Mike Benner: How we were
Mike Benner, chief executive of the Campaign for Real Ale, marks The Publican Newspaper's 30th Birthday by reflecting on the organisation's last 30 years.
The founding of the Campaign for the Revitalisation of Ale - as it was initially known - is almost folklore these days.
In 1971 our four 'founding fathers', as they are affectionately known to today's 80,000 members, shared a feeling of despair at how British beer was losing its taste as the new breed of keg beers were born.
The campaign grew quickly. By 1974, it had 4,000 like-minded members and several important publications under its belt, including Chris Hutt's groundbreaking 'Death of the English Pub', attacking big brewers for wrecking their tied estates and, of course, What's Brewing, which remains the campaign's newspaper to this day.
1974 was an important year. The first ever Good Beer Guide was published and withdrawn within days due to an objection from the book's distributors about the entry for Watney's Red Barrel. 'Avoid like the plague', was seen as a little too risky! It was promptly replaced with the equally damning 'Avoid at all costs'. CAMRA sold 30,000 copies in the first seven months. The Good Beer Guide has not looked back since. It remains our flagship publication and is Britain's best-selling guide to beer and pubs.
Next came beer festivals. The first national beer festival was held at Covent Garden in 1975. Beer festivals quickly became an essential campaigning tool as thousands flocked to try beers they wouldn't usually be able to find. We now run nearly 170 beer festivals with over half a million visitors. This year's Great British Beer Festival broke all records - more people, more beer, more memberships, than ever before. By the late 1970s, brewers had got the message. Led by the regional and family brewers, handpumps were being dusted off and reinstated on bars.
By 1987 CAMRA was involved in the MMC investigation into the supply of beer and the resulting 'Beer Orders' legislation. We worked hard to secure a guest beer right for tenants - one of the few aspects of the final legislation which actually worked well, only to see it revoked in 2002.
The guest beer law and CAMRA's promotional campaigns led to a massive revival in real ale in the early 1990s. In 1994, cask beer's share of the beer market peaked at 17 per cent.
Since then, as national brewers have become global brewers and tied brewers have been replaced by massive pub companies, access to market for small brewers has declined, the marketing might of global lagers has increased and the market for real British beer has suffered. Worse still, some bright spark invented nitro-keg beer and big brewers, having divested of their pub estates, aggressively pushed nitro kegs.
CAMRA's Ask if it's Cask campaign launched in 1999 and running until 2003 fought back and controversially targeted women and younger drinkers to get the message across that real ale was not 'old fashioned' or reserved for the woolly jumper brigade.
Our long-running battle for progressive beer duty (PBD) came to fruition in 2002 resulting in tax breaks for small brewers. This month we announced that 88 new breweries opened in the last year as a result of PBD.
2003 saw the launch of National Pubs Week in February, proving that CAMRA, these days, is as much about pubs as it is about beer. The launch of the Community Pubs Foundation in August this year marks a new era for CAMRA's attempts to preserve and promote community pubs.
Our battle for full pints, regularly slated by many Publican readers, will remain a priority as we maintain that getting what you pay for is a basic consumer right. We will also continue fighting for improvements in planning law to protect pubs.
Whatever happens during the next 30 years or so, CAMRA will continue to shout from the rooftops about great beer, great pubs and consumer rights.
