Death of a pub

"Borrowed" from the Liverpool Echo article,
which used a picture I'd taken without credit.

The Blundell Arms in Birkdale was for more than 30 years the home of the Bothy Folk Club of which I'm a resident singer. Regrettably, over many years the pub was run into the ground by the pubco and deteriorated from respectable street corner local to scruffy and, frankly, slightly dodgy dive. The Bothy was increasingly made to feel unwelcome, despite the amount of custom it brought in every Sunday night, and moved elsewhere. Finally, and perhaps inevitably, on 6 March 2016 the pub closed its doors for the final time.

Shortly afterwards, a campaign to convert it into a community pub was set up by Jason MacCormack and succeeded in gaining Asset of Community Value (ACV) status for it. The site on which the pub sits is large, and developers bought it to turn it into housing, leading to something of an impasse.

There the matter had remained until last weekend when, according to the Liverpool Echo, a huge fire swept through the building. The cause of the fire has not yet been announced, but empty buildings with no gas or electricity supply don't tend to go on fire spontaneously. I have read three different speculative explanations, although obviously I have no idea which is the right one:

• Vandalism.
• An accident by homeless people who, it has been said, were staying in the building.
• A convenient fire to scupper the community pub campaign.

The campaign has said it will try to get an estimate of the cost of repairing the fire damage to see whether they can still proceed, but even if they can, there's no doubt their task has become considerably harder. I wish them luck, but I fear it will soon be a building site.

Magic Mild Festival

As I wrote on 17 April, CAMRA Southport & West Lancs' contribution to 'May is Mild Month' is to run the Southport Mild Trail throughout May in conjunction with eight great local real ale pubs.

One of those pubs, the Grasshopper in Sandon Road, Hillside, will be taking the concept further and will be holding its own 'Magic Mild Festival' over the May bank holiday weekend, 3rd to 6th May. They will be offering eight different cask milds from various breweries including:

• Dunham Massey.
• Timothy Taylor.
• Salopian.
• Local breweries – Southport, Rock the Boat and George Wright.
• Moorhouses Black Cat.

The full range of blonde, golden and bitter beers will still be available as usual. There will also be music, a barbeque and Morris dancing.

Debating the future of pubs

An important debate is taking place in Parliament this Thursday, 7 February, in which MPs will be discussing the issues affecting beer and pubs and their valuable contribution to our society, economy and culture. MPs must stand up for the diminishing number of places in their constituencies where ordinary people can enter free of charge, meet their friends or make new ones, celebrate special events, watch sport, play darts, listen to music, have a meal prepared on the premises, or even just enjoy their own company – not forgetting, of course, savouring a pint of British real ale.

Following on from CAMRA's well-supported lobby of Parliament last October, members all over the country have recently been e-mailing their MPs about today's debate with the following demands:

• A preferential rate of duty on beer sold in pubs.
• Full reform of business rates to fix the unfair amount that pubs pay.
• Reforming the Pubs Code so that tenants get a fair deal. 

Let's hope enough MPs have got the message!

••••••••••••••••••••••••

Tax freezes on alcohol that CAMRA has been vigorously calling for came into effect last week on 1 February. Duty on beer, cider and spirits was frozen in the 2018 Autumn Budget. Duty on wine was left to rise with inflation and a higher rate was imposed upon 'white ciders'. The Treasury claims that a standard pint of beer is now 14p cheaper than if taxes had risen in line with inflation.

It's a welcome measure, not only because it helps protect the great British pub and pint, but also because it has saved at least 3,000 jobs that would have been lost if duty had gone up, according to an estimate by the British Beer and Pub Association.

Public Meeting To Save The Blundell Arms

The Blundell Arms on its final day of opening

The campaign to save the Blundell Arms in Birkdale, Southport, held a successful public meeting at Birkdale Conservative Club on Friday 30 November. An attentive audience listened to speakers discussing various aspects of the campaign, including the possibilities of success and the obstacles that still remain to be overcome. There were speeches from two of Southport's parliamentary candidates: Labour's Liz Savage and the LibDems' John Wright, both pledging support for the campaign. Three of us from CAMRA attended, and Mike Perkins addressed the meeting on behalf of the local branch. After the speeches, the meeting was opened to questions from the floor, some of which were quite searching.

While there is no doubt that in its final years the Blundell fell on bad times, the campaign is clear that they don't intend to return to that sorry period of the pub's existence. Instead they wish to recreate it as a community centre as well as a pub with plans that include a dementia café, a children's play area, food and a venue for functions.

