Campaign for Real Pubs

In the September issue of the CAMRA newsletter What’s Brewing there’s a letter from Frank Mitchell of Claverdon which includes the following comments:

In my part of Warwickshire there are so few decent drinking pubs remaining compared to just a few years ago. Many of them have been taken over by people masquerading as chefs and attempting to become the latest gastro-venue and have discouraged drinkers from going there just for a drink.

In others the beer quality and service is so poor or the prices so unreasonable that customers have almost abandoned them altogether.

There is hardly a decent pub where you can meet friends just for a drink and a chat together without having a menu thrust at you or being made to feel guilty for occupying a table that food can be served on.

It has to be said that this reflects what I’ve been saying on here for the past four years. The same is a major problem in Cheshire. Of course food has its place in pubs (as Mr Mitchell later acknowledges), but there comes a point where it dominates to the exclusion of all else. The core purpose of a pub is as a social meeting place where people will gather over a few drinks, yet nowadays you see so many press articles that assume that the menu is the main attraction. I’d say, once more than four-fifths of customers are there just to eat, you’ve lost it. But even a sprinkling of social drinkers can keep your pub authentic.

So, maybe as CAMRA has saved real ale, we need a Campaign for Real Pubs to save pubs. Pubs that work as pubs should, that don’t make casual customers feel unwelcome, that cultivate sociability, and that don’t make food the centre of their offer. This applies especially outside major urban centres, but within them too. Obviously the smoking ban, beer duty hikes, the demonisation of “one-drink driving” and the general anti-alcohol climate have all had their effect, but such pubs do still survive and deserve to be celebrated.

CAMRA’s National Inventory and the additional regional lists would be a good starting point. A few of the pubs on there won’t qualify, but the vast majority will. I’d doubt whether any Wetherspoons would be included, or any chain dining pubs, and many of the specialist beer pubs concentrate on that aspect of the business so much that they fail in the basic social function. On the other hand, if they attract a good number of customers who aren’t just there for the beer, as with the Barrels in Hereford, they might qualify.

Maybe I should start a blog of Real Pubs as a counterpoint to Closed Pubs, so people couldn’t accuse me of being unrelentingly negative...

A tax too far

Words fail me...

The Liberal Democrats are drawing up plans for a controversial new ‘tipple tax’ on every drink sold in a pub – despite warnings it will cripple the struggling industry.

Policy documents to be discussed at next month’s Lib Dem conference in Birmingham suggest the party should push for councils to be given new powers to levy a ‘small per drink surcharge’ in bars and pubs.

The document suggests the money raised could offset additional policing and health costs that drinkers impose on councils, and therefore residents, in many towns and cities.

The plan was condemned last night by both the drinks industry and the party’s Coalition partners. Experts warned it would pile financial pressure on pubs, which are already closing at the rate of 25 a week.

Do these people have any grasp on reality whatsoever? It seems they have come to believe their own hysterical propaganda in which Britain is in a fatal spiral of rising alcohol consumption and drink-related health problems, whereas in reality pretty much the opposite is true. Not to mention the fact that we already have the third highest alcohol duties in the world.

Six into two does go

Northenden is a South Manchester suburb which must be typical of many places throughout Britain. Sandwiched between upmarket Didsbury and sink estate Wythenshawe, it’s a middling kind of place, with a surprisingly extensive local shopping centre along the main Palatine Road. Maybe about ten years ago, it had six pubs, unusually all situated south of the main road – the Jolly Carter, the Spread Eagle, the Church, the Crown, the Tatton Arms (pictured) and the Farmers Arms. Now, only two are left, the Crown and the Farmers, which were probably the smallest of the six.

Maybe that is a bit of an extreme case but, on the other hand, there are plenty of places that have lost two or three out of six, or the equivalent, and this is somewhere depopulation and poverty cannot be blamed. This should serve as an object lesson to those blinkered individuals who continue to insist, in the face of an ever-growing mountain of evidence, that the British pub trade remains fundamentally healthy and losses have only been at the margins.

On a similar note, it’s worth mentioning the scenic B5470 road between Macclesfield in Cheshire and Whaley Bridge in Derbyshire. Not so long ago, this had five pubs along it – the Rising Sun and Robin Hood in the village of Rainow, the Highwayman in a picturesque location a couple of miles east of Rainow, and the Bull’s Head and Swan in the village of Kettleshulme. Now, only the Swan is still open, and this not in the deep countryside but in a desirable area within twenty miles of the centre of Manchester.

