As the Campaign starts working towards its Members’ Weekend, AGM & Conference 2025 in Torquay, What’s Brewing rounds up what happened this year in Dundee.
Below is national chairman Nik Antona’s address in video and text.
Good afternoon, Conference.
What a pleasure it is to be back in Dundee and in this magnificent hall.
I hope you have all found some time at lunch to listen to the recital from Timara Easter, who has been showcasing the brilliant acoustics by playing the organ. I want to start by thanking Colin and the Local Organising Committee for their hard work in hosting us this weekend.
Last time we were here, I know that some of the local hostelries were drank dry of cask beer – I’m hoping we are all aspiring to the same or better this year, as we raise a glass to 50 years of CAMRA in Scotland.
Much in keeping with our return to this venue, this year has seen us return to long-standing campaigns and principles as our pub stock, and our consumer rights, have come under increasing threat. Today, I am going to talk to you on those themes, on the past year, and on the challenges in the next.
We’ve made great strides forward in places, but it’s been peppered with frustrations and tough decisions in others. The licensed trade continues to be under immense strain – energy costs, inflation, the cost-of-living crisis, and a lack of meaningful reforms from government. We continue to campaign to support them, and we continue to innovate to deliver a better Campaign for you, our wider membership, and for consumers.
In August last year, I looked on in sorrow as images of the burnt-out shell of the Crooked House were splashed across the news. Then, just days later, that sorrow turned to anger as it became clear that the remaining shell of the building had been torn down unlawfully. This was a despicable act of vandalism, and an attempt to remove any hopes of the building being restored to its former glory.
Our response was swift. We have published our data on unlawful conversions and demolitions, met with the housing and planning minister and local MPs about the case, and worked with the mayor of the West Midlands to apply for statutory listings for other heritage pubs.
Our data comes from our network of pub data coordinators and members of the public that take the time to submit updates. Those listing applications are being ably handled by expert volunteers. At all points in our campaigning, our Pub and Club Campaigns Committee, Pub Heritage Group, Planning Advisory Group, and our pub data volunteers have been on the case, providing information and advice. I’m sure you will join me in thanking them now.
The outpouring of public support over the Crooked House was wonderful to witness, but it should never have been needed. Since 2017, developers have continued to flout the hard-won planning protections for pubs in England. This is a scandal.
Harsher punishments are needed to deter cowboy developers, including creating a specific offence of illegal demolition of a pub, and giving local authorities stronger planning enforcement options. Shockingly, planning protections in England are still stronger than in Wales, and here in Scotland.
Planning loopholes continue to allow pubs to be demolished without planning permission, and in Wales many conversions are also classed as permitted development. This is the next fight we must take to the Scottish and Welsh governments – and is an important flank of our pub campaigning this year.
In Northern Ireland, we have a very different fight. Our brilliant NI branch are battling against archaic licensing laws, severely restricted consumer choice and more often than not, a lack of government to lobby about it. Happily, the assembly and executive are back up and running. We now have plans for campaigning on reforms to the new Producer’s licence, and the abolition of the “surrender principle” which fixes the number of licences available for pubs, bars, and off-licences.
So, from licensing laws that date from 1902, to our own efforts to ensure our digital presence is cutting edge and providing for the modern-day consumer. Our Digital Futures project continues at pace, with a coordinating team led ably by Ash Corbett-Collins. Our in-house development team has been busy delivering on that programme of work.
This includes updates to our brewery information database Pilgrim and scoping out requirements for its cider and perry equivalent, Pippin. FOCUS, the new online platform for festival business plans, will replace the old Excel-based spreadsheets and allow closer collaboration between organisers and assessors.
Paladin, a bespoke e-campaigning tool, begins development later this year and will replace our current e-lobbying tool which I hope you all know well from emailing your elected representatives about planning, draught duty relief and business rates.
The CAMRA Experience is a new platform to replace our public-facing website. It streamlines and improves the way that consumers can find good-quality pubs, clubs, and pints online. It combines the features of the several standalone websites that we have developed over time, and provides a user-friendly experience, with integration to our events and ticketing platform for festivals.
Today, I’m delighted to offer everyone the chance to see the new website for yourselves, ahead of the official soft launch on Wednesday. Scan the QR code on the screen, or use the link provided to access the new platform. Please browse during the weekend, maybe over a pint in the Members’ Bar, and give feedback using the survey on the site itself.
The team are making constant improvements to improve the user experience based on feedback, and further features and integrations are in the pipeline. This is just the start of a development roadmap, which will provide greater opportunities for membership recruitment and volunteer activation – watch this space.
But along with the excitement of new projects, we have also had to make some tough calls. Catherine Tonry and the Great British Beer Festival Working Party had to make the difficult decision to take a hiatus from the festival this year. While we never like to cancel events that bring us together and showcase the best of the Campaign, we simply could not go ahead with the terms that Olympia were able to offer us. Adam Gent, the new chair of the Working Party, has been working hard on plans for next year, and our festival assessors are looking forward to receiving a business plan and budget to scrutinise.