My own memories of this pub come from attending the Bothy Folk Club there on most Sundays for 25 years until 2003 when the club moved. Until the final years, it had been a perfectly decent street corner local, sadly the kind of pub that is disappearing from our communities. I attended quite a few functions there myself, such as weddings, wakes and birthdays, including one of my own.

At the meeting, Jason McCormack stated that a video of the meeting is to be posted on the group's Facebook page: "The Blundell Arms Community Pub" - have a look for it. He also mentioned an on-line petition; I'll give details here when I get them.

AB InBev's anti-union aggression in India

HBLM members demanding union rights in Sonepat, India

AB InBev is known for many international brands, including Beck's, Budweiser, Castle Lager, Cerveza Corona, Hoegaarden, Leffe and Stella Artois.

Although for some time now the company has been attacking trade union rights at the brewery in Sonepat, about 27 miles north of Delhi in India, it has recently been escalating its anti-union pressure. In response, the union has since February been defending its members with a permanent protest at the factory gate.

For the past two years, local managers have refused to negotiate a collective bargaining agreement with the Haryana Breweries Limited Mazdoor Union (HBLM) and opted for repression, suspending active union members and dismissing four elected union leaders, including the president and the general secretary.

When selective victimisation failed to break the union's struggle for rights and recognition, management orchestrated a physical attack on a peaceful union protest on 28 April outside a Sonepat government office in which a union committee member was seriously injured. They then made a false complaint to the police against union members alleging assault; this resulted in the arrest of the union leaders who have since been released on bail.

AB InBev Sonepat workers and their families are continuing their 24-hour protest at the factory gate in support of their right to union recognition and collective bargaining free from harassment and victimisation. Send a message to AB InBev, insisting they reinstate all HBLM union leaders and members, withdraw the false assault allegations, recognise the union and negotiate in good faith.

And once you've signed, why not boycott AB InBev products?

Reopen the Blundell Fun Day

As part of the campaign to reopen the closed Blundell Arms as a pub for all the community, there will be a street party-style Fun Day in the pub's grounds on Saturday 2 September. From midday, there will be food, stalls, games and attractions for kids of all ages. In the evening between 18:00 and 21:00, there will be live acoustic music from singers from the Bothy Folk Club, which met in the pub for 38 years, Babs from Fag Ash Lil, and rock band Restless Angels, with possibly others. The event is to show support for the project to reopen the pub and to have an enjoyable and memorable day towards the end of the school summer holidays. It's free and open to everyone. The Blundell Arms is in Upper Aughton Road, Birkdale, Southport.

Health benefits of moderate drinking

I've just written this for the CAMRA column in our local papers, the Southport Visiter and the Ormskirk Advertiser. They've published a few 'campaigning' articles from me among the pub reviews (another one was about the lack of real science behind alcohol units), and I've been expecting a backlash from local anti-alcohol busybodies. I'm pleased to say there has been none, not so far anyway. They're local papers, not the national media, but as Tesco tells us, every Lidl helps!

The British Medical Journal (BMJ) has published a study that found moderate drinkers have a lower risk of heart attack, angina and heart failure when compared to teetotallers. They discovered that lifelong non-drinkers have a 24% higher mortality rate than moderate drinkers, and that the death rate among former drinkers is even higher. The study involved nearly two million people.

CAMRA national chairman Colin Valentine responded: "The study published in the BMJ, which shows that moderate alcohol consumption, such as a pint of real ale in the pub, is good for the heart is just the latest piece of research that demonstrates the benefits associated with moderate drinking.

"While no one would disagree that excessive consumption of alcohol causes harm, there is a long list of scientific evidence that shows moderate alcohol consumption can have a positive impact on people’s personal and physical well-being.

"It is heartening to see this story covered by the media among the current atmosphere of increasing alcohol ‘scare stories’ and misreporting of alcohol research. We hope this study will go some way towards helping people make informed choices about how they consume alcohol in the future."

These findings follow a report in January this year that moderate and low-alcohol consumption could improve people’s personal and mental well-being. Researchers at the University of Oxford combined data from three separate studies, including a national survey by CAMRA, and demonstrated that people who visit their pub frequently tended to be more "socially engaged and contented" with their local community than those who did not.

At a time when most studies on alcohol focus on the health and anti-social behavioural problems caused by over-consumption, this study explained that: "Alcohol is known to trigger the endorphin system, and the social consumption of alcohol may thus have the same effect as the many other social activities such as laughter, singing and dancing."

