Keith Flett mulls over CAMRA's history and its options for future campaigning activity

CAMRA is 50 years old in March. That is quite an achievement for a voluntary campaign, implying at least renewal through several generations of activists, something which is often hard to achieve. It now has 170,000 members and most will be active at least in the sense of promoting CAMRA’s raison d’etre, the production and drinking of good beer.

It is not a party political organisation or, in the main, a campaign that takes capital ‘P’ political decisions. After all drinkers of decent beer come with all kinds of opinions and none. All that said of course there are politics. That can’t be avoided for any campaign that operates in a capitalist market economy.

CAMRA is neither pro or anti-capitalist as such but strongly in favour of a ‘moral economy’ of beer. That is, a society where brewers and publicans can make a fair profit but the quality, price and supply of beer are influenced by ordinary drinkers.

When CAMRA started the outlook for beer and pubs was poor indeed. There had been a long process, accelerating from the 1950s, of brewery consolidation. That meant takeovers and closures. By the early 1970s beer in Britain was very largely controlled by what was known as the Big Six – giant brewing concerns such as Courage, Watneys and Whitbread. Since the breweries also owned most of the pubs, that meant a significant restriction of choice for the drinker at the bar. To put it in perspective, in 2021 London has well over 100 independent breweries. 50 years ago there were just two – Fullers and Youngs.

There was also the question of the beer the Big Six were producing. With the consolidation big brewing operations brought , cost reduction was looked for. That meant a move away from traditional cask beer to pasteurised keg beer, which was much easier to transport and keep in the pub without cellaring skills. One problem was that for many beer drinkers this cold, fizzy beer, served under gas pressure, was either tasteless or had a distinctly unpleasant taste. A related problem was often that as breweries owned the pubs, there was little escape from keg.

The beer writer Richard Boston wrote in his 1970s Guardian column of areas of East Anglia where if you didn’t want the Watneys Red Barrel served in one pub you could always try another. The problem was that also sold Watneys. There was a lot for CAMRA to oppose and that meant it had no choice but to confront the Big Six, aka Big Beer. That meant a range of campaigning tactics. The Big Six were lampooned – Watneys became Grotnys and Whitbread Twitbread. Pubs were boycotted and those that sold traditional cask ale promoted. The first Good Beer Guide to CAMRA-approved pubs appeared in 1974. At the same time campaigning pressure was exerted on the Big Six to draw back from keg and start selling cask beer again. Over time this campaigning pressure worked. Allied breweries were first producing a cask Burton Ale from 1976. Even Watneys finally gave in and brewed Fined Bitter real ale.

CAMRA pressure on large companies had its impact. They had to change their strategies and plans. Capital constantly revolutionises itself, or tries to, however and no battle against it within its framework is ever definitively won. The Big Six had to return to cask beer and more pubs now sold it. But the choice remained very limited. In early Good Beer Guides, symbols were used to show the range of beer available. To stretch beyond a mild, an ordinary and best or special bitter was unusual. Beer from the remaining independent breweries – around 100 of them – was very hard to come by, outside of their own local area.

CAMRA’s focus shifted to an extent to lobbying for changes in the law, under a Tory Government. No easy matter clearly, but it was achieved. The Beer Orders restricted the number of a pubs a brewery could own. That meant pubs were sold and saw the rise of pub companies. At the same time there was legal provision for a guest beer to be sold in pubs which were tied to particular breweries. Again it was a pursuit of the moral economy strategy of CAMRA – not ending the control of capital but tempering it in the interests of drinkers.

That was 30 years ago and capital has not stood still since. If the first wave of Big Beer had been successfully grappled with by CAMRA, a new wave appeared that posed significant new challenges. If you want a pint of Courage Best or Whitbread Bitter you won’t find one in 2021. The Big Six companies that once dominated British brewing are long gone. Even the classic and benchmark pale ale, Bass, is hard to come by. Its recent history summaries well where Big Beer has now gone.

The Bass brewery in Burton is owned by Molson Coors, a US/Canadian brewing giant. The actual beer however is owned by another huge brewing operation, ABInBev. It is based in Belgium but has significant interests across the world – in Latin America and South Africa, for example. However, it has contracted out the brewing of the beer to Marstons, one of the larger UK-based brewers and pub companies. Or it was – in 2020 it sold a majority stake in its brewing operations to Danish brewer Carlsberg.

Grappling with UK brewers as CAMRA did successfully in the 1970s and 1980s is one thing. Trying to take on global brands is a rather different matter. The focus has shifted to some extent to supporting those larger brewers that remained UK owned – albeit often supporters of the Tory Party. However Big Beer has marched on here as well. As well as Marstons, Fullers’ brewing operations were brought by Japanese brewer Asahi and Greene King is now owned by a Hong Kong businessman. Nor has it stopped there. Some of the larger craft brewers whose backgrounds had rested on the idea of independence from Big Beer have ended up being swallowed by it. Heineken has a 49% stake in Beavertown while ABInBev owns Camden.

This is not a counsel of despair. CAMRA remains a large organisation with the capacity to campaign and influence. It’s fairly clear though that on its 50^th birthday the original model – even with later tweaks – of promoting a moral economy of beer, not anti-capitalist but for a constraining influence on it, needs to be re-thought.

Firstly, CAMRA could do more to combat Big Beer on a global basis. Consumer organisations around beer, like CAMRA, exist in a number of European countries and the US. There are long-standing links which could be developed and mobilised further. That is easier now using global communications apps like Zoom. The trade union and anti-war movements have been co-ordinating activity across the world for a while.

Secondly, CAMRA could look to build on its original campaigning focus. It’s very good at lobbying MPs and Government for legislative changes, but the protests of the 1970s about brewery closures or takeovers are now rare. To some extent this relates to an ageing membership, but with the rise of movements like Black Lives Matter and Extinction Rebellion, it’s clear that the mood to protest which was there in the early days of CAMRA is back again.

In practice both of these could be done, but a lot does depend on managing to engage and mobilise younger drinkers in a way CAMRA did so successfully 50 years ago.

Keith Flett considers the recent Budget boost to community pubs

The past year of the pandemic has caused massive problems for nearly everyone in the brewing, beer and pub trades area. Nearly everyone, because global big beer such as ABInBev and even large UK-based concerns like Marstons - now a PubCo - have weathered the economic times well enough. But that is not true of course for many of those who work in the industry who at best have found themselves furloughed with no real guarantee of future employment and at worst have lost their jobs.

