CAMRA’s identity crisis
Who would have thought that the British beer revolution would catapult the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) into something akin to soul searching?
The Cask Report 2015-16 recorded 1,700 breweries in Britain, with an average of four new breweries opening every week. Since the Progressive Beer Duty (PBD) was introduced in 2002, providing significant tax relief for small breweries (those brewing less than 60,000 hl per annum qualify for a discount, while those brewing less than 5,000 hl get a 50 percent relief) the number of breweries in the UK has trebled.
That’s the good news. So why is CAMRA, the 45-year-old real ale campaign group, trying to reinvent itself?
On 23 March 2016 CAMRA launched its revitalization project, chaired by Michael Hardman, a journalist who was one of the founding members of CAMRA.
What the project comes down to is this: CAMRA is considering abandoning its initial cause – real ale – and broadening out to include so-called “craft beers”, many of which are the anathema to the group’s original ideas.
In its release on its website, CAMRA says it “may no longer be focused on real ale... in response to a beer and pub industry which has changed hugely since the organisation was founded in 1971.”
The release says: “The rise of craft beer and a resurgence of interest in beer in recent years, plus renewed threats to pubs, have challenged CAMRA to review if it is best positioned to represent its members in the future.
Options include becoming a consumer organisation for all beer drinkers, all pub goers regardless of what they drink, or even all alcohol drinkers, regardless of where they drink it.”
In particular craft beer poses a challenge to CAMRA: most craft beers are served from gas-pressurized metal kegs, one of the innovations that the group was set up to oppose. Real ale is served from traditional wooden casks and pumped by hand, without the help of gas.
CAMRA was founded in 1971 as a grass roots organisation of beer drinkers who opposed poor quality beer, aka bland lagers, which they saw as the destruction of Britain’s beer culture.
While CAMRA was hugely popular in the 1970s and 1980s, thanks in part to its annual beer festival and its Good Beer Guide, it shifted its focus to preserving pubs themselves, particularly during the late 1990s and 2000s when beer duty rose and many pubs were forced out of business.
Observers argue that CAMRA has dwindled in significance in recent years as craft beers have risen in popularity, most of which are made in such a way that many CAMRA traditionalists are hostile to.
Mr Hardman says in the release: “CAMRA has sometimes been criticised for failing to react to the times, being old-fashioned and reactionary, and failing to embrace developments in the pub and beer industry such as craft beer. This is the chance for our members to tell us who we should represent in the future and for what we should be campaigning.
Who do we represent now, and who should we represent in the future to help secure the best outcome for the brewing and pub industry? If we want to play a key part in driving the beer market back into growth and helping to create a thriving pub sector, do we continue with our narrow focus, or do we become more inclusive?”
180,000 members of the organisation will be invited to share their views about the future of CAMRA by completing surveys and attending around 50 consultation meetings across the UK this summer.
The outcome should be most interesting.