Not so ordinary

Back in the 1970s, most British brewers just produced Mild (at around 1033 OG) and Bitter (at around 1038 OG). Choice, and a contrast in flavours, was achieved by switching between brewers, not within an individual brewer’s range. There were a handful of premium beers, such as Ruddles County, Marstons Pedigree and Wadworths 6X, and these got the recognition as the beers you would go out of your way to sample. Inevitably, these beers gained a reputation and became the standard-bearers of the “real ale revival”. The fact that they had memorable brand names rather than just being “Bloggs’ Bitter” must have helped.

But times change, and recently we have seen a number of brewers reducing the strength of these “premium beers” because they were felt to be too strong for the current climate of sobriety and health obsession.

However, rather than doing this, shouldn’t the brewers be doing more to promote their classic “ordinary bitters” in the 3.5-4.0% ABV strength band? These beers, which manage to extract huge depths of flavour and character from a very modest, quaffable strength, are surely the most distinctive achievement of British brewing, and cover a vast spectrum of colour, flavour and character.

Locally, Robinson’s Unicorn at 4.2% is a bit too strong to qualify, but both Holts and Lees bitters are excellent brews when in good condition. Just considering the family brewers, a selection of Timothy Taylors Bitter, Batemans XB, Adnams Southwold Bitter, Harveys Sussex Best and Hook Norton wouldn’t disgrace any bar. I used to love Brakspear’s when brewed in Henley, but have not had enough of the Wychwood version to be able to judge it.

Incidentally, I was recently surprised to learn that Robinson’s are now selling more of the pale, somewhat hoppy 3.8% Dizzy Blonde than their traditional mainstay, the 4.2% Unicorn. Dizzy Blonde was originally just produced as a seasonal beer but has now become their best seller. Initially it was a bit bland, but more recently it has gained more hop character and is now, when well-kept, an enjoyable beer.

Responsibility or appeasement?

If you were running any kind of business, you would obviously, unless you were a crook, want to do so in a responsible manner. So, if you were running a brewery, what would you do? You would aim to comply with all relevant legislation, to be open about what ingredients you were using, not to hold out your products as something they weren’t, not to sell or promote them to minors, and not to advertise them in a way that implied they might contribute to sexual success or would get you drunk quicker. You would recognise that you were selling a product that a small minority of customers might abuse, but provided your business was conducted in an open, legal and above-the-board manner, that would be their responsibility, not yours. If your business was successful and well-established, you might even contribute a bit towards programmes to rehabilitate alcoholics, but that wouldn’t mean that you accepted blame for their problems.

However, Stefan Orlowski, the Managing Director of Heineken UK, doesn’t seem to think that goes far enough. He believes that his industry needs to actively engage with health professionals in an attempt to reduce alcohol misuse.

But, in accepting the health professionals’ definition of alcohol misuse, he is batting on a losing wicket from the start. They believe he is involved not in a legitimate business but in a “toxic trade”. There can never be any final settlement with them. Every concession granted will only be met with a demand for more. He only needs to look at the tobacco industry to see the likely outcome.

He prints on all his bottles and cans the made-up “official guidelines” on safe drinking levels. But he knows that a large proportion of his customers cheerfully ignore these, and if they all followed them to the letter, the pub trade would be devastated and the British brewing and distilling industries grievously harmed.

Perhaps he is being clever and playing a long game in the belief that, given time, the neo-Prohibitionist threat will abate, as it did in the past. But the example of tobacco is not encouraging. Is a prolonged managed decline and surrender to restriction the best future that can be expected? Maybe the long-term interests of the drinks industry would be better served by adopting a more robust and combative stance rather than by endless grovelling and appeasing. Wetherspoon’s Tim Martin, for example, would never be so defeatist.

He may even damage his own business relative to others by being too eager to embrace its enemies.

As an example, we recently withdrew a popular and highly profitable white cider brand because it had become part of a category of drinks increasingly chosen for price and alcoholic strength alone. It no longer had a place in our business.

So he gave Diamond White the chop. But Aston Manor are still happily making Frosty Jack’s, and no doubt taking a lot of what once was Heineken’s business. If you take a high moral stance, there will always be other producers willing to come in below you, while still fully adhering to the law. Alcohol is far more suited than tobacco products to small-scale, under-the-radar production.