Estimates of the number of pub closures so far vary but the number is likely to be significant. This is particularly true for ‘wet-led’ pubs. That is those who sell mainly beer and little or no food. They have been shut for most of the last year without recognition of the particular issues they face by any of the four UK Governments.  Measures announced in the March 3rd Budget by Rishi Sunak include a range of grants, loans and VAT cuts (but not on alcohol), while beer duty remains frozen despite the long running CAMRA claim for it to be cut. UK alcohol taxes are amongst the highest in Europe. In short it is in the ‘better than nothing’ area of Government interventions.

Against this backdrop the Government however has at last decided to do something specifically on pub closures. A lot of it is probably spin, designed to appeal to a particular section of Tory voters. In a tabloid paper owned by Rupert Murdoch, Boris Johnson was reported as claiming that he is ‘on the wagon’ until the pubs re-open and that re-opening is a priority.

Some might suggest that there are other more pressing matters for financial help - the NHS for example. It is not however an either/or matter. There is such a thing as society, and pubs play a key role in that even for many who don’t drink. They are meeting places, where much of the social fabric of society is knitted. Without them isolation and alienation start to predominate. In this context, the Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s Budget announcement of a £150 million fund to help communities save places and spaces they see as central to their local area, has been widely supported.

The scheme works on matching funds raised by local community campaigners up to a limit of £250,000. £500,000 might not be enough to buy out quite every pub, depending on location, but is probably sufficient for some that are struggling. Three key questions emerge.

Firstly the last year has seen numbers of Government funding schemes most of which, with the exception of furlough, have proved patchy, slow and bureaucratic. Will this be any different?Secondly, the Government has a notorious record of channelling public money to its mates. Might this be just another way of doing that. Thirdly, supposing that neither one or two is correct, or only partly so, what might a radical community pub actually look like?

So far we have only a headline document, carefully written by civil servants. The detail of how to apply for the fund will appear in June 2021, when pubs should be able to open without significant restrictions. The focus of the scheme - which applies across a range of institutions that a local community might want to save from being lost including pubs - is on proper governance from established community groups rather than ad hoc campaigns that come together on a particular issue.

Shock horror! Activists!

We’ll see in June where the balance lies. It does read though as if well-off Conservative-led efforts in the shire counties might be preferred to what the Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden often refers to as ‘activists’.

There are two further caveats here. Firstly there are a number of existing well-run campaigns to save community pubs, sometimes successful. Often these are informed by the experienced campaigners of CAMRA, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this month. They can offer advice and strategies for community pub buy-outs and they are an officially recognised ‘player’ by the Government.

Secondly there is the stage before a bid for a pub gets underway, and that is making sure that a developer doesn’t get in first, knock it down and build flats. For this planning permission is required as it’s a change of use. However in the absence of any alternative proposals it's likely to get nodded through. That’s where the Asset of Community Value legislation needs to be used. An ACV allows bids on pubs to be halted while a community buy-out is attempted - specifically that means raising funds. How this legislation works in conjunction with the Community fund (if it does) will be important.

Successful community pub buy-outs require hard campaigning and fundraising work and this is now a more common feature of life. If there is success there are more issues to address. An historic pub where I live in Tottenham, the Antwerp Arms, was saved and is now a very successful place. It meant a lot of hard work by an experienced community management team and it also meant a good pub manager who was on board with the ideals behind the project. 

So what might such a pub look like? Firstly it should not be in any way a top down project. The Carlisle State Management scheme is an interesting historical template, but for the community buyout to work it needs to be from below.

That means a truly co-operative pub, democratically run by regulars and staff to the mutual benefit of both. There are examples of this working, but there are a lot of market and society pressures to be understood and dealt with.

Such a pub could and should be a genuine community space welcoming to all, drinkers and non-drinkers. It also though has to work as a business and turn a profit. Here lie tensions that require careful community management governance and stewardship. Let’s hope for the moment though that the new community fund provides the chance to give this model a try.

Keith Flett celebrates the key social role of the pub

As we enter the New Year the Dry January campaign is once again active. It is a registered charity and it aims to persuade people to abstain from alcohol for a month, after a supposed festive season of excess.

While no doubt Boris Johnson and Co. did manage some seasonal excess, that was far from the reality of Christmas 2020 for many.

Dry January, although it never says so, has a particular place historically in wider campaigns to cut down on drinking. In calling for people not to drink at all, albeit only for a month, it is at the extreme end of what used to be called the temperance movement. That is those who were teetotalers. Others were happy enough for people to drink beer and focused their concern on consumption of spirits. Hence the slogan ‘strong drink is raging’.

In the Carlisle State Pub Scheme from 1916, which was partly inspired by temperance motivations, while the strength of the beers sold in Carlisle pubs was reduced – and the quality improved – consumption of spirits required special treatment. Large glasses were used and water to dilute the spirit accompanied the drink.

Dry January is however about promoting alternatives to all alcoholic drinks and it is correct in saying that there is an increasing demand for this.

Writing in The Guardian, veteran beer expert Roger Protz noted correctly that while low or no alcohol beer used to be hardly drinkable, it has improved a lot. He cited Adnams Ghost Ship which is a 4.5% pale ale but also has a low alcohol version that sells well. There are also specialist low/no alcohol brewers such as Big Drop. Meanwhile Kernel Brewery in South London has done much to promote very hoppy Table Beers, usually at around 3% alcohol.

That wouldn’t satisfy Dry January, but it is very popular with those who like a beer but don’t want to become intoxicated.

One of the key motivators of temperance supporters (accepting that it can have a positive side, which I’ve written on before) is that people only drink to get drunk and behave in a socially irresponsible way.

That seems to be very much in the mind of all four UK Governments as they have closed hospitality without any significant evidence that (for example) pubs, which have had strict controls in 2020, are a particular source of COVID infections.

There is an alternative campaign, run entirely on a voluntary basis and loosely linked with the Campaign for Real Ale amongst others.

Try January (@tryanuary on Twitter) is about continuing to try new beers and new styles. It’s mostly done virtually at the moment, by ordering beer for delivery – many craft brewers now have significant online shops – or from off licences.

Consumption of the beer is then often discussed and 'shared' on social media and sometimes via zoom meetings.

It still offers some sense of the social benefits that the pub provides, and indeed CAMRA branches have run online ‘pub’ meetings.

