CAMRA had discovered a groundswell of opposition to the national brewers. When the campaign staged its first national beer festival in 1975 in a disused flower market in London’s Covent Garden district, it found itself almost overrun by the unexpected number of people that turned up. Forty thousand flocked to the festival and drained it dry of beer. Eight hundred new members were recruited.
The campaign was active at the political and intellectual level. A series of well-researched and well-argued papers were sent to the government analysing the lack of consumer choice in many parts of the country as a result of the activities of the national brewers. In Britain, brewers are allowed to own pubs that are restricted to selling the beers of the owning breweries—these are known as “tied houses.” Pubs not directly owned by brewers are known as “free houses” but CAMRA showed that many of these were effectively tied to brewers as a result of cheap loans and discounted beer. The Labour government in the late 1970s made some half-hearted attempts to restrict the activities of the Big Six, but the attempts to give consumers improved choice were abandoned when the Conservatives returned to power.
In 1979, Watneys announced it was discontinuing production of Watneys Red, proof—if it were needed—of CAMRA’s growing influence and the public’s dislike of keg beer. But the national brewers had another shot in their collective locker: lager. As more and more British people enjoyed cheap packaged holidays in the sunnier parts of Europe, they discovered a taste for cold beer. Carling Black Label had come of age and other big British brewers switched to lager production.
By any definition, the first lager beers were an abomination. They were often brewed as quickly as ale and were not truly lagered or stored. They were also weak—the British version of Heineken was just 3.6 percent—and had little in common with the robust beers brewed in Germany and Czechoslovakia. But, backed by enormous advertising campaigns and a few unusually hot summers, sales of lager started to increase.
The Weak Shall Inherit the Earth?
In the late 1970s, Whitbread, brewers of the British version of Heineken, said they expected lager to account for 80 percent of the British beer market by 2000. That hasn’t happened but lager has come to dominate the beer scene: it’s the biggest-selling beer in the take-home sector and runs neck and neck with ale in pubs. If the inexorable rise of lager seems like a failure on CAMRA’s part, it would respond by pointing out that it was formed with the specific aim of saving traditional ale as brewers switched to keg. And the campaign was busy in other areas. Thanks to its influence, the late 1970s and early 80s saw the first flowering of the microbrewery revolution. Homebrewers keen to go the extra mile, along with some experienced brewers made redundant by the national giants, seized the opportunity to widen the choice of cask ale.
The best shop window for the new micros was CAMRA’s ever-growing beer festivals. In particular, the Great British Beer Festival, which moved around the country before settling permanently in London, was and remains the most important event of CAMRA’s year. The festival features hundreds of cask ales, stages regular beer tastings by leading writers, and incorporates the annual Champion Beer of Britain competition. Panels of judges choose beers in every sector, ranging from Mild to Extra Strong Bitter, culminating in the announcement of the overall champion beer. Winners of the prestigious award have seen their sales grow, in some cases beyond the capabilities of the available brewing equipment.
In 1989 a major report into the beer industry by a government-backed body called the Monopolies & Mergers Commission had enormous impact. It proved everything that CAMRA had been saying since its foundation: the Big Six acted as a cartel, fixing prices; they made grotesquely high profits by over-charging for lager; they dominated the so-called “free trade” through loans and discounts; and they put up barriers to smaller brewers finding a road to market.
The report was grist to the mill for Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. She disliked vested interests and powerful corporations, and she was determined to tackle the power of what was facetiously dubbed “the beerage.” But her solutions were naive. The big brewers were told to turn most of their pubs into free houses and allow in other brewers’ beers. The Big Six responded with a collective razzberry and sold off either their pubs or their breweries, or in some cases, both.
The result has not been beneficial to consumers. Most British pubs are now owned by non-brewing pub companies—“pubcos” for short. The top three pubcos ironically control more outlets than the Big Six. They have brought a gas station approach to running pubs: get ’em in, fill ’em up and send ’em out again. The pubcos have sweetheart deals with the new global brewers that now dominate Britain. Most of their beers are supplied by the globals with massive discounts and are then sold at inflated prices to drinkers.
The old Big Six have been replaced by overseas giants. Heineken is now Britain’s biggest brewer. The former Bass breweries are owned by Molson Coors, A-B InBev brews both Budweiser and Stella Artois at former British brewers’ plant, while Carlsberg owns the celebrated Tetley ales. Their interest in ale is minimal: Carlsberg will close the Tetley brewery this year while A-B InBev has put up for sale Draught Bass and several other cask beers it now owns. Draught Bass was once by far Britain’s biggest-selling cask beer, worth more than two million barrels a year. Unloved and unwanted, sales have plummeted to 60,000 barrels.