The Snowball keeps rolling

Wrong kind of Snowball

I wrote in May this year about the CAMRA Liverpool Branch's Snowball initiative to bring new people to real ale by organising events where female CAMRA members would bring a woman friend to try out real ale. Snowball received the first national CAMRA Membership Initiative Award in 2012. I also wrote that the current branch committee had decided to discontinue Snowball, regarding it as no more than a women's drinking club.

Undaunted, the team behind Snowball has decided to carry on regardless. On Monday 14 November, an event took place at the Pen Factory on Hope Street, Liverpool. Paddy Byrne and his staff opened the pub specially for the occasion: they don't usually open on Monday. As well as encouraging people to sample the good range of real ales on offer, the evening also featured a talk by Geraldine Roberts-Stone. Her talk, titled 'No Woman’s Land', covered the role of World War II and pubs in relation to the advancement of women’s rights in that era, partly through the story of a woman poet; this was followed by a lively discussion on women's experiences of pubs in Liverpool. More than forty women attended, including 12 who were new to Snowball and some of them new to beer.

Drinkers club or campaigning tool? There are more than 125 women on the Snowball mailing list, with attendances of more than forty for events. More pertinently, close to 30 women have chosen to join CAMRA as a result of involvement with Snowball, while others have taken to real ale without joining.

I'm pleased that the Snowball women have decided to carry on with something that they consider to be much more than merely a female drinking club. I know them all and can vouch for their genuine commitment to this project. May the Snowball continue to roll and gather more momentum.

My only regret is that I wasn't able to attend this particular event (not being of the qualifying gender) as it sounded rather interesting.

CAMRA mission statement 1972

"Feeling bitter about your pint?" was the headline over this extract from the very first Good Beer Guide produced by the Campaign for the Revitalisation of Ale in November 1972. It wasn't a professionally published volume, just eighteen sheets of paper stapled together and posted out to members. It states that the Campaign supports "a really good pint" (the term "real ale" hadn't yet been coined) and the premises where it's served, and pledges to "fight against the spread of all pressurised and keg-type beers and harmful takeovers". The first properly printed GBG was published in 1974. 

The address of CAMRA's first HQ in Salford was in fact the home of founder Graham Lees's mother. Annual subs were 50p (about £6 now).

"Tanked up yobs"

Authentic front page, but for one minor amendment

When I began this blog in March 2009, one of the first links I installed was to the Hillsborough Justice Campaign: as someone born in Liverpool, I have always felt strongly about this terrible disaster, and the terrible injustice that followed. How the Establishment seriously thought that Liverpool would eventually just shut up and go away, I do not know. I can only guess that, not only do they not understand Liverpool, but they also don't understand ordinary human nature. A sense of injustice does not fade away in time: if anything, the opposite is true.

To remain true to the themes of this blog, I will concentrate on one specific aspect of the matter; alcohol. All other aspects are - at last - being covered thoroughly elsewhere.

In the immediate aftermath of the disaster when the dead were in the improvised morgue, the injured were in hospital and the traumatised supporters were making their way home, the first priority of senior police officials was to find a scapegoat. They knew they had badly mishandled the situation, but this was only four years after the miners' strike when most of the the media had stood shoulder to shoulder with the government in demonising a workforce that only wanted to save its jobs and protect its communities. They must have felt confident they could cover this one up too, and what better to blame than booze?

95 of the 96 dead were tested for alcohol, including children: the 96th victim didn't die until four years later. Police photographers were sent out to photograph litter bins, rubbish in the road, and even motorway verges, to find 'evidence' in the form of discarded beer bottles and cans that Liverpool supporters were drunk. Stories were leaked to the press which uncritically followed the party line of blaming drunken hordes for causing the crush and behaving disgracefully; in particular, the claim that "Some fans urinated on the brave cops" immediately - and quite deliberately - suggests people who have had a skinful.

The Establishment went into overdrive to protect its own:

• Papers released by the Hillsborough Independent Panel show that Thatcher ordered the Government’s response to the Taylor Report in August 1989 to be toned down to avoid criticising South Yorkshire Police.
• In 1996 Bernard Ingham wrote to Liverpool fan Graham Skinner: "Who if not the tanked up yobs who turned up late determined to get into the ground caused the disaster? To blame the police, even though they may have made mistakes, is contemptible."
• Boris Johnson wrote in 2004 that, while Hillsborough was a tragedy, "that is no excuse for Liverpool's failure to acknowledge, even to this day, the part played in the disaster by drunken fans at the back of the crowd who mindlessly tried to fight their way into the ground that Saturday afternoon."

