CAMPAIGN FOR REAL ALE

• Take it to the Top
• Mild make a May comeback
• Roy Rides, from Ashwell to Sandy
• CAMRA Beer Club

25 YEARS AGO

National brewers Watneys brought real ale back into more of their trading areas. Cask Websters Yorkshire bitter arrived in Sussex and Ushers Best Bitter was introduced in Hampshire.

CAMRA’s Norwich Branch published the first issue of its branch newsletter ‘Norfolk Nips’, with mixed news of many Watney pubs in Norfolk stocking cask Websters in place of the threatened local-brewed real ale Norwich Castle. The news of the arrival of cask Websters from Yorkshire was also dampened by reports of a processed keg version of Websters confusingly being marketed in the area.

The European Commission banned brewery ties on wines and spirits, but backed down from a ban on beer ties. CAMRA had been lobbying for improved choice and hoped that pub tenants would at least be given the right to buy bottled beer from brewers of their choice. CAMRA pledged to continue pressing for what eventually became known as a guest beer right for tenants.

St Neots CAMRA met at Kisby’s Hut, Papworth, the Bell at Eaton Socon and the Globe in St Neots and Bassingbourn’s red Lion. A social was held at the Axe and Compasses in Hemingford Abbots. The Bell is currently closed with an uncertain future.

One of the last remaining UK brewers producing no cask beers, Mansfield brewery, returned to the real ale fold after producing only brewery-conditioned beers for ten years. Four XXXX, cask-conditioned ale with an original gravity of 1045, was launched in 14 pubs in the East Midlands.

CAMRA Investments, the chain of model real ale free houses set up by CAMRA but run independently, looked likely to change its name at the request of CAMRA’s Annual General Meeting, to avoid confusion with the campaign.

CAMRA feared for the future of cask beers from Oldham Brewery following its takeover by neighbour Boddingtons, then an independent regional brewer. Boddingtons was to survive for another two decades but was eventually taken over by Whitbread and subsequently closed by new owners, the global brewer InBev.

In June 1982 CAMRA celebrated 10 years of publishing its members’ newspaper ‘What’s Brewing’. The first two page issue in 1972 had brought news of CAMRA fact- finding inspections of London breweries owned by Youngs and Guinness to discover ‘the difference in production of true draught ale and keg’. There had also been news of a ‘CAMRA list’ of pubs serving high quality beer, to be available to members only at a price of 25p.

National brewer Whitbread’s ‘brewery tour of destruction’, as CAMRA put it, rolled on, with announcements of closures of their plants in Liverpool and Leeds, bringing their brewery closures since June 1981 to six.