It also means keeping breweries going by buying beer they can’t sell in pubs, keeping people in work and where pubs are doing takeaway, keeping them going too. Rather different from the idea of Dry January!

It also suggests a wider agenda about the pub, community and social relations that both myself and Phil Mellows have previously touched on.

During one of the brief non-lockdown periods in 2020 I looked through some issues of the weekly socialist paper The Clarion, published in the early 1900s. The paper has been fully digitised and is available online, although paywalled except in academic locations such as the British Library, where access is free.

The Clarion promoted socialist fellowship and culture, perhaps notably with cycling. It straddled an audience that used pubs and those who didn’t, and carried some reports of temperance hotels and pubs. These were attempts to emulate the social atmosphere of the pub, but with non-alcoholic drinks such as ginger beer, dandelion and burdock and Vimto. The view was, even from those who were well disposed towards temperance, that these were that these were austere and unfriendly places.

This reminds us that the role of the pub is very far from just being about drink. This was the point of Labour’s 2019 ‘pub is the hub’ policy.

The reality that pubs and bars were shut more often than they were allowed to be open in 2020 rests on an official assumption of what happens in pubs. One can find numerous statements on the matter, written fairly obviously by people that rarely visit a pub.

The caricature is that pubs are places where people gather to drink as much as possible, shout loudly at one other, crowd together and generally engage in behaviour that encourages the spread of infection.

No doubt examples can be found – just as very occasionally a Tory MP can say something sensible.

In general, however, pubs are socially controlled environments and that is one of the key reasons for the legal and licensing framework in which they sit. Pubs are licenced by law, and the landlord or manager must also hold a personal licence. For people to be drunk (or for that matter asleep) on licensed premises is an offence.

In addition pubs, when open in 2020, were COVID-19 safe environments in a way that very few other places were.

On occasion this was recognised. The Welsh Labour Government did keep pubs open a little while longer than some, because it was recognised that it was safer for people to mix there than in unregulated private homes. They were also places where people, especially those who lived on their own, could meet and enjoy the company of others in a social way.

Fundamentally it is as much the social context of the pub and drinking that temperance promoters dislike as the drink itself. Here we can make a useful distinction from those, primarily in the medical profession, who voice concerns about drink because they have to deal with those who over -ndulge and the impact on their health.

This takes us back to the Carlisle State Pub scheme which ran until a Tory Government privatised the operation in 1971.

The pubs offered a decent quality of beer, food and quite often leisure facilities such as games. This combination welcomed all sections of the community, and proved to be both very popular and very profitable. So much so that before long, temperance campaigners who had pressed for the move during World War One were demanding its end.

In times like these the social role of the pub, safely managed, should be valued and promoted.

Keith Flett discusses the challenge of Big Beer and Big Capital in 2019/20. What is to be done to resist and oppose them?

Beer writer Roger Protz has noted the strategy of Big Beer:

First Big Beer buys up a swathe of independent breweries. Now it’s attempting to control the natural ingredients used to make beer. The power of these global behemoths is frightening and has to be vigorously resisted….

Big Beer is on the march, and we risk losing our wealth of choice to merely the illusion of it. Not only are consumers being misled, but these global brewers are changing the very character of the beers they buy and driving genuine independents out of business….

The question of what the strategy of Big Beer and Big Capital is for the 2020s has come into sharp focus in recent months. Firstly, by Japanese brewer Kirin’s takeover of the Huddersfield craft brewer Magic Rock. Secondly, by the sell out of Fuller’s brewery (and with it Dark Star) to Asahi and finally (so far) by Greene King’s sale of its brewery and pub to a Hong Kong-based property company.

I agree with Protz that one of the aims of Big Beer is to control the market, and produce mass market beers which will claim to be ‘craft’ but will be of lower quality and more bland than ‘genuine’ products. That process will usually take time. It is the outcome of a series of decisions that capitalist businesses make about cost savings and efficiencies in order to retain or boost profit levels.

It would be a mistake, however, simply to expect a re-run of the 1960s. In that period regional and smaller brewers, often those which had failed to invest or keep pace with changing markets for various reasons (but not always) were swallowed up and closed. Their beers, or at least their best-selling beers, were produced elsewhere in much larger breweries. At the same time the Big Six, Watneys, Whitbreads and the like sought to monopolise not just beer production but beer sales. They did that by growing pub estates and making sure only their products could be obtained in wide geographic areas – Watneys in East Anglia for example.

Richard Boston, who wrote on beer for the Guardian during this period, noted the case of a drinker who had left an East Anglian pub, fed up with the quality of Watneys beers, only to find that every other pub in the area also sold Watneys – and only Watneys.

I don’t think the 2020s will look quite like that. For a start Big Beer is now definitively global. It still has some interest in shutting down a brewery it buys and brewing the beer elsewhere. Where would that be? To an extent it can be contract-brewed and at the moment that can be in the rest of Europe as much as the UK – it’s unclear what impact Brexit will have on that.

It may not have a big interest in owning pubs, unless of course as with the Greene King sale the new owner is actually a property company. What it does have an interest in is making it financially attractive for pubs to carry its products, and not those of genuine independents.

Moreover, unlike the 1960s it’s not really about reducing beer ranges and promoting a few big brands. These already exist. The problem is that the profit to be made out of them by Big Beer is not as high as it was, while the profit out of the (much smaller) craft beer market is higher.

The Big Beer combination could therefore be to reduce the cost of making craft beers they acquire (and in doing so make an inferior product) and to seek to make them as widely available as they can.

That means of course not just pubs but supermarkets, restaurants, cafes. The shape of the beer market looks a bit different in that respect to the 1960s.

A preliminary summary might be that the broad trends that Big Beer pursued in the 1960s remain, but that the context of the 2020s is somewhat different.

What is missing in the above is the input of an independent campaigning voice for beer drinkers. CAMRA arose out of the impact of Big Beer in the 1960s. It is still around – but can it, or others grapple with Big Beer 2020s style?

Roger Protz has suggested on social media a summit of CAMRA, SIBA and others to determine proposals to be put to Government – once there is one that is actually concerned with day-to-day Government.

But what should be proposed? As ever it is much easier to oppose than argue for a positive and realistic way forward.

One idea might be to return to the model of the State-owned brewery in Carlisle that was started during World War One and lasted until the 1970s. Its aim was to set a benchmark for good beer, family-friendly pubs and of course moderate drinking habits amongst munitions workers and others.