Thus it can be seen that the myth of the drunken fans turning up late, demanding to get in without tickets, creating a dangerous crush and, ultimately, causing the disaster itself was firmly established. Johnson's and Ingham's comments were made even though though the Taylor Report had previously exonerated the fans of blame in 1990. As recently as the last couple of years, lawyers for South Yorkshire Police at the Warrington inquest deliberately repeated the myth that fans' drunken bad behaviour was in some way a contributory factor: fortunately the truth had by then become undeniable, the fans were exonerated again, and the deaths ruled unlawful.

The 70s and 80s were full of stories about drunken football hooliganism, and there was undoubtedly plenty of it at the time. The fact that hooligans were only ever a tiny percentage of fans as a whole didn't deter the media from blaming the many for the actions of the few. Against that background, it is easy to see how the Establishment's Hillsborough myth, based on the fiction of a drunken mob, took root so firmly. 

Conclusion: I have often read in the press a shocked 'explanation' for violence or other criminal behaviour that some offender had been on a 10 or 12 hour drinking spree. Anti-alcohol campaigners regularly make assertions, often with extremely dodgy 'evidence', about the level of antisocial behaviour caused by alcohol. Back in 1989, people were then, as they still are now, attuned to associate drinking with violence and disorder. The Hillsborough myth both tapped into that prejudice and propagated it further, and in doing so condemned the bereaved to suffer for 27 years. That prolonged agony must be the greatest injustice of them all.

A personal note: I went to the Blood Tub beer festival last week, and later went on to my local. After the equivalent of a 10 hour session, I walked home safely, locked my front door after me, took out my contact lenses, hung my clothes on the chair and went to bed. If the media were right about alcohol, I should have been an out-of-control, violent yob. For the record, I don't follow football, but I do care about injustice.

Not a conspiracy after all ... probably

Yesterday I logged onto the Morning Advertiser website where I saw a link to an article by Pete Brown, the beer writer, on the subject of the deceptive figures that are frequently quoted by anti-alcohol campaigners. It is a subject he has written about a number of times before. However, when I clicked on the link, I was faced by a blank page. I logged out several times and logged back in with the same result. I wondered whether the Morning Advertiser had censored the article, or - worse - removed it under pressure.

When I decided to check the website today, I found that the link now worked, although I think it was less prominent than yesterday. Nonetheless it is there after all, previously hidden by a glitch (I presume), therefore a cock-up rather than a conspiracy. I do find it a bit of a coincidence that it happened to that particular article, one that the anti-alcohol brigade would utterly loathe because it blows their fallacious arguments out of the water. It's definitely worth a look, Pete's main point being that the £21 billion figure for the cost of alcohol to society keeps on being quoted across all our news media without ever being examined. Click here to see the article - while you still can!

Drinkers ignore recommended limits (yawn!)

More tut-tutting from the anti-alcohol campaigners: apparently around 2.5 million people drink more than the new weekly recommend units of alcohol in a single day, according to the Office of National Statistics. I'm really quite surprised, astonished even, that this is news to anyone.

I can only conclude that the anti-alcoholics really do lead sheltered lives, because they don't realise why people consistently ignore their advice and drink over the recommended limits. Well, I'll tell them: hardly anyone believes in the units - I've certainly never met anyone who has told me that they take them seriously.

Although statistically you are 25% more likely to be knocked down when crossing the road than get cancer through drinking, these campaigners don't push for greater road safety for pedestrians, despite the greater risks and the fact that losing a loved one to a road accident would surely be as devastating as to illness.

They keep on using the term 'hard science', but as I explained here in January, there is little real science to justify the recommended units. The fact that the government pays Alcohol Concern, a supposedly independent charity, to lobby the - er - government is somewhat a dishonest and scandalous misuse of taxpayers' money.

What a tedious bunch they are!

ACV - safeguard or fig leaf?

Sorry for the lapse in postings; I don't like to leave things so long but, as I said on 31 October, I've had recurring minor ailments that have made me feel generally under the weather since September. On the mend now, though.

I've just noticed an item in the Morning Advertiser that may well be a significant setback to CAMRA's strategy of campaigning for pubs to be granted Asset of Community Value (ACV) status. Woking Council has revoked the ACV status of the Star Inn in Wych Hill, Surrey, and has granted permission for it to be turned into a Co-op supermarket. They said that a local community group had failed to show that it had community value as a pub, citing an e-mail from one councillor that stated that the pub had deteriorated with licensees who "tended to cater to younger, rowdy, non-residents of the local area."