Urban pubs hammered

The Western Mail reports that, in a recent auction of pubs held at the Celtic Manor Hotel near Newport, only one of the nine pubs on offer was sold, six failed to meet their reserve prices and two received no bids at all.

This is sadly symptomatic of the general malaise of the pub trade in urban areas outside major town and city centres. Prominent South Wales CAMRA activist Arfur Daley looked into the pubs being sold and said:

One thing I noticed about these pubs is that a lot of them are urban and they lack outdoor smoking areas.

Some of them had been quite successful in the past but once the smoking ban came in that was the big problem. That was their downfall.

A rare and welcome example of a CAMRA member actually taking the blinkers off and recognising the disaster that has overtaken the pub trade all around him.

Rodney Cave, an independent licensed property valuer, said it was time for the Government to call a review of the smoking ban, adding pressure also needed to be put on banks to lend to those looking to invest in pubs and hotels.

“I attribute this disastrous decline in the licensed trade to the smoking ban, certainly,” he said.

“While you can make a case for saying smoking is harmful, it would be perfectly suitable to provide a separate room for smokers.

“Now the people who would have been down their local are at home with cans of lager from the supermarket.”

He said the trend has led to a decline in social contact, especially in less prosperous areas where, he claimed, families cannot afford to pay for expensive meals and “going out for one or two pints is all that their budget allows.”

It is precisely these areas, he said, where the worst-hit pubs are.

And exactly the same kind of thing has been happening in working-class areas the length and breadth of the country, for example as reported here in Denton and Audenshaw.

It would be interesting to see whether some of those who bang on in the comments here about the rude health of some parts of the pub trade would have the guts to take on some of these South Wales pubs. The asking prices are so low that, if you could make a go of one, it could prove a goldmine. Funny how nobody was biting, though, isn’t it?

This coincides with the launch this week of Antony Worrall Thompson’s petition on the government website calling for a review of the smoking ban. If you care about the future of the pub trade, please sign it here.

Incidentally, the headline on the newspaper article is wrong – it clearly should refer to “urban pubs”, not “rural pubs”.

H/t to Simon Clark at Taking Liberties.

The ox loves the yoke

I was reading an article recently which said that, in the era of the Suffragettes, a substantial proportion of women didn’t actually want to be given the vote. From the perspective of a hundred years later, this may seem unlikely, but at the time I have no doubt it was true.

More than once, commenters on this blog have said that many smokers actually support the blanket smoking ban. That may seem equally unlikely, but that too contains a certain element of truth. Indeed, I have spoken to one or two such myself. Now I can see how a smoker might support some legal restrictions on smoking in public places. That is an intellectually defensible position, in the same way as a motorist might to a greater or lesser extent support the use of speed cameras and road humps.

But to be in favour of a blanket ban in any indoor public place is taking things to a completely different dimension. I mean, something that you do personally, and that is entirely legal, but you don’t believe you should actually be able to do it anywhere. What kind of twisted thinking is that?

All I can conclude is that these people have been so brainwashed by years of hysterical antismoking propaganda to come to believe that they really are contemptible, weak-willed, dirty, smelly, inadequate second-rate human beings. Self-loathing has been inculcated into them. Just as in the 1900s many women believed their sex was inherently inferior in judgment and intellectual capability to men. Something similar has happened to a proportion of the oppressed throughout history.

And it is completely wrong to claim that all, or the vast majority, of smokers are hopeless, enslaved addicts. As James Rhodes explains here, many smokers find smoking actively enjoyable. “Every puff is like a little hug,” he says. Is that really much different from scoffing “naughty but nice” cream cakes, something else that we are constantly told is unhealthy and shows a lack of self-control?

Another one down

Sad news that the Tiviot pub in Stockport town centre is to be demolished in eight weeks’ time. Apparently the building has been condemned as unsafe by the council, but it would not have been allowed to get into such a state if it had been seen as having more of a future.

Yes, it was tatty in places, but going through the door was like entering a timewarp back into the 1950s. It even still had wrought iron bar fittings – you don’t seen many of those around nowadays. Until fairly recently, it was one of the last Robinson’s pubs in Stockport to serve Mild and Best Bitter into oversize glasses using electric metered pumps. Licensee Dave Walker was one of the longest-serving in the Robinson’s estate, and had taken over the tenancy from his father.