I have no issue with reasserting that idea but in a world where global beer and capital operate it can’t be the entire answer.

Another is to strengthen legislation (which currently operates in England) to allow community bids a first crack at buying a pub under threat of closure. That would make property-focused takeovers like that for Greene King less attractive.

More is still required. Perhaps it’s time to designate a range of regional brewers as producing something unique to the UK and put strict regulations around anyone trying to interfere with it. Much for example as the EU has done (remember them) with Stilton cheese.

Finally, if not State or municipal ownership, perhaps local or national authorities could take a golden share in some leading breweries, meaning they could not be sold without a reviewing process.

Some possible ideas for the manifestos which are no doubt being hastily drafted at the moment? Because it all depends, of course, on who gains power in any forthcoming general election.

Keith Flett surveys the beery landscape of 2019, and considers what a Labour Government could do about Big Beer

You don’t need a crystal ball to know that beer in 2019 will follow trends already evident in 2018. In craft beer there is a perpetual search for new styles or takes on old styles that will prove popular. For example in 2018 we saw a proliferation of Brut IPAs. 2019 will certainly see something different.

But beer and beer drinking are much more than style wars amongst craft brewers.

We might identify a couple of areas which may influence the broader area of pubs, beer and drinking in 2019. The first is Big Beer and the potential impact of Brexit (or not) and a possible recession. The second is a potential Labour Government and what it might do, or at least plan to do, in this area in its first 100 days in office.

Following ABInBev’s acquisition of Camden Town brewery in 2015, the news that Heineken was to take a significant stake in Beavertown in Tottenham was probably the most controversial brewing news of 2018. The funding is designed to get the long talked-about new brewery ‘Beaverworld’ built. Its location is in Enfield, not far from where ABI built a new brewery for Camden. The concern of course was – and is – that over a period Heineken will simply take total control as they did at the US brewer Lagunitas.

To any Marxist it is hardly news that capitalism is about consolidation in a quest for profit and ultimately, if left unregulated, monopoly. Also in 2018 Japanese brewer KIrin bought Fourpure in South London, while Carlsberg continued to develop its reshaping of London Fields Brewery

For those who like their beer local, community-based and small-scale Big Beer is anathema. I might broadly be in that category, but it is not one that is easy to sustain within the framework of market capitalism. Alternative structures of ownership, around co-operative production might work better.

The drinker might in any case query whether this actually makes any significant difference to the beer they end up drinking at the bar, or acquire from a supermarket or craft beer bottle shop.

The answer I think is problematic for the left. Some beer pundits claim that beer produced by Camden’s new ABI brewery or indeed by Beavertown’s outsourced operation in the Low Countries (the current brewery being at capacity) is as good as anything they’ve done before. With Big Beer comes quality control (hence a more consistent product) but also cost control (hence sometimes a weaker beer). Big Beer can and does compete on price to force competitors out of the market. Again however this can mean that decent beers such as Camden Pale Ale or Beavertown Neck Oil start to appear in bars where previously the choice was much less inspiring. And the aim of most craft brewers is to get better quality beers into the hands of the public.

Whether Big Beer plans further UK activity in the craft beer area in 2019 we shall see, but it’s worth keeping in mind that the companies in question operate on a world scale and may feel they have made sufficient headway in the UK for now.

More likely perhaps is the acquisition of small-ish craft brewers by larger or regional brewers. Again it is a familiar process of industrial concentration of ownership. The end of 2018 saw York Brewery rescued from administration by Black Sheep brewery for example, itself some years ago a spin-out from Theakstons Brewery, which it stands next door to it in Masham, North Yorkshire.

A new Labour Government

Should an incoming Labour Government aim to do anything about all of this?

In the first period of a new Labour Government there will be other priorities and in any case state intervention in a situation which has seen a huge expansion of breweries and beers in the last 10 years needs to be thought through carefully.

It was tax changes introduced by Labour that promoted the boom in the first place, and perhaps a first step would be an Inquiry, a device beloved of Labour Governments in the 1960s and 1970s, to assess what issues prevent it from developing further. How much for example the activities of Big Beer on pricing and supply are anti-competitive, balanced against the reality that the price of a pint of beer is already expensive for many people on low incomes.

Combined with that might be a look at the whole structure of the industry and whether alternative methods of ownership might work both in terms of breweries and of pubs. Here we could expect to hear a considerable amount of moaning and groaning from the Beerage – breweries who support and donate money to the Tory Party

There has been a long-running lobby, primarily by the larger regional breweries, who are now the core of the Beerage, to change tax rules on the amount of beer produced. Their argument is that the tax breaks given to smaller breweries impact unfavourably on them and that the cut-off point where standard tax is paid should be raised so that they also can benefit from it.

It is a complex issue not least because while socialists are unsympathetic to the politics of the Beerage, the regional brewers support a considerable number of unionised jobs, and a pub infrastructure in the areas they operate in.

This takes us into the wider area of pubs and how beer gets into the hands of the drinker. A future Labour Government might well look at cut-price beer in supermarkets (minimum alcohol pricing may impact this but is designed to address different issues) and controlling the market. One senses that taking on Tesco and Sainsbury’s might be an even tougher battle than the Beerage.

Beer for the many not the few will require not just inquiries and legislation but popular campaigning too.

Keith Flett offers some ideas on how a socialist Labour government could improve our drinking culture.

In the stimulating essay on Culture for the Many, not the Few: Notes towards a Socialist Culture Policy, the authors state this:

In our social cultures of eating and drinking, we face the terrible effects of profit-seeking capitalist corporations, loading our food and drink with sugar, salt and fats, causing immense and increasing mental and physical health problems.

It is certainly true that the power exerted by 'Big Food' and the problems caused by the monopolistic behaviour of the big supermarket chains are a real cause for concern. The ‘food deserts’ that exist in many towns and cities are one of the key reasons why many lower income, working class people have such poor diets today.

These poor diets are often made worse by pressures from corporate capital, supermarkets and discount chains on people to consume too much alcohol. This leads to problems of physical and mental health, homelessness and crime, including violence in and out of the home, and money worries.

Corporate capital thus has a double-sided influence on our eating and drinking cultures – it is a massively powerful engine of production, enabling and enhancing the development of our social natures through the culture of eating and drinking, but it also insidiously tends to privatise, corrupt and destroy some of the pleasures and benefits of that culture, because of the drive to make profits for the few rather than meet the needs of the many.