The residents said that they'd like the Star to become a gastropub as it was the only place that could provide food, drink and accommodation in the area, which - they added - was already well served by supermarkets. The council replied that another supermarket could also become a valued local asset.

So there you have it. While I know that no one has claimed that obtaining ACV status conclusively and permanently saves a pub, I do feel it may have been relied upon rather more than it merited; it is merely a tool in the process of saving a pub, not the final result. As with so many campaigning issues, it is a mistake to assume a success is permanently in the bag: you often have to fight for things over and over again.

The only other thought that occurs to me is that if the good people of Wych Hill had made greater use of the pub before it became at risk, perhaps it would not have come to this. Use them or lose them.

Has CAMRA had its day?

We found little to smile about in
Greenall Whitley pubs in the 70s.

Does CAMRA have a purpose any more? It seems that I've been reading articles and blog posts on this theme almost since I first joined CAMRA in 1985. At their least contentious, they say that there are now loads of different real ales from a record number of breweries, so it's job done. Others, often written with a 'more in sorrow than in anger' tone, prefer to twist the knife. They went to a CAMRA meeting once, and found a load of bearded weirdos who were loud about their likes and dislikes, while ignoring outsiders, which is usually interpreted as a deliberate snub. Everyone else in the pub was apparently annoyed by the CAMRA types, and the writer concludes by shaking the dust from their feet and swearing never to attend a meeting again. This attitude has recently been astutely parodied in the Seeing The Lizards blog. Another group of detractors are a vocal minority from the 'craft' beer tendency who don't like the Campaign because it won't endorse a beer type that doesn't fit CAMRA's definition of real ale. This is a bit like ranting against the Cat's Protection League because it won't take in dogs.

Beer font? Or the headstone
over many lost breweries?

I am not an undiscerning member of CAMRA, and I have criticised the organisation quite a few times here. I do, however, take issue with suggestions that the Campaign is now redundant, or even that it's insular and exclusive. CAMRA members are not all of a type, no more than the members of any other voluntary mass membership organisation, although there are always those who do fit the stereotype. To present an analogy: Lefties often stereotype Tories, but in my years of local political activity on the Left, I have come across local Conservatives who are likeable people who, in their own way, want to do the best for the local community. From my perspective they're misguided, of course, but the point remains. Reality is always much more multi-layered and complicated than simplistic generalisations suggest - it's also much more interesting. CAMRA is no exception to this. Most CAMRA members don't go round boorishly taking over pubs, insulting lager drinkers and demanding privileges from licensees. Even more shockingly, most male CAMRA members I know don't even have beards. But recycling these myths provides sufficient excuse for some of these writers to feel justified in not playing a more active role in the Campaign. If you don't want to be involved, fine, but don't justify that by peddling hackneyed misconceptions.

The mainstay of
1970's parties

Is the Campaign's work done? We have a record number of breweries and most pubs not only sell real ale, but many have a good selection on offer. We've become so accustomed to this that people sometimes turn their noses up at selections of 'the usual suspects', forgetting that in the 70s and 80s we would have been delighted with such offerings. The snobby attitude to Wetherspoons is a good example of this: when I was a student in 1970s Warrington, we would have thought we'd gone to heaven if we'd come across a pub like Wetherspoons. I recall in the 1980s finding myself in a pub in Hampshire which had six real ales on handpump, mostly from the Gales range. I thought it was wonderful, but today there are some who would turn up their noses because of the lack of variety. 

This is all good, isn't it? Yes, of course, but in the long term there can be little room for complacency. The number of brewers is constantly increasing, but the market is shrinking: pubs continue to close, and beer consumption overall is going down. At some point, these two contradictory pressures must collide, resulting in many small brewers closing, though a few may be taken over by bigger concerns. In ten or twenty years' time, we may look back on the present situation as a golden age. Campaigning to save pubs is a logical response to this problem, because fewer pubs will mean less cask beer, the growth of micro-pubs notwithstanding. Those who short-sightedly argue that CAMRA has no business campaigning for pubs should bear that in mind.

In general, no advances can ever be taken for granted: what was hard fought for can be lost again. The current attacks on workers' rights, the trade union movement, the NHS and the benefit system bear testament to that. Whether or not you agree with such measures is irrelevant: the point is that nothing can be seen as safely in the bag. Progress is not inevitable. In the case of real ale, there are many threats that I've covered many times before, so here is a brief reminder of some of them in no particular order:

• Attacks by the anti-alcohol brigade, aka the health lobby.
• Predatory property companies buying up pubs for redevelopment.
• Debt-ridden pub companies overcharging tenants and redeveloping sites to offset debts.
• Punitive tax levels.