In the last few years, we have also taken an honest look at our publishing strategy. Aided by Alan Murphy, our commissioning editor, we have transformed our approach to how we commission and publish books. We have moved from publishing several deep-dive titles that appeal to our core membership to a smaller selection of titles that approach a subject with a broader brushstroke.
This in turn attracts a wider audience to introduce to CAMRA and our campaigning. The approach can be summed us “fewer, bigger, better” and is starting to return dividends in sales, innovation, and in critical acclaim. Data from Neilson showed that CAMRA Books was the most significant and successful publisher of books on beer, cider, and pubs in 2021-23.
Desi Pubs by David Jesudason won Beer Book of the Year at the Guild of Beer Writers Annual Awards, with Cask by Des De Moor coming a highly commended second. Both are the result of our new publishing strategy.
In March, we celebrated International Women’s Day with the publication of The Devil’s in the Draught Line’ by Dr Christina Wade. A much-needed title to dispel some tired myths about women’s brewing history, and showing that at all points in time, women have been present and integral to the brewing process.
Our next title, Perry: A Drinker’s Guide, comes out this week and coincides with Cider and Perry Month. This is a world first – a perry book written for consumers and funded by consumers through a Kickstarter campaign – authored by Adam Wells of Cider Review. The Kickstarter model allows us to publish titles that are important for our campaigning and can showcase up-and-coming authors with bold ideas.
With Desi Pubs now nominated in the Fortnum and Mason Food and Drinks Awards, and Perry and Devil in the Draught Lines eligible for the guild and Fortnum Awards this year, we’re hoping for more successes for our brilliant authors and our publications.
But some of our progress has felt it has been considerably longer in the making. After a long and tedious delay while the pub companies and global brewers tried – and roundly failed – to mount legal challenges, we finally have news on a Pubs Code and adjudicator for Scotland.
Earlier this month we got the news that implementation will go ahead. I noted at the time of the announcement – and with a wry smile – that the Scottish Beer and Pub Association declared that the code “will not be welcomed by the majority of pub owners, tenants and customers”.
Well Conference, we are here to tell them that the consumers in this hall, and at bars across Scotland, roundly disagree. A code and adjudicator for Scotland is a long-awaited achievement, the product of a Member’s Bill that Neil Bibby MSP first introduced in 2017. But we also need to be aware of what comes next, and use the lessons learned from the implementation of, and disappointing lack of reforms to, the code in England and Wales.
Two years ago, I urged everyone in Eastbourne to sign the petition in support of the licensees at the Briton’s Protection in Manchester. This year, I need to ask for your support again. Heineken’s pub arm is trying to take the pub into managed use, denying a lease renewal to the licensees and risking all love and care that has gone into negotiating a market rent only deal and curating distinctive drinks offer for customers.
If you can get to Manchester this Wednesday, please join our Central Manchester branch to show your support and protest peacefully outside the Heineken brewery. At the crux of this protest are the principles that we hold dear as a Campaign – standing up for the rights of the small and independent operators against the power, influence, and undue privilege of the global brewers and huge pub companies that have a stranglehold on bars across the UK.
That stranglehold is something all of us can observe first hand. For me, it’s as simple as walking a few hundred metres from my front door. In my village of Barton-under-Needwood we are incredibly lucky to have six pubs. A brewing company – a joint venture between a UK brewer and global giant – supplies cask beers which it does not produce, to one of those pubs via the Beer Flex scheme.
Beer Flex is run by SIBA, but they have no control over the prices that the pub company charges the licensee – it simply facilitates a small route to market for small and independent brewers making cask beers. Pubs order via the Beer Flex scheme and the licensees must pay the price set by the pub company, coincidentally also owned by one half of the joint venture, which then pays the original brewing company.
This means that the “guest” beers supplied via Beer Flex scheme are now more expensive than beers bought from the pub company which were supplied by brewing company. Not only do local drinkers end up paying more for the guest beers than they should if they had been bought by the pub in a free market, but the pubs increase the price of their beers from the brewing company to match the higher price of the guest beers.
The pub company has now extended the guest beer offer to the other two pubs they own in the village, which will likely see prices increase in those pubs too. This offer is also being extended to pub company’s tenanted pubs up the road in Burton-on-Trent as a sweetener for switching out lagers such as Fosters for the lagers made by the brewing company.
It is very telling, and quite frankly outrageous, that the offer of a curated choice of cask beers can be used as a lever for big brewers to grab a bigger bar share of everything. You and I both know that choice curated by global brewers and drinks distributors is not a genuine or empowered choice for consumers.
However, a large proportion of pub-going public don’t know that their “choice” at the bar is akin to a magician’s trick. It’s not unusual for most people to walk into a pub and believe that they have a huge choice. Cask beer aside, there might be a selection of lagers: Amstel, Fosters and Moretti. They might be looking for an apparently independent craft beer – great news! There’s Beavertown on tap. They might marvel at the choice of cider – there’s Inch’s and Strongbow on tap, and Old Mout in bottles. And they likely won’t realise that every one of those brands is owned by Heineken.