Not surprisingly, the clientele tended towards the more mature end of the spectrum. It could be busy at lunchtimes, but was often quiet in the evenings. It was the epitome of what Cooking Lager would dismiss as “dumpy old men’s pubs”, and all the better for it.

We will not see its like again.

Not in front of the children

The Sunday Telegraph reports that two mothers were refused white wine spritzers in a City of London pub because the barperson thought it inappropriate for them to be drinking alcohol in front of their children. Now obviously this is just a one-off aberration, and if it was generally adopted it would kill the “family dining” market stone dead.

But it is symptomatic of the growing stigmatisation of alcohol that such an opinion was expressed at all. It’s a more extreme version of the refusal to serve a pregnant woman even a single drink. The view is becoming increasingly common than any quantity of alcohol is incompatible with any responsible activity (see my recent poll about lunchtime drinking at work) and we are heading towards a situation where drinking becomes an activity that has to be ringfenced from the rest of society.

Decline and fall

A year ago today, I started a blog entitled Closed Pubs. This was originally prompted by a non-beer-related forum, where people were invited to put forward some interesting sights in the then new Google StreetView. I posted a couple of views of boarded-up pubs near to me, and then thought that, since there were so many closed pubs around the country, I could turn it into a blog. So I did.

So far I have featured 207 pubs. Some are ones known to me, some suggested by correspondents, some I have spotted on Internet searches. It has featured town-centre pubs, inner-city pubs, suburban pubs, estate pubs, classic roadhouses, village pubs, isolated country pubs, indeed pretty much every kind of pub known to man. I’d like to record my thanks to those who have e-mailed me with suggestions for the blog.

There can be no doubt that over the past few years the British pub has experienced an unprecedented holocaust. Before then, unless it was due to population decline in the locality or redevelopment, pubs scarcely ever closed. But now, it seems that pretty much everywhere you go you are confronted with the depressing sight of a closed and boarded pub.

I don’t for a minute claim that all of it is due to the smoking ban – indeed some of the closed pubs pictured predate the smoking ban by many years. But only the most self-deluding antismoker would claim that the smoking ban has not played a significant part in pub closures over the past four years. For a lot of pubs it seems to have been the straw that broke the camel’s back.

And the question has to be asked whether this is an “adjustment” which will lead to the pub trade stabilising at a lower level, or whether it is the sign of an inexorable long-term decline that in a generation will reduce pubs to a tiny, irrelevant rump. Yes, some pubs are still thriving, but many of those that are still open are noticeably much less busy than they once were.

The pub illustrated, The Beeches in Northfield, Birmingham, is maybe the saddest of the lot, its mock-Jacobean magnificence, almost like a licensed stately home, contrasting poignantly with its current burnt-out dereliction. It wouldn’t surprise me if it had now been demolished.

Denormalisation at work

Well, it would seem that blog readers are not very keen about lunchtime drinking when at work. Out of 75 responses, 79% said it was something they would do either very occasionally or never.

This is a major change in pubgoing habits that has occurred over the past twenty or thirty years. When I started work in the early 80s, it was usual to go to the pub at lunchtime – and drink a couple of pints – at least one day a week, often more.

But now, partly due to changing attitudes towards alcohol, partly due to more restrictive policies from employers, for most workers the lunchtime pint is rare or non-existent. I have a facsimile of a guide to central Manchester pubs produced in 1975, which comments how many of the pubs were busy at lunchtimes, but much quieter in the evenings. Nowadays, assuming the pubs are still there, it’s usually the other way round. Even if people do go to the pub for a leaving do or suchlike, most will stick to soft drinks.

Obviously it can be argued that this is a good thing in an age where idleness and low productivity at work are much less acceptable. Many will say that they like to keep themselves fully on the ball while at work, but can still go out and have a few pints in the evening.

But the point is that the number of occasions during the week when going to the pub is something that people will consider doing has been reduced, to the inevitable detriment of the pub trade. For many, lunchtimes while at work were the main occasion when they had an opportunity to visit a pub, as opposed to making a specific journey for that purpose. Pubgoing becomes a specific interest rather than something woven into the fabric of everyday life.

And that is the process of “denormalisation” in a nutshell – a steady curtailment of what is considered “normal” behaviour, which creeps up on people so stealthily that they don’t notice it happening.

And cheers to the 20% who still manage to do it at least once a week.

Float or sink?

