Suffolk Branch of CAMRA
Early Beginnings
By Rob Walters, Founder Chairman
Some
time in 2007 my friend Mervyn Lamacraft in Suffolk sent me a copy of
the local CAMRA magazine. He sent it because it had an article on the
early days of CAMRA in Suffolk, sort of commemorating its 33 and third
year anniversary. We were both there at the time so I knocked
up the following and sent it to the branch. Not sure whether it
appeared in the mag, but here it is, as I wrote it.
I can remember the very day that the branch was born. I had read
something about the formation of the campaign in a paper called Labour
Weekly (guess my affiliation at the time!) The article related the
goals of CAMRA and the fact that it was soon to hold it’s
first AGM. At that time I had two serious drinking friends: Mike and
Jim. We all liked Tolly bitter but faced with the growing use of carbon
dioxide pressure in pub after pub we had all found some technique for
getting rid of the stuff. I twirled my glass around rapidly to release
some of the gas, Mike demanded a cocktail stirrer and twirled that
around in his pint and Jim, very cleverly, ordered an extra glass and
poured his beer from one glass to another. But we all knew that this
was not the solution. We wanted the real stuff back, real ale from the
handpump or direct from the barrel – and CAMRA offered a way
of getting that.
So Mike Bennett and I set off by train from Ipswich to London, I had
called Labour Weekly and they told me that the AGM was at the Press
Club and specified its start time. Part the way through the journey we
realised that we were travelling on a presumption. I had not checked
that the meeting was to be in the Press Club, London. It could have
been in any city in the land! Fortunately it was in London –
phew.
It was not a big affair – I reckon that there were fifty or
so of us present. We just happened to sit next to a chap from Ipswich
– the only other person from Suffolk. His name was Ron Booth
and he worked for the local paper, the East Anglian Times, as a sub
editor.
The meeting was great, good campaigning stuff together with some
much-needed information about the topic that was so close to hearts and
stomachs – real ale. We knew so little in those days, just
that we liked the stuff, that keg was awful and that pressurisation
made the real stuff taste like keg. Enthused and thirsty we went off to
the Marquess of Anglesey to check that we really did like our ale real
and then, in our cups, the three of us vowed to start a branch of CAMRA
in Suffolk. Ron left early and Mike and I continued to check the ale
and then missed the last train home and so had to stay in London.
Our vows to start a branch could so easily have been forgotten in the
sober light of the following days, but they weren’t. With the
zeal of people robbed of a decent pint we set up our inaugural meeting
at the Rose and Crown in the Norwich Road – one of the best
Adnams pubs in Ipswich at that time - and the branch began.
Mike and I worked for BT in those days and consequently the core
membership was initially from there and the East Anglian Daily Times -
but it soon spread with early members such as Keith Froom, a solicitor
and Graham Hudson, a teacher. We also had good support from a group of
students from Essex University who joined us because there was no Essex
branch at that time. Soon we were having protest meeting with Tolly
Cobbold. The chief brewer at the time told me that the
‘product’ (i.e. beer) was best delivered to the
consumer (i.e. the drinker) via gas pressure to ensure consistent
‘quality’ (i.e. it didn’t go off as
quickly). Patrick Cobbold then took us to the Pin Mill, plied us with
drinks and fed us on jugged hare. This little bit of appeasement
didn’t work, we still wanted our beer back. And of course we
won. Through publicity, protests, letters to the press, beer walks and
regular trips to outlying pubs that kept the faith we, as part of the
national group, managed to reverse a sad and pernicious trend. And we
proved that consumer power can work.
I am still a member of CAMRA, though not an active one. I am better at
campaigning for lost causes than maintaining a victory. I have lost
touch with Ron Booth but recognise the essential role that he played in
the early days of the branch – we had excellent press
coverage due predominantly to his connections. Mike Bennett sadly died
a few years ago. We used to meet at the Oxford Beer Festival every year
and I miss him.
Oxford is my home city now, I am a tour guide here (yes, I do lead pub
tours) and an author. I look back at those early days of CAMRA with a
sense of pride and pleasure. As chairman one of my roles was to ensure
that we did not become an Adnams appreciation society – Greene
King and Tolly Cobbold were the real enemy then. Nowadays I feel that
the main problems lie in the changing nature of pubs and increasing
government legislation and corporate gerrymandering that diminishes
their essential independence. Of course maintaining the variety and
quality of real ale is still essential, but I am saddened by the
decline in good pubs with both character and characters in the Oxford
area. The turnover of licensees is ridiculously high and many good pubs
have closed in the decade that I have lived here. We have also lost the
only remaining brewery of any size (Morrells) and the neighbouring
Morlands.
Enough of the moaning. Well done for keeping the branch going so
successfully for 33 years, good luck for the future and hello to any of
the people that were around when we started the thing.