The Plough, Southport, in the
process of being demolished.

There is also the fact that multinational beer corporations want to move in on the market that is currently dominated by micro and regional breweries. I can see nothing that would prevent a repeat of the infamous Whitbread Tour of Destruction which swallowed up so many local brews, replacing them with Whitbread 'Big Head' Trophy Bitter, the deluded pint that thought it was a quart. Sharps and Meantime have already been hoovered up, and I have no doubt that other breweries are currently being eyed up for takeover. A proliferation of new small breweries suggests our beer scene is healthy but it can do little to combat such threats, whereas a campaign of 174,690 members has more of a chance.

The Sir Henry Segrave (JDW), Southport.
If only we'd had pubs like this in the 70s.

CAMRA is often dismissed as just a drinking club. This may be true for some members, and the Wetherspoons vouchers are often cited as proof of this, but most members that I know did not join for the vouchers. Another shocking fact: quite a lot of members don't use their tokens. In addition, I've known even 'drinking club' members become activated when faced with a threat to something dear to them, such as a local brewery or much-loved pub. If there's nothing local to campaign on, they are keeping a network of local branches going so that if a campaign is needed at any time, the structures are already in place. Okay, it might take a bomb to get some people moving, but it's massively better than trying to build a campaign from scratch in the future, should one be needed.

CAMRA's list of some of its successes can be found here - link provided to save me just repeating what they say - and some of these are recent, which refutes the suggestion that the Campaign no longer has a purpose. Many attempts to rubbish CAMRA are motivated by people who are hostile, often with agenda of their own, such as talking up 'craft' beer, and decrying real ale as old hat. CAMRA is not perfect, but then neither is any other mass membership organisation. I should know: I've belonged to quite a few over the years. Despite the fact that I sometimes get impatient or annoyed with certain things in the Campaign, I'll stick with it. People who sit around waiting for the perfect organisation that suits them in absolutely every respect will end up belonging to nothing. For me, this one is still worth belonging to.

References to craft beer advocates in this article refer to a partisan vocal minority. Most drinkers, whether of real ale, craft beers or both, are tolerant and don't mind what others choose to drink.

CAMRA accepts 30 pieces of silver

It's Cask Ale Week, apparently. I can't say I would have noticed, except that I received a gushing e-mail from CAMRA promoting it. They point out that the 'week' runs from 24 September to 4 October, helpfully explaining that this is 10 days, although it's 11 by my reckoning.

There's a free pint promotion from Punch Taverns, although you have to have an internet enabled smartphone to access the offer. That doesn't bother me too much. The fact that CAMRA is promoting a Punch Taverns offer does.

Last month Punch agreed to sell 158 pubs to New River, a property company with a record of converting pubs to other uses. This sale included the Roscoe Head in Liverpool, one of only five pubs in every Good Beer Guide, and the only one north of Cambridge. I've written about this issue and the local campaign on 31 August, 6 September, and 13 September.

My question is: why is CAMRA promoting an offer by a pub company that is no real friend of the Campaign, whose record with pubs is scarcely exemplary and who has put a cherished local at risk? It's a punch in the face for local campaigners who are trying to prevent or limit the damage this business is causing.

Roscoe Head demo

Carol Ross heads the demo outside her pub
(click on the picture to enlarge it)

Big day in Liverpool yesterday for the Roscoe Head with a demo in the street supporting this threatened pub (I've written twice about this issue recently on the 31 August and the 6 September). Liverpool CAMRA had called the demo, and it was attended by its own members, along with members from neighbouring branches - six from my branch, Southport and West Lancs - pub regulars and some representatives of the media.

The street had been blocked off for the occasion, and I was pleased that two Liverpool councillors addressed the event; it's good to see local politicians recognise the significance of pubs like the Roscoe Head to the community and to the attractiveness of Liverpool as a destination for visitors.

I had known that the pub was one of only five to be in every Good Beer Guide, but was surprised to learn it is the only one north of Cambridge. Copies of CAMRA local magazine, Mersey Ale, were waved in the air for the cameras, along with letters of protest to be signed and sent to the boss of New River, the property company buying this pub from Punch Taverns.

When it was all over, most of us went indoors with the altruistic aim of boosting the pub's profits, although quite a few stayed outside in the street to enjoy their pints in the sunny weather. If there's a better way of showing this pub's popularity, I can't think of it.

