“There’s no room for complacency” – they were the wise words of CAMRA’s national chairman Joe Goodwin when he addressed annual meetings in the 1970s. He stressed that while the Campaign could record many successes, the battle to save real ale was far from over.
Today, as we celebrate CAMRA’s 55th anniversary, Joe’s mantra is as true as ever. We can indeed look back with pride on our undoubted achievements but we face an even more daunting battle to save and promote this country’s unique contribution to the world of beer.
From the 1970s to the end of the century, the Campaign’s opponents were known as the Big Six. They owned half the country’s pubs and dominated 75 per cent of the so-called “free trade”. Their size and power was awesome, accounting for more than 80 per cent of all the beer consumed in Britain.
And they had either axed or sidelined cask beer in favour of keg – beer that was filtered, pasteurised and artificially carbonated.
The Big Six was made up of Allied Breweries (Ansells, Ind Coope and Tetley), Bass Charrington, Courage/John Smiths, Grand Metropolitan (Watney, Mann, Truman and Wilsons), Scottish & Newcastle and Whitbread. They used the power of modern advertising, including commercial TV, to promote at huge cost such truly abysmal beers as Watney’s Red, Bass’s Worthington E, Whitbread Tankard and S&N Tartan.
But – and it’s an important but – they were all British-based companies. They still produced or had the ability to produce cask-conditioned beer and in many cases they were persuaded to return to the path of brewing righteousness.
As a result of the Campaign’s vigorous work and the evident success of such cask beer producers as Young’s, Ruddles and a clutch of breweries in Manchester and Yorkshire, the Big Six saw the errors of their ways. The likes of Draught Bass and Charrington IPA were promoted once again and the “real ale revolution” was given a massive boost when Allied launched Draught Burton Ale at the end of the 1970s to nationwide acclaim.
The opposition is a very different one today. The market is dominated to a greater extent than in the days of the Big Six by global lager brewers.
The main players are Heineken, Carlsberg, Asahi, Molson Coors and AB InBev. Asahi of Japan has kept faith with Fuller’s ales since it bought the Chiswick brewery but the others have little or no interest in cask.
Society of Independent Brewers and Associates (SIBA) chief executive Andy Slee puts it well when he says the global brewers want to produce the same liquid in every market where they operate: a filtered and pasteurised beer with a long and profitable shelf life.
If you tell them cask beer has to be consumed within two or three days or it will oxidise, their accountants will have a fit of the vapours.
As a result, an alarming number of cask breweries have been shuttered. Heineken axed Caledonian in Edinburgh, Molson Coors has closed Sharp’s in Cornwall, while Carlsberg has gone on the rampage, closing Jenning’s, Banks’s, Ringwood and Wychwood.
Jenning’s has been rescued by local entrepreneurs but the remainder are on the scrapheap. These acts of vandalism were carried out when the Carlsberg Marston’s Brewing Company was created in 2020. That has since morphed into Carlsberg Britvic and Marston’s, once one of the most revered names in British brewing with Pedigree pale ale and the historic Burton union fermentation system, has now been reduced to the status of a pub company.
When the Danish giant says it has to close the breweries as a result of falling demand for real ale it's being – as a politician once remarked – “economical with the actualité”.
In Yorkshire, Theakston, which will celebrate 200 years of brewing in 2027, says it had its best year ever in 2025. In the same county, Timothy Taylor says it’s brewing more cask beer than before the Covid pandemic. It’s not exactly a micro – it brews 70,000 barrels a year of which 80 per cent is cask, with Landlord leading the field.
Across the Pennines, Robinsons family brewery in Stockport has built a new plant to supply cask beer to its 300 pubs. In Derbyshire, Thornbridge also reports a strong surge for its cask beers, some of which are brewed in a Burton union fermenter, that was surplus to requirements at Marston’s.
Down in Cornwall, St Austell has launched a range of seasonal cask beers that will augment its core brands. In Suffolk, Greene King has similarly unveiled new seasonal beers to stand alongside their IPA, Abbot and Old Speckled Hen on the bar.
Carlsberg should take a long, hard look at Greene King, which clearly sees no sign of the decline in demand for cask reported by the Danes. The Suffolk company is now the biggest producer of cask beer in the country and it’s investing a mighty £40m in a new brewery that will supply its formidable estate of 2,700 pubs.
A strong sign that campaigning works comes with the news that AB InBev, the world’s biggest brewer, best known for Stella Artois and American Budweiser, has launched a promotion for Draught Bass. This is the result of lovers of the beer staging an annual “Drink Bass Day” and compiling a list of pubs that serve the beer with a National Bass Directory.
Draught Bass once accounted for 800,000 barrels a year but that has fallen to just 30,000. But now AB InBev is promoting it with new pump clips and etched glasses and stressing its history 19th century history, when its Red Triangle was the first registered trademark in Britain.
The other global brewers will turn their backs on this success story and will continue to shutter breweries and axe cask beers.
So as we raise a foaming tankard to celebrate CAMRA’s 55th anniversary let us pledge to carry on campaigning. There’s no room for complacency.