This article aims to begin to explore these issues specifically in relation to beer-drinking and pubs, and to suggest ways that a socialist Labour government could improve this particular cultural activity.

The pub as the hub

The pub is a central part of British cultural life, certainly for the many, but not necessarily fully inclusive even in 2018. Not everyone drinks alcohol, for a range of reasons from personal preference, to cultural and religious belief. In addition pubs have been seen and actually were male centred environments – think of the Working Men’s Club – and people under 18 were not always particularly welcome.

On the other side there is what is known as the ‘tavern drinking’ school of social history. This is a subset of scholarship relating to the work of EP Thompson – who himself was certainly not adverse to visiting the pub. It sees the pub as a cultural institution of the left, very much in opposition to dominant and mainstream cultural formations.

One need only look at radical working-class history in the first half of the nineteenth century to see that from the Luddites to the Chartists, the pub was a central meeting place. This was perhaps particularly so after the 1830 Beerhouse Act, which led to a considerable increase in pubs, perhaps a little like the micro-pubs of today.

The idea of the ‘pub as the hub’ of local community activity has long been one promoted by the Campaign for Real Ale. CAMRA was founded in 1971 to combat moves by the big corporate brewers to replace traditional cask ales with bland, artificially carbonated keg beer. To its credit, it has been one of the most successful consumer campaigns of recent decades, and has also been active in trying to stop pub closures. Recent legislation in England, supported by CAMRA, allowing pubs under threat to be classified as Assets of Community Value (ACV) has helped. This would surely be one area which a Labour Government could look to strengthen through legislation.

The wider and biggest issues that such a Government would have to grapple with however are arguably twofold:

1] How to make pubs genuine centres of community activity rather than places where people down as much alcohol as possible to their own detriment, but to the profit of the drinks industry

2] How to make sure that the drink provided, beer particularly, is of a good quality and sensible price.

These two aims are surely complementary. Traditionally, pubs have supported a variety of social activities ranging from pub games through support for local music, theatre and other performing arts, to support for local football clubs and beer festivals. A pub which recognises its important role in the local community and offers well-kept beer at a fair price is far more likely to have a bright future and avoid becoming a casualty of the current wave of pub closures.

We also need to acknowledge that temperance has had and still does have a place in the labour movement. After all Jeremy Corbyn himself is certainly not a drinker. Indeed from Keir Hardie onwards, Labour leaders have generally not been enthusiasts for alcohol, the exception being Hugh Gaitskell and Harold Wilson who drank brandy – and the tonic wine Wincarnis, according to Private Eye!

There is a need to find a way between the hardliners of Alcohol Concern, who would probably ban all drink if they could, and the drinks industry that simply wants to make greater profits out of selling as much of it as possible, regardless of the health, wealth and happiness of consumers.

Possibly the best available model is the Carlisle State Management scheme. It was introduced in 1916 both in Carlisle and in an area of Enfield with a view to controlling the drink consumption of munitions workers. It coincided with other measures to reduce pub opening hours generally and to cut the strength of beer. It took a good while to move away from the impact of both of these.

However there was a positive side to the Carlisle scheme. Good quality beer was produced at reasonable prices and before the 1970-74 Tory Government sold the brewery and pubs to Theakstons, as part of their ideological drive for privatisation, Carlisle beer was revered by drinkers. The pubs themselves were also models of community use. Food was always available, while a close eye was kept on the consumption of spirits. Initially ‘treating’, the buying of rounds of drinks, was also forbidden.

How would this translate into the modern day? A Labour Government could acquire a brewery and its associated pubs and use both to try and set a standard in terms of quality and price. Alternatively a State brewery could be set up, again with the idea of providing a template of best practice like Carlisle.

Of course the impact on the wider drinks and pub trade would be limited, so a Corbyn Government would also need to look at other measures. Controlling multinational drinks companies like ABInBev and Heineken is beyond any UK Government, and would demand international action, just as regulating and controlling media companies like Google and Facebook demands international action by democratic socialist governments. However, it should still be possible to put a national regulatory framework in place that would shift matters a bit towards drinkers and brewery workers.

A modern version of the Assize of Ale could be linked in to local licensing committees. They might also be charged with checking and regulating both prices and quality of beer sold, perhaps in association with activist groups like CAMRA.

Alcohol duty could be constructed in such a way as to both regulate the profits made by brewers, and to make sure that fair prices were charged. Regulating the market in this way would not be easy, and again the Government could set the tone and benchmark with its own version of the Carlisle scheme.

A safe and comfortable environment for all

The key remains the promotion of the pub as safe and enjoyable environment for all, whether drinkers or not. This might usefully include consideration of how to reflect their traditional role in providing space for multi-generational engagement, avoiding the social problems associated with the ‘vertical drinking establishments’ introduced in the 1980s, which are a cynical move to boost takings and ensure pubs are exclusively attractive to younger people. There are tensions here which are well known. The common good, not profit, was the motivation of the Carlisle State Management scheme, but in the modern market-dominated environment pubs that don’t make a profit close, even when they’re clearly serving the common good.

Again a Labour Government can address this and effectively downgrade the centrality of profit, by reducing business rates for pubs, and where pubs are leased from breweries or pub companies, cap the amount of rent charged. They can also act to prevent ties which mean that wholesale drinks have to be bought at higher than market prices, which then reflected in higher prices to drinkers – which also exploit the publican.

Finally, in all of this, Labour would need to be prepared to push back the complaints of the ‘Beerage’, that unholy collusion between brewers and right-wing politicians which emerged in the 19^th century, as many of the larger regional brewers and brewing groups are supporters of the Tory Party. Don’t expect any of the above to get a good reception in the Daily Mail! Which is surely all the more reason to seize the opportunity to explore the counter-hegemonic cultural possibilities offered by social institutions such as pubs.

Keith Flett considers the various references to the role beer played in the lives of Marx and Engels.

There have been many and varied attempts over the years to paint Karl Marx in particular as a disreputable character whose ideas on capitalism should therefore not be taken seriously.

In that context the story that he was more or less permanently drunk has a fairly minor place. One would not need a great deal of knowledge of Marx’s life to grasp that, certainly once he came to London, he rarely had sufficient money to fund a lifestyle of drinking.

