Camra reaches membership landmark
CAMRA is celebrating a landmark today after it signed up its 80,000th member.
This week campaign group celebrates its 35th anniversary and chief executive Mike Benner said: "CAMRA has gone from strength to strength and achieved some incredible successes in the last three and a half decades thanks to the hard work and dedication of all those involved.
"CAMRA volunteers work tirelessly throughout the year to promote real ale, cider and the traditional pub and ensure they have the healthy future they deserve.
"Welcoming our 80,000th member is a real milestone for CAMRA and we are absolutely delighted, but we still would like more people to join us to make sure consumers of real ale will always have a powerful voice to speak on their behalf."
HistoryCAMRA was formed in 1971 after six large national brewers (Allied Breweries, Bass Charrington, Courage/John Smiths, Scottish and Newcastle, Watney and Whitbread) set about replacing cask ale with pressurised keg beer in the UK.
During a holiday in Ireland four friends - journalists Michael Hardman, Graham Lees and Bill Mellor, along with brewery employee Jim Makin - bemoaned the dreadful standard of beer back home and decided to set up the Campaign for the Revitalisation of Ale.
The first annual meeting was set up in Nuneaton in 1972 and 20 people turned up. By the time of the second AGM in 1973 there were more than 1,000 members on the books, and the name of the organisation was changed to the more pronounceable Campaign for Real Ale.
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