Under my umbrella

Boarded up and in the hands of a property developer eager to knock it down and put 14 houses in its place, the Summer Cross in Otley, near Leeds, was effectively dead and buried in January this year.

Yet four months on there is more than a glimmer of hope that the pub could soon be open for business again after Leeds City Council twice threw out the developer's plans for the site following objections from campaigners.

Lib Dem MP Greg Mulholland says the Summer Cross, in his Leeds North West constituency, is the perfect example of what can be achieved if people from different backgrounds come together to stand up for pubs.

"Musicians, real ale enthusiasts, people who come to the pub three times a week and people who go once a month have all got behind the campaign," he says. "It's been so heartening to see the plans get so strongly thrown out by the council.

"And it's been heartening to see how local people can stand up for something with passion, energy, skill and intelligence."

And that, declares the member of the All-Party Parliamentary Beer Group and the Campaign for Real Ale, is the kind of action that the whole industry needs on a national scale right now.

Mulholland's experience as a campaigner, both before he became an MP in 2005 and since, has prompted him to invite organisations from all sides of the pub trade to attend a meeting in the House of Commons this Tuesday (May 20) to stand up for the British pub.

An urgent need

The MP has become an increasingly vocal campaigner on pub trade issues in recent months, fiercely criticising Alistair Darling's Budget tax hikes and tabling a Commons motion urging the Chancellor to rethink his policy.

A supporter of The Publican's Proud of Pubs campaign, Mulholland also tabled a motion in support of Proud of Pubs Week last summer, and will again be backing this year's event, which runs from July 13 to 20.

But he's not been afraid to ruffle the feathers of publicans either, with his unwelcome calls for wine glasses to be limited to 125ml measures.So what's he trying to achieve with his latest campaign?

"With all the problems pubs have been facing this year, I felt there was an urgent need to get all the trade bodies together to launch a campaign we can all get behind to support and save the British pub," he says.

Fine words - but a lot of people have been saying the pub and brewing industries need to speak with a more consistent voice for a long time.

Can it happen?

"Other organisations have done it - the most obvious example is the Make Poverty History campaign. There were a lot of people campaigning on side issues. Then they realised that to make a difference they had to work together," he says.

"I'm an optimist - if we organise, we can push this up the agenda."

Mulholland is also on record as supporting the Fair Pint campaign, launched last week, which calls for an end to the beer tie.

His latest initiative is not anti-pubco, he says, but what can it realistically hope to achieve?

"There are plenty of issues which we can all agree on - such as beer duty," he says.

"What we can do is find new ways to put more pressure on the government to wake up to what's going on - and the fact that we are losing something which is so important to communities, something which is uniquely British."

The starting point, he contends, should be to fight this "ignorant increase in duty" by speaking more directly to pub-goers about the problems.

"We need to politicise pub-goers and people need to realise the issues when they go to pubs.

"It's realistic to campaign for beer duty to be frozen. It might seem like a lost cause - but what if 2,000 publicans came down here and marched on Parliament?

"Campaigning works - and I say that as a campaigner and as a politician from both sides of the fence. It works locally and nationally."

Great initiatives

Mulholland says publicans should also take some encouragement from the ongoing debate over supermarket pricing.

Chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Beer Group John Grogan has continued to pressure the government over the issue, and Mulholland believes the government is "definitely moving towards some action".

"We need fair and sensible pricing of alcohol, and it's the supermarkets which have continued to ignore that," he says.

"We're making slow progress in this area and John Grogan has done an excellent job."

The flip side of that is to underline the message that pubs are the best places to enjoy a drink - the Proud of Pubs message writ large, he says."There are some great initiatives already going on - and one of the best is Proud of Pubs Week. It's so important to call on the public and get them to back British pubs.

"The government has still not woken up to the fact that the pub is a contr-olled community environment in which people can enjoy a drink. The pub is part of the solution to problem drinking - we don't need a café culture!

"Pub closures are now on the agenda with the media - but still not with the government."