CAMRA - losing its Marbles?

It's been interesting to see the spat between Manchester's Marble Brewery and CAMRA, with Marble claiming that they were blacklisted from the Great British Beer Festival. According to the brewery, a Marble staff member was victim of a sexist remark by a CAMRA volunteer at Manchester Beer and Cider Festival (MBCF), in January 2016. The brewery e-mailed the festival organisers to resolve the matter and have subsequently said that they felt great headway had been made with this. They are now asserting that their complaint led to their being blacklisted at the Great British Beer Festival (GBBF). CAMRA has investigated and states there is no evidence to support such an allegation.

Ultimately, I've no idea who's right here, but I have not read of any demonstrable evidence of a link between these two incidents. Marble seems to saying: "We had this problem at the MBCF, and then we weren't selected for the GBBF - there must be a connection." Well, not necessarily.

I know there are people in CAMRA with sexist attitudes, just as there are in most walks of life; for example, a long time ago I used to know a union rep who thought it was okay for him to crack sexist and racist jokes, not a view most of us shared. Nowadays most people who do hold such crass attitudes usually know when to keep them to themselves, but occasionally some idiots don't, as seems to have happened at the MBCF. From the very few incidents in a CAMRA setting that I've been aware of, I know that the campaign generally takes them seriously.

As I see it, there are three possible scenarios here:

1. The brewery is mistaken: there is no link.
2. They are correct: they were blacklisted.
3. Publicly slagging off CAMRA is good publicity.

I don't know which is correct, although I tend to think point 3 is the least likely because such publicity is short term - next week's chip paper, in fact. In addition, to use an allegation of sexism for publicity purposes would downplay the seriousness of the complaint.

Bearing in mind that no brewery has an automatic right to be at the GBBF, and if one puts the suggestion of blacklisting aside for a moment, there are two possible explanations:

• There are lots of good beers that have to be left out simply because the GBBF cannot accommodate them all; Marble was just unlucky.
• Marble's beers simply weren't as good as the competition on this occasion.

Again, I don't know which applies. Any satisfactory resolution to this dispute seems unlikely in the near future, but I doubt anyone will gain by continuing it in public. There will have to be either an agreement to disagree or a permanent falling out, because this public war of words is going nowhere and benefits no one.