Jenny Marx noted of Engels that when he retired to London in the 1870s that he was keen on beer, particularly the Viennese variety. How easy it was to obtain such a style in London at the time is less clear, but the authoritative beer writers Boak and Bailey suggest that Vienna lager was available in the Capital in the 1860s and 1870s and indeed was regarded as a premium ‘craft’ drink.

The episode which feeds the Marx as a drunk caricature is the well-known pub crawl up Tottenham Court Rd in central London that ended with them being pursued by police. There are not that many pubs on the road today but there were considerably more 150 years ago.

It is to be found in a memoir of Marx written by the German socialist Liebknecht in 1896 around 40 years after the event itself.

His account begins

One evening, Edgar Bauer, acquainted with Marx from their Berlin time and then not yet his personal enemy […], had come to town from his hermitage in Highgate for the purpose of “making a beer trip.” The problem was to “take something” in every saloon between Oxford Street and Hampstead Road – making the something a very difficult task, even by confining yourself to a minimum, considering the enormous number of saloons in that part of the city. But we went to work undaunted and managed to reach the end of Tottenham Court Road without accident.

In due course the drinking party Marx included got involved in a political discussion in the back room of a pub. Liebknecht recalls

The brows of our hosts began to cloud […]; and when Edgar Bauer brought up still heavier guns and began to allude to the English cant, then a low “damned foreigners!” issued from the company, soon followed by louder repetitions. Threatening words were spoken, the brains began to be heated, fists were brandished in the air and – we were sensible enough to choose the better part of valour and managed to effect, not wholly without difficulty, a passably dignified retreat.

Now we had enough of our “beer trip” for the time being, and in order to cool our heated blood, we started on a double quick march, until Edgar Bauer stumbled over some paving stones. “Hurrah, an idea!” And in memory of mad student pranks he picked up a stone, and Clash! Clatter! a gas lantern went flying into splinters. Nonsense is contagious – Marx and I did not stay behind, and we broke four or five street lamps – it was, perhaps, 2 o'clock in the morning and the streets were deserted in consequence. But the noise nevertheless attracted the attention of a policeman who with quick resolution gave the signal to his colleagues on the same beat. And immediately countersignals were given. The position became critical.

Happily we took in the situation at a glance; and happily we knew the locality. We raced ahead, three or four policemen some distance behind us. Marx showed an activity that I should not have attributed to him. And after the wild chase had lasted some minutes, we succeeded in turning into a side street and there running through an alley – a back yard between two streets – whence we came behind the policemen who lost the trail. Now we were safe. They did not have our description and we arrived at our homes without further adventures.

It is an entertaining story but not one can find repeated, meaning it was almost certainly an exceptional occasion.

Engels in his younger days was hardly exempt either from occasional beer influenced activities. He wrote on 1^st September 1838:

Excuse me for writing so badly, I have three bottles of beer under my belt, hurrah, and I cannot write much more because this must go to the post at once. It is already striking half-past three and letters must be there by four o'clock. Good gracious, thunder and lightning’ you can see that I've got some beer inside me. [... ]

However there is a more serious and political side to Marx’s views on beer both in terms of practical political campaigning and in respect of theory.

Marx wrote in support of an 1855 demonstration organised by the Chartists in Hyde Park in what had become known as the ‘Beer Bill’:

The first measure of Religious coercion was the Beer Bill, which shut down all places of public entertainment on Sundays, except between 6 and 10 p. m. This bill was smuggled through the House at the end of a sparsely attended sitting, after the pietists had bought the support of the big public-house owners of London by guaranteeing them that the license system would continue, that is, that big capital would retain its monopoly.

Marx was here defending the right of working people to enjoy a beer on the one official day of the week they didn’t work, against what he terms ‘religious coercion’. Marx associated a Chartist leaflet for the protest which made the point that the aristocracy who of course enjoyed their drinks elsewhere than pubs could continue as normal.

Marx also defended the right of working people to enjoy beer in a more theoretical context, In Capital Volume One, chapter 24 he noted the tendency of capitalists to force down the wages of workers. He quotes an eighteenth-century author who complained that workers indulged in such things as drink:

“But if our poor” (technical term for labourers) “will live luxuriously ... then labour must, of course, be dear ... When it is considered what luxuries the manufacturing populace consume, such as brandy, gin, tea, sugar, foreign fruit, strong beer, printed linens, snuff, tobacco, &C.”

In terms of 2018 it is perhaps interesting to speculate whether Marx would have been a member of the Campaign for Real Ale. He was clearly interested in defending the right of ordinary people to drink beer and was keen on drinking beer himself, at least on occasion. He would certainly have been much less keen, and more critical than CAMRA sometimes is, of the activities of brewers and he would have the theory to back the point up.

One can see Marx, a lifelong activist, being in CAMRA, enjoying his beer, but organising to keep its focus firmly on pubs and beer while maintaining criticism of what is known as ‘big beer’, the worldwide beer companies such as ABInBev.

Keith Flett offers a brief survey of Bolshevik policy and practice towards alcohol consumption.

Drink and the left has been an issue since the labour movement was born or made in the 1820s and 1830s. The left, trade unions and political groups often met in pubs for want of other venues, and Marx and Engels themselves were famous imbibers. Yet inebriated workers and the culture of the pub and beer was something promoted rather by the Tories, who after all represented brewery owners, the Beerage. People who had a drink or two were not the easiest to organise or to get out on demonstrations.

Temperance was a feature of the labour movement again more or less from the beginning although we need to be careful about usage. Abstinence from drink did not usually mean beer and wine but spirits. It's in this context that we can consider what the attitude of the Bolsheviks was to drink, and what impact the 1917 revolution had on the question in Russia. The Bolsheviks were after all part of a European labour movement familiar with the politics of drink. Before 1917 Keir Hardie, the first leader of the Labour Party was a confirmed non-drinker while the revolutionary Labour MP Victory Grayson, by contrast, certainly was not.

This makes the question of what the Bolsheviks did on drink after they took State power in Russia in late 1917 of particular interest, as they were the only left party of any hue that had the opportunity to put into practice policies on alcohol during this period.

There was certainly from the early 1920s a distinctive Bolshevik practice on drink that differed by degree from the United States, but perhaps rather less so than the policy of the First World War Government in Britain.

While Prohibition in the US was driven by temperance groups, and by local ballots in both Russia and Britain after 1914, restrictions on drink were determined by concerns for a healthy workforce and that if drinking did occur, then what was drunk should be of good quality and in an appropriate, controlled environment.

