CAMPAIGN FOR REAL ALE

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• Champion Winter Beer of Britain
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25 YEARS AGO

CAMRA set up campaigns against the policies of a number of large UK brewers, most of which no longer brew in 2007. Greenall Whitley were targeted for their expansionist ambitions following their takeover of the Shipstones brewery in Nottingham. Whitbread were to be the subject of campaigns against their high prices, brewery closures and pub closures, and Courage were criticised for stopping real ale production at their London and Reading plants. Meanwhile Manchester brewers Boddingtons were under fire for their takeover of the neighbouring Oldham Brewery.

St Neots branch of CAMRA met at the Kings Head in St Neots and the Royal Oak in St Ives. There were socials at the Black Bull, Godmanchester and the Axe and Compass in Hemingford Abbots. The branch Annual General Meeting was held in April 1982 at the Cannon in St Neots.

Trumans, part of the Watney, Mann and Truman brewing empire, launched two more real ales alongside Truman Bitter, which had already replaced their first re-entry into the real ale scene, Tap Bitter. The new beers were Truman Prize Mild and Best Bitter.

CAMRA reported on two microbreweries making inroads in and around the then Whitbread dominated brewing town of Luton. The larger of the two, at Lilley was Mickles, named after the two partners who had originally set up the venture, Mick Birch (later to become a long standing stalwart of St Neots CAMRA, and still involved at the Booze on the Ouse festivals), and Les Kent. Birch Bitter was its main product. Another brewery, Coney Hall, had been set up in Luton by the secretary of the students’ union at Luton College, and supplied the union bar and two other outlets in town with Coney Hall Bitter.

In a report that CAMRA insisted was not an April fool’s joke, in April 1982 the Milk Marketing Board was said to be launching draught milk in thirty pubs in the south Midlands. Newly developed milk dispensers were used to serve milk at 40p a pint, then about double the price of cartons of milk in shops.

Wolverhampton and Dudley, the Banks’s brewing company was building up a stake in Birmingham brewers Davenports. But finance director Robert Houle attempted to reassure CAMRA that this was ‘purely defensive’, adding ‘We would not like them to be taken over by someone else’. The move did not save Davenports, but Greenall Whitley of Warrington were the eventual successful predators and closed the brewery.

Another eventual victim of Greenall’s takeover ambitions was Simpkiss in the Black Country. In 1982 CAMRA reported that Simpkiss was determined to remain ‘fiercely independent’. They had replaced their cask mild with keg mild from North Country Brewery in Hull, but announced that they would brew their cask Old Ale all the year round.