Here again is the petition to Liverpool City Council to list the pub as an Asset of Community Value (ACV), and here is the report of the event in the Liverpool Echo.

P.S. I hear that the council as agreed the ACV, although this is subject to the agreement of the Land Registry.

If you want to write to New River, you can click on this letter, save it on your own computer and print it off. Don't forget to add your own name and address.

National Beer Day?

I see from my What's Brewing (WB) that 15 June was National Beer Day; apparently there was a national "cheers to beer" with drinkers raising their glasses to beer in pubs throughout the land at 12.15pm, the exact time, according to WB, when the Magna Carta was signed. I've completely missed all of this, and if I'd realised, I might well have decided to go to the pub and join in just for fun. Well, it would have been a good excuse.

First of all, the time: WB has cocked up here. Time wasn't standardised across the country until the coming of the railways, and it certainly wasn't so precisely measured 800 years ago that we can say something had happened at exactly 12.15pm. The 12.15pm time is obviously to reflect the year the Magna Carta was signed: 1215 AD, which is a bit embarrassing for our leading real ale newspaper.

Secondly, the relevance of the Magna Carta is that article 35 states:

Let there be throughout our kingdom a single measure for wine and a single measure for ale and a single measure for corn, namely the London quarter and one width of cloth, whether dyed, russet or halberjet, namely two ells within the selvedges. Let it be the same as with weights as with measures.

Yes, it mentions beer, but it's not really about beer; it's about weights and measures, but that's okay too because it shows that CAMRA magazines printing the contact details of local trading standards have an 800 year old precedent.

I don't mind campaigns like this and "Let There Be Beer", even if I do think the latter is a bit naff, because they depict beer as something normal and not a scourge on society causing uncontrolled mayhem and disorder. I just wonder how far the general public were aware of National Beer Day when someone like me who is interested in real ale completely missed it?

Go Sober For October

What a strange nation we are. We enjoy various indulgences, but then meekly accept being directly or, in the case of Go Sober In October, indirectly harangued for doing so. Go Sober is a health campaign with a difference, as its aim is to raise money for Macmillan Cancer Support, undoubtedly a worthwhile charity. The Go Sober website is mostly devoid of the moralistic disapproval of the likes of Alcohol Concern, and I see that it's nicely timed to avoid the build up to the Christmas season: I wouldn't have put any money on Go Sober In December succeeding. I shan't be joining in, but I don't have much of a problem with this particular campaign.

In contrast, we have Dry January, which is run by Alcohol Concern. Same idea, and you are invited to "become a Dry January fundraiser, and help make a difference to the lives of those affected by alcohol harm." The website is fairly coy about the recipient of your money, but with a little digging I confirmed what I expected: all the money goes to Alcohol Concern itself. I wrote about this supposed charity most recently on 7 September, saying among other things: "The fact that Alcohol Concern is itself almost entirely financed from public funds completes the circle whereby the government squanders our money to pay a pressure group [i.e. Alcohol Concern] to lobby that selfsame government." Not the behaviour you'd get from a responsible and respected charity such as Macmillan.

What I do wonder is how effective dry months really are. The likelihood is that some participants will have a quick binge before the dry period, and if they last the course, another to celebrate their success, which will surely negate some of the health benefits of abstention. On the other hand, I doubt a Take It Easy In October campaign would raise much money.

If you want to give up booze for charity, I'd go for October and support a very good cause, although there is of course nothing to stop you supporting it anyway.

Have we won the real ale war?

"The battle for real ale has been won. We must now turn our attentions to saving our pubs!" says CAMRA's Greater London regional director, reported by Geraldine Rolfe in What's Brewing, the campaign's newspaper. It's an interesting thought, but is it true?

It is true that we have a highest percentage of pubs selling real ale in decades, and that the range of real ales available in most localities is greater than at any time since the rise of the big brewing companies. I know individual pubs that have a greater range of real ales than some towns did in the 1970s. Despite all that, I am not convinced by the Greater London regional director's assertion.

Firstly, real ale and pubs are inextricably entwined. You can't have the first without the second. I know there are bottled real ales, but they constitute a very small percentage of total real ale sales. It's obvious, therefore, that a threat to pubs is a threat to real ale.

Secondly, there are communities where the only significant real ale provision is in Wetherspoons. Such communities are not enjoying the benefits of winning the battle for real ale.

Thirdly, it is a naïve campaigner who assumes that a victory, once achieved, can be treated as being in the bag and therefore no longer in need of attention.