In Russia the Tsarist regime banned alcohol at the start of World War One in 1914. In Britain drinking was not banned, but pub opening hours significantly curtailed and the alcoholic strength of beer lowered. In both cases these measures did have a real impact.

When the Bolsheviks took power in late 1917, the issue of drink was not central. Even so in December 1917 the Petrograd Soviet appointed G. Blagonravov Special Commissar to combat drunkenness.

The concern of the Bolshevik Government was widespread, small scale and home distilling of spirits. This meant the unregulated development of capitalist enterprise as well as large scale drunkenness. It led to the denunciation of ‘home brew fascism’ and police efforts particularly in rural areas to uncover, prosecute and jail at least those who were brewing commercially and on occasion anyone at all, even those brewing just for home consumption.

By 1923 well over half of the prison population of Moscow were home brewers. This was hardly a sustainable position particularly because at the same time the Bolsheviks were reducing police numbers, mainly for financial reasons.

Once the Civil War was won, the Bolsheviks could turn their thoughts to reconstruction and building a socialist society and it was at this point that the issue in particular of vodka production came under serious scrutiny. There was a division between those who argued that drinking and drunkenness led to an unhealthy and inefficient workforce, precisely what the infant USSR did not need, and those who saw the importance of State control of the drink trade and the money this could make for an infant socialist State with little source of finance.

Interestingly, the British Government towards the end of the First World War pursued a similar policy. In areas where munitions factories were sited, in particular Carlisle, it took over and shut breweries and used instead a State-owned brewery that sold beer to State-run pubs. The quality of the beer almost certainly improved as a result and the State ownership scheme in particular was keen to keep a very close eye on spirit consumption and to encourage eating with drinking.

This general attitude was also to be found in Communist Parties other than the Russian. The US CP published a magazine, Health and Hygiene, which while not supporting Prohibition, which it saw as simply promoting gangster control of the drink trade, certainly did not feel alcohol was something to be encouraged in the proletarian lifestyle.

The magazine also pronounced on diet:

(it) recommended a recognisably healthy diet of vegetables, fruits, cereals, dairy products, soups, meat and fish, but also recommended ‘miscellaneous’ foods, such as ‘ice cream, cake, pie, mayonnaise, olive oil, gelatin [sic], custards, puddings, jam, marmalade, nuts, candy in moderation and so forth.' Alongside these dietary suggestions, the same article recommended ‘a certain amount of exercise’ and a ‘sufficient amount of sleep. (Hatful of History blog)

By the mid-1920s the drink issue in Russia had reached a point where action had to be taken beyond simply attempting to punish home brewers.

Stalin argued in 1925 that socialism could not be built with white gloves on, and on this occasion, he was referring to support for State production of vodka. One result was that between 1924 and 1927, the number of annual arrests for drunkenness in Leningrad rose from 11,000 to 113,000. Full-strength vodka sales had resumed in 1925.

Distribution of State produced vodka appears to have been patchy in a country as vast as Russia recovering from a Civil War but the political point was clear. It could begin to undercut home brewers, particularly those who brewed for profit beyond personal consumption. It could also address the vital issue of grain supplies and direct them to the production of basic food rather than drink. The link between a healthy workforce, a basic diet and alcohol could not have been clearer.

For much more detail see Neil Weissman Prohibition and Alcohol Control in the USSR, the 1920s campaign against illegal spirits, Soviet Studies Vol 38/3 (1986)

Keith Flett offers a brief survey of Bolshevik policy and practice towards alcohol consumption.

Drink and the left has been an issue since the labour movement was born or made in the 1820s and 1830s. The left, trade unions and political groups often met in pubs for want of other venues, and Marx and Engels themselves were famous imbibers. Yet inebriated workers and the culture of the pub and beer was something promoted rather by the Tories, who after all represented brewery owners, the Beerage. People who had a drink or two were not the easiest to organise or to get out on demonstrations.

Temperance was a feature of the labour movement again more or less from the beginning although we need to be careful about usage. Abstinence from drink did not usually mean beer and wine but spirits. It's in this context that we can consider what the attitude of the Bolsheviks was to drink, and what impact the 1917 revolution had on the question in Russia. The Bolsheviks were after all part of a European labour movement familiar with the politics of drink. Before 1917 Keir Hardie, the first leader of the Labour Party was a confirmed non-drinker while the revolutionary Labour MP Victory Grayson, by contrast, certainly was not.

This makes the question of what the Bolsheviks did on drink after they took State power in Russia in late 1917 of particular interest, as they were the only left party of any hue that had the opportunity to put into practice policies on alcohol during this period.

There was certainly from the early 1920s a distinctive Bolshevik practice on drink that differed by degree from the United States, but perhaps rather less so than the policy of the First World War Government in Britain.

While Prohibition in the US was driven by temperance groups, and by local ballots in both Russia and Britain after 1914, restrictions on drink were determined by concerns for a healthy workforce and that if drinking did occur, then what was drunk should be of good quality and in an appropriate, controlled environment.

In Russia the Tsarist regime banned alcohol at the start of World War One in 1914. In Britain drinking was not banned, but pub opening hours significantly curtailed and the alcoholic strength of beer lowered. In both cases these measures did have a real impact.

When the Bolsheviks took power in late 1917, the issue of drink was not central. Even so in December 1917 the Petrograd Soviet appointed G. Blagonravov Special Commissar to combat drunkenness.

The concern of the Bolshevik Government was widespread, small scale and home distilling of spirits. This meant the unregulated development of capitalist enterprise as well as large scale drunkenness. It led to the denunciation of ‘home brew fascism’ and police efforts particularly in rural areas to uncover, prosecute and jail at least those who were brewing commercially and on occasion anyone at all, even those brewing just for home consumption.

By 1923 well over half of the prison population of Moscow were home brewers. This was hardly a sustainable position particularly because at the same time the Bolsheviks were reducing police numbers, mainly for financial reasons.

Once the Civil War was won, the Bolsheviks could turn their thoughts to reconstruction and building a socialist society and it was at this point that the issue in particular of vodka production came under serious scrutiny. There was a division between those who argued that drinking and drunkenness led to an unhealthy and inefficient workforce, precisely what the infant USSR did not need, and those who saw the importance of State control of the drink trade and the money this could make for an infant socialist State with little source of finance.