Drinkers have been tricked into thinking they still have a genuine choice when they go into many pubs and clubs – and we will lead the fight to pull back the magician’s cloak. To use the age-old saying – knowledge is power. And for us, that means education – through learning, exploration and awareness raising.
That’s why we launched our Learn and Discover programme, and that’s why we’ve been expanding it beyond beer and cider education into pubs and clubs, how the wider industry works, and the reasons for that. Along with the CAMRA Experience website, I’m delighted to tell you that Learn and Discover will soon be launching on a new, improved platform. It will allow users to curate their own courses, provide added functionality and properly showcase the quality content of the contributors producing content for us.
Learn and Discover has an important part to play in educating consumers about their choice at the bar – whether genuine or curated. We already have an excellent series of videos from Jonny Garrett, exploring the meaning of independent in brewing, why cask beer has been in decline, and what the beer tie is. When the new platform launches, we will have a series on pub companies from former Campaigner of the Year Paul Ainsworth. And in the coming year we will be commissioning more content on consumer choice, when we have it, and when we don’t.
As I’ve said already, clever marketing can mislead people into thinking they are supporting small, local, and independent breweries – when the beers are from brands acquired and owned by a handful of huge brewers. But just as insidious is when consumers are actively tricked into thinking they are drinking cask beer – when they are not. I am of course talking about Fresh Ale.
As you will likely know, last month, Carlsberg Marston’s Brewing Company launched their Fresh Ale range of beers. We also know that other brewers have brought, or are considering bringing, similar products to market.
Unfortunately, Fresh Ale is nothing of the sort – these are filtered and kegged beers, that CMBC are serving through cask handpumps. This is a handpump hijack. When dispensed like this, so-called Fresh Ales are misleading to consumers and may be in breach of consumer protection laws.
Sadly, this is the latest disappointing action from CMBC, who claim to champion cask beer but have instead closed breweries, ditched the Burton unions, and removed cask lines from bars – including here in Scotland. They even have recent form for misleading advertising – having badged Wainwright as a “Lake District Original”despite it never being brewed in the Lakes and now brewing it over 100 miles south in Wolverhampton. Brewers should be proud of their cask and keg ranges – and shouldn’t have to resort to misleading consumers to sell their products. There’s room on the bar for both – but not for deception.
Unfortunately, Fresh Ale is little more than a marketing gimmick being used to pitch a product which has the same, or a longer, shelf life as keg beer. That’s why we have launched our Handpump Hijack campaign, to raise awareness of misleading dispense and to pressure Trading Standards to act.
This week, as a follow up to our letters to National Trading Standards and Trading Standards Scotland, we have submitted a formal complaint to Trading Standards in West Northamptonshire. You might wonder why? Well, I wondered about that too. It’s because Carlsberg Ltd have something called a primary agreement with West Northamptonshire Council, to obtain assured advice on their sales practices.
While we await a response, please let us know when you see Fresh Ale out in the wild and look out for the next stages of the campaign. Please use the resources we have provided for branches to campaign locally – the Campaigns Hub on the website has graphics, flyer designs for local printing, template press releases and guidance on staging local demonstrations and photo opportunities.
Of course, Carlsberg Marston’s are welcome to save Trading Standards, and us, some time and simply use keg fonts to dispense Fresh Ale. I won’t hold my breath.
Please remember – this is not a call to avoid your local if they serve Fresh Ale. We all know that pubs and clubs need our custom. Use your power as a consumer to choose something else to drink, and politely let the licensee know why. As we look to our next year of campaigning, we know many of the challenges that we face. They are familiar to us all – continued threats to our pub stock from cowboy developers, erosion of consumer choice by the dominant global brewers, the enduring, tough economic outlook for independent brewers and cider makers.
But we must all seize on the opportunities that will present themselves to us. While it’s often hard to make predictions about politics, we do know that a general election will take place before the end of January next year. With the high turnover expected in parliament, it’s an opportunity to introduce the newest round of MPs to CAMRA and our campaigning.
There’s also the prospect of a new government to engage with – and a chance to pursue new policy areas with ministers. We will have our new, integrated, office and warehouse premises operational – which Tom Stainer will speak more about tomorrow – and a refreshed GBBF in Summer 2025. There’s our new digital platform and more publications to come – all tools for recruitment and activation of volunteers.
The challenges we face may be great – but I know that our strength and resolve can be greater. Our founders – the giants that came before us – saved real ale. We now need to fight for a genuine consumer choice, and the longevity of the pubs, social clubs and festivals that provide it. This is the essence of everything we do, and the campaigns that we are fighting now, and will be into next year.
We need to take our improved resources and our famous tenacity to the fight. We need to take the campaign to the enemies of consumer choice – the global brewers, the unscrupulous developers, the pub-owning companies that refuse tenants agency in their businesses.
Conference, it’s a big challenge. I know it won’t be easy, but that’s never scared us off before. If we stay focused, and most importantly united, I’m confident we can do it.
Thank you.
