime to cope with demand.

Since those heady days, cask beer has been through many difficult times. At heart, the national brewers were always determined to concentrate on keg beer and lager because they are more profitable and enjoy longer shelf life. In the early 1980s, I was told by an experienced pub operator that sales of cask were 'going through the floorboards. Yet sales have recovered.

It suffered terribly in the 1990s as more than 40 regional breweries were culled. But at the same time Camra membership has climbed from 30,000 to 78,000 today.

In spite of the best efforts of the global brewers, cask b

eer refuses to die. Just like cricket.