Interestingly, the British Government towards the end of the First World War pursued a similar policy. In areas where munitions factories were sited, in particular Carlisle, it took over and shut breweries and used instead a State-owned brewery that sold beer to State-run pubs. The quality of the beer almost certainly improved as a result and the State ownership scheme in particular was keen to keep a very close eye on spirit consumption and to encourage eating with drinking.

This general attitude was also to be found in Communist Parties other than the Russian. The US CP published a magazine, Health and Hygiene, which while not supporting Prohibition, which it saw as simply promoting gangster control of the drink trade, certainly did not feel alcohol was something to be encouraged in the proletarian lifestyle.

The magazine also pronounced on diet:

(it) recommended a recognisably healthy diet of vegetables, fruits, cereals, dairy products, soups, meat and fish, but also recommended ‘miscellaneous’ foods, such as ‘ice cream, cake, pie, mayonnaise, olive oil, gelatin [sic], custards, puddings, jam, marmalade, nuts, candy in moderation and so forth.' Alongside these dietary suggestions, the same article recommended ‘a certain amount of exercise’ and a ‘sufficient amount of sleep. (Hatful of History blog)

By the mid-1920s the drink issue in Russia had reached a point where action had to be taken beyond simply attempting to punish home brewers.

Stalin argued in 1925 that socialism could not be built with white gloves on, and on this occasion, he was referring to support for State production of vodka. One result was that between 1924 and 1927, the number of annual arrests for drunkenness in Leningrad rose from 11,000 to 113,000. Full-strength vodka sales had resumed in 1925.

Distribution of State produced vodka appears to have been patchy in a country as vast as Russia recovering from a Civil War but the political point was clear. It could begin to undercut home brewers, particularly those who brewed for profit beyond personal consumption. It could also address the vital issue of grain supplies and direct them to the production of basic food rather than drink. The link between a healthy workforce, a basic diet and alcohol could not have been clearer.

For much more detail see Neil Weissman Prohibition and Alcohol Control in the USSR, the 1920s campaign against illegal spirits, Soviet Studies Vol 38/3 (1986)

Keith Flett outlines how market capitalism undermined the principle of a fair price for a pint of beer. 

The price of a pint of beer, or perhaps as accurately the price of a half or third of a pint of beer, has been the source of considerable controversy in recent months.

A pub guide found that the most expensive pint of beer in the UK was no longer in London but Surrey and was over £4. That is indeed a fair sum of money if you are on a low income. A survey by the trade British Beer and Pub Association found the average price of a pint of beer is now just over £3 across the UK. Lager, typically on keg rather than cask, is more like £3.50 a pint.

If you like beer in this price context you might prefer, for example, the four for £6 offers on cans of Brewdog’s punk IPA that can be found in nearly all supermarkets.

There is a wider argument about the cost of beer and the impact of this on pubs then but I want to focus here specifically on the price issue, and how it also relates to the style and quality of beer.

The controversy arose particularly because someone had spotted a double ipa from the Manchester brewery Cloudwater on sale at the Rake in Borough Market for £13.40 a pint. Of course since the beer was 8-9% ABV you’d be drinking it in thirds or halves anyway but at £6.70 a half the price was still well above the ‘going rate’ for such a beer in London pubs, which would usually be around £4-4.50 a half.

I understand that the price neither deterred customers or put them off drinking the particular beer which quickly sold out – as Cloudwater beers invariably do. But it made the pub trade paper the Morning Advertiser and sparked a huge social media controversy.

Just how awkward the matter is to judge can be seen by a subsequent non-controversy over a 3.6% beer brewed by the US brewery Jester King and the London brewery Kernel, that was selling in a Hackney pub for £13 a pint. How much, one might say? Except of course the beer had been matured in barrels for a lengthy period and then specially flown in from the US. It was probably one of the only UK outlets. In this case the cost of production and the importation justified the price.

The main impact on the price of a pint is Government taxation. Some will be able to remember the days when the Chancellor’s decision to raise duty on beer in the annual Budget led to news headlines that beer would increase by 1p or 2p a pint. It was invariably more once that increase had worked its way through various middlemen, but the underlying point was that there was a fairly clear idea of how much a pint of beer cost and hence how much changing the tax would change it.

The Campaign for Real Ale still campaigns for a reduction on beer duty as much as health campaigners and temperance advocates push for minimum alcohol pricing. Certainly the tax on beer in the UK is amongst the highest in Europe, and it seems unlikely therefore that Brexit will have a helpful impact on it for beer drinkers

Yet the world is now more complex than the notion of the average cost of the average pint.

Most of this in one way or another amounts to regulation of the market – or lack of it – and as we shall it leads back to eighteenth century debates about a moral economy, one of whose key features was the concept of a ‘fair price’ for consumers and producers.

The debate about the price of a pint revolves around what is reasonable for drinkers to pay particularly in the age of the 1% public sector pay cap. But it also raises issues about how much profit, if any, pubs and pub companies should be making and how much a brewery should expect in terms of a financial return for the beer it brews.

This equation around price, profit and also supply and quality of the raw materials like malt and hops, was central to the work of the Assize of Ale.

The Assize, a local Court, met to fix the price of beer and its quality. Aletasters were used to visit each brewery, often small brewers, or before the nineteenth century, brewsters, and check beer before it was sold to customers.

The Assize would go into some detail about the appropriate price for a pint, depending on the cost of supply of essential ingredients such as malt and the type of beer being produced. A high quality stronger beer would be allowed to be sold at a higher price than a lower strength standard beer. Also taken into account was the view that the Brewster or Brewer should be allowed to make enough profit to allow their business to continue and to be able to live on, but no more.

How was this enforced? If Aletasters found an issue with quality or price then this was reported to the Assize and the offending brewer or Brewster was brought before the Court and fined. It might be argued that some regarded the fine as a necessary part of doing business the way they wanted to, particularly as surviving records in some areas indicate a level of frequent offenders.

The system broke down as market capitalism started to intrude on purely local brewing, with some more successful brewers supplying a numbers of pubs and the role of middlemen, or forestallers and regraters as they were sometimes termed, also becoming of increasing importance.

Yet the Assize, for the many issues that existed with it and how it functioned, did represent in principle the ideas that there should be a fair price to be paid for beer by the drinker and a fair profit, but no more, to be achieved by the brewer. For the many, not the few, as the slogan has it!