Pinning our hopes of saving pubs by getting planning regulations tightened up is to miss several points. While there are a few exceptions, most pubs that are converted to other uses were not previously thriving. Why not? I wrote three years ago:

In no particular order, the causes of problems for pubs include:

• Beer taxes rising by more than the rate of inflation. 
• Pub companies overcharging their tenants for rent and supplies (including drinks).
• Falling beer sales overall (except for real ale ~ just).
• Cut-price drink in supermarkets.
• Sophisticated home entertainment systems.
• Changes in drinking habits, with young people increasingly going to their preferred bars and clubs, and less to what they call “old men’s” pubs.
• More choices of places to drink, such as bars, restaurants, hotels and clubs.
• The recession, leaving people with less cash and either unemployed or worried they might be.
• Rising costs for brewers (e.g. raw materials) and pubs (e.g. utility bills).
• The smoking ban.
• Tougher drink-drive enforcement.* 

* By this, I really meant the increasing pressure against driving within the legal limit.

To these I'd now add: 

• Pub companies deliberately running pubs down to the point when they become unviable. Most people don't want to sit in a dingy pub that hasn't seen a lick of paint this millennium.
• Draconian under-age drinking laws, resulting in the next generation of drinkers developing drinking habits unlinked to pubs.

Even if CAMRA achieved exactly what it wanted with planning regulations, none of these factors would be addressed. Changing the planning regulations is not the cure, in the same way that the 2p cut in beer duty has not, as far as I can see, saved a single pub. If pubs aren't safe, neither is real ale.

No gains can be taken for granted. Most people have a lot less disposable income than they did four years ago and alcohol consumption is in decline. If the government decided to introduce an adverse change to beer taxation, perhaps even a reduction or abolition of Progressive Beer Duty, many micro-brewers would close. It's not impossible that anti-alcohol campaigners could gain even more influence on government policy. The corrosive effects of all the factors I've listed above may become more pronounced. 

My aim with this post has been to explain why I believe real ale's apparently healthy situation is more precarious than it looks and that it wouldn't take much to send it into decline. It's certainly true that the current proliferation of micro-breweries cannot be maintained if the outlets for their products continue to close. At some point, the latter will impact upon the former. Overall, I do not share the complacency of CAMRA's Greater London regional director. CAMRA should stop finding a "Reason of the Month" for pub decline and take a more holistic view if it doesn't wish to look like it is clutching at straws when determining campaigning priorities.

Priory a local priority

Picture from campaign website

The Priory Hotel in Litherland is a pub I occasionally went into when I had a temporary job in social services in Bootle a long time ago; I think it was a Tetley house in those days. I recall on one occasion a disgruntled social worker who had lost his brief case earlier in the day arriving in the pub with it in pieces. Someone had reported finding a suspicious object and it had been blown up. Apparently the Beatles drank in there on the 20+ occasions they played at Litherland Town Hall, just 150 yards away.

The pub closed last year and was bought by Adactus Housing, but the council refused planning permission for its conversion into flats after a successful campaign by a community action group which plans to make the Priory the first community-run pub in Merseyside. They need £400,000 to buy the pub, having raised £170,000 so far and applied for grants to help bridge the gap.

CAMRA keeps on encouraging local branches and members to oppose pub closures by having them declared as assets of community value under Part 5 Chapter 3 of the Localism Act 2011. That's all very well, but such applications cannot really succeed unless there is evidence that the community actually values its pub, as in Litherland. Here in Southport, Mike Perkins of local CAMRA has done sterling work in applying for ACVs but in each case the council has refused; this is the same council that has said yes in Litherland, so our failure is not a result of municipal stonewalling.

Opposing a pub closure is an uphill battle. The owner can easily produce accounts to demonstrate how the use, and therefore profitability, of a pub has been in decline, which tends to pull the rug from under any argument that the community values it. There are many reasons why pubs decline, and I don't intend to list them here, except for one: deliberate neglect of a pub by its owner to discourage custom and thus provide an excuse to close it - in other words, a process of managed decline. Some closed pubs around here certainly hadn't had a penny spent upon them for years, other than for essential maintenance. Pub owners know that, with the price of pub drinks nowadays, customers won't want to spend their hard-earned cash in a dingy room that hasn't seen a lick of paint this side of the millennium.

My view is that CAMRA centrally is being oversimplistic with its exhortation simply to get a threatened pub declared an ACV. There is the risk that, if local people keep on trying this and get knocked back too often, they will lose heart. With the best will in the world, CAMRA can't do this alone: genuine community support is needed, and that is the really hard bit. If you can't show you've got that, your chances of stopping a pub being redeveloped are slim.