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Consumer: Let drink to the Campaign for Real Ale
CHEERS: CAMRAs Regional Director Mick Moss (right) and Councillor Bernard Atha.
A meeting in a Leeds pub played a key part in the success of Britain’s biggest consumer group - the Campaign for Real Ale. The group this week launched the 39th edition of the drinkers’ bible, the Good Beer Guide. Peter Lazenby reports.
The success of the Campaign for Real Ale is beyond doubt.
With 130,000 members it is hailed as Britain’s – and probably Europe’s – biggest consumer pressure group. Its influence extends far beyond its signed-up members and into corridors of power, both Parliamentary and board room.
It has branches across England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. It was the main factor in defending from potential oblivion those bastions of Britain’s cultural heritage – traditionally-brewed ale.
This week it celebrated another milestone with the launch of the 39th edition of its Good Beer Guide, a meticulously-researched tome of more than 900 pages, created through a labour of love involving thousands of CAMRA members investigating thousands of pubs to discover the best of brews.
The publication comes at a lively time for CAMRA. Pubs are still under threat – they are closing at the rate of around 30 a month, lost for ever. Thankfully 55,000 remain to provide us with refreshment, and the rate of closures is shrinking slowly.
CAMRA cannot rest on its laurels, though it can at least pause and reflect on its work which began 40 years ago. What better place to do so than on a narrowboat, cruising gently on the Leeds-Liverpool canal on a journey between one of the city’s newest ale-related businesses, Kirkstall Brewery, and the Abbey tavern at Newlay, where the Good Beer Guide underwent its Yorkshire regional launch.
The cruise was a re-enactment of history. The original and long-gone Kirkstall Brewery – now student flats – used to deliver its beers by barge using the canal and river network which was Leeds’ main industrial transport hub in the days before rail.
The new Kirkstall Brewery in Wyther Lane ensured that supplies of its products on the narrowboat were plentiful.
Barrie Pepper is a mine of information on all things to do with beer, pubs and brewing, having written 18 books on the subjects. He was also a major influence on the development of the Campaign for Real Ale, both in Leeds and nationally.
He was one of the instigators of the founding meeting of the consumer group’s Leeds branch, which took place in 1973, soon after the organisation was formed.
Between sups of Kirkstall Brewery’s admirable Three Swords ale on board the narrowboat, Barrie, now 78, said: “Leeds branch of CAMRA was formed at a meeting at the Central Station Hotel in Wellington Street. The upstairs room was absolutely packed, and for the first half dozen meetings there were at least 100 there.”
The first branch chairman was Ed Anderson, who later became managing director of Leeds-Bradford International Airport.
The branch was formed against a background of what was a desecration to beer drinkers. Traditional hand pumps were being ripped out of pubs across the city and replaced with electronic buttons and levers to serve ale via plastic dispensers. Breweries were abandoning traditional brewing methods, in which beer is a living thing, fermenting in the barrel, in favour of “keg” beer which is dead and is artificially livened only through the addition of gas.
Barrie said: “The first meeting was to have been in the Pack Horse in Otley Road, but they took the real ale out so at the last minute it was switched to the Central.”
The landlord at the time was ex-miner and former rugby league player Brian Frost, and his pub was a favourite haunt of journalists, printers, postal workers and guests of a Salvation Army hostel which was nearby. The Central is now the Wellington.
Tetley’s brewery, which was shut down by its owners Carlsberg recently after 189 years in the city, dominated the beer-drinking scene in Leeds.
“They owned half the pubs and tied houses and were taking out the hand-pumps,” said Barrie. “Early in 1974 we had a meeting at the Sun in Stanningley. The landlord there was about to take his hand-pumps out. We persuaded him not to, and that was the turning point. He persuaded other landlords not to take them out – no more hand-pumps were taken out in Leeds. It was a significant moment for CAMRA.”
One of the Leeds activists’ early moves was to approach brewers in the region, organise visits, and establish links and thereby influence.
“Relationships with Tetley’s was very good, right up to the very end,” said Barrie, who for more than seven years was liaison officer between Leeds CAMRA and Tetley’s. He dealt with stalwarts of the brewery such as promotion and media officers Clifford Lackey and Colin Waite, and managing director Philip Butler. CAMRA provided the Tetley’s boss with a chauffeur-driven tour of pubs in Leeds, pointing out to him good points and bad points from the beer drinkers’ viewpoint. At the time Leeds had 602 pubs, and after the ravages of the introduction of dead keg beers, only just over 50 served real ale. CAMRA set about changing that, and in the main succeeded.
“It went up to more than half, and we think that was due to our campaigning,” said Barrie. “The breweries benefited. Tetley’s sold more cask-conditioned bitter than any other brewery in the world. Eventually out of 200 Tetley tied houses in Leeds, all but two sold real ale. The other breweries tended to follow suit. We had discussions with Youngers, Whitbreads, Sam Smiths.”
Barrie’s work was not confined to local level. In 1974 he was elected onto CAMRA’s national executive, and became its northern regional director.
“I covered an area from Angelsey to Grimsby, including Scotland, the Isle of Man, all Ireland and Rocall,” he said.
Leeds MP Merlyn Rees was the Labour Government’s Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, and invited Barrie to form a Belfast branch, which he did.
Nationally and locally CAMRA went from strength to strength.
Leeds hosted the Great British Beer Festival – an enormous event rivalling even those of Germany – in 1981, 82, 88 and 89 at the now-demolished Queen’s Hall in Sovereign Street.
CAMRA produced its first Good Beer Guide 39 years ago, and it was printed in Leeds.
The 2012 edition is the most comprehensive ever, and it paints a healthy picture of pubs, beer and brewing, particularly in Yorkshire. It lists and recommends 1,047 pubs, of which 42 are in East Yorkshire, 132 in North Yorkshire, 80 in South Yorkshire and 131 in West Yorkshire – 385 Yorkshire pubs, more than one-third of the UK total. It includes 22 Leeds pubs, including historic gems such as Whitelocks and the Victoria in Leeds city centre.
Despite the loss of Tetley’s brewery, Yorkshire also now has 98 breweries out of 840 operating in the UK.
The Good Beer Guide was launched at the Abbey tavern by Barrie, CAMRA’s regional director Mick Moss, and guest of honour Kirkstall Councillor Bernard Atha, who at 83 is father of Leeds City council and former Lord Mayor of Leeds, and an enjoyer of real ale.
The book costs £15.99. It is available in bookshops and at a discount from.camra.org.uk/shop.
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