October 1st will see two significant legislative changes affecting the British brewing industry and pub trade. In both cases, it’s difficult to predict exactly what the impact will be. The first is the new beer duty regime, with 50% duty for beers of 2.8% ABV or below, and 125% duty for beers above 7.5%. And the second is the introduction of the two-thirds pint “schooner” measure. Will these measures radically change things, or will they prove a pair of damp squibs? Heineken UK have announced that they will be making a big push on two-thirds glasses. Given that they campaigned for the change, you can see them featuring prominently in BrewDog’s bars, where they may be well-suited to the relatively strong beers on sale. But will they really take off in the general pub trade, or will it be a case of the H. M. Bateman cartoon of “the man who asked for a schooner in the Gungesmearers’ Arms”?

Nobody biting

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve read that food is going to be the saviour of the wet-led pub. But it isn’t always quite as simple as that. Not too far from me, there’s a big Victorian pub in a prominent suburban main-road location tied to one of the local family brewers. It used to do a cheap and cheerful lunchtime menu of toasties, bacon barms, ham, egg & chips, pensioners’ specials and the like, which seemed to bring in a reasonable amount of custom.

However, the brewery clearly thought the food trade had more potential, so they gave it a makeover – nothing structural, just new upholstery and chairs and a general spring-clean, put the bar staff in uniforms and introduced a new and more ambitious menu with most main courses in the £7+ bracket. However, all this seems to have done is to drive away the old food trade but not bring in any new, more upmarket customers. I’ve been in at lunchtimes both during the week and at weekends, and have always been able to count the number of diners on the fingers of one hand. Sometimes there have been none at all.

Possibly the fact that the pub, both outside and in, still looks like a classic urban local doesn’t help matters. If the same food offer was transplanted into a cottage-style establishment ten miles further south, it might prosper. But it looks as though, in this pub, in this location, the owning company have made a wrong call on the potential food trade. You wouldn’t blame them too much if they decided to cut their losses and, as many other pubs have done, drop the food entirely and not even bother opening at lunchtimes during the week.

The indifferent stuff

Well, here are the results of the survey question “Name up to three cask beers that you regard as poor or lacklustre examples of the genre.” As you can see, there’s an even more decisive winner in the shape of Greene King IPA, with Wells Bombardier second and Sharps Doom Bar third.

There are quite a few beers that appear in both lists, such as both Bombardier and Doom Bar, Deuchars IPA, Butcombe Bitter, Holts Bitter and Wadworths 6X. I’m disappointed to see Harveys Sussex Best on this list as to my mind it is one of the finest ordinary bitters in the country.

It is noticeable that this list includes many of the most widely-distributed cask beers in Britain. This raises some interesting questions. Are these intrinsically lacklustre beers, brewed to a lowest common denominator for a mass market? Or is it a case of “familiarity breeds contempt”? Or could it be that, the more widely available a beer is, the more likely it is to end up in outlets that can’t look after cask beer properly, thus damaging its reputation?

For example, Wells Bombardier is a beer that I “think” I don’t much care for. However, I have to say on the past three occasions when I’ve drunk it, generally when there wasn’t much else to choose from, I have found it in good condition and a perfectly pleasant pint.

And does it do the overall cause of cask beer any good when “beer enthusiasts” dismiss many of the cask beers the average drinker is likely to encounter as disappointingly bland?

29 votes:
Greene King IPA

Ten votes:
Wells Bombardier

Eight votes:
Sharps Doom Bar

Six votes:
Marstons Pedigree

Five votes:
Deuchars IPA

Four votes:
Ruddles Best Bitter
Wychwood Hobgoblin

Three votes:
Courage Directors
Greene King Abbot Ale
Hydes Bitter
Shepherd Neame Spitfire
Tetley Bitter
Youngs Bitter

Two votes:
Draught Bass
Fullers London Pride
John Smiths Cask
Marstons EPA
Morland Old Speckled Hen
Ringwood Best Bitter
Robinsons Unicorn
Sam Smiths OBB
Theakstons Best Bitter
Thwaites Bitter
Wadworths 6X
Wells Eagle IPA

One vote:
Ansells Bitter
Any golden ale
Anything by Arkells
Anything by Coach House
Anything by Enville
Anything by Greene King
Anything by Marstons
Anything by Hydes
Anything by Salamander
Arkells 3B
Badger Best Bitter
Banks’s Best (not sure if this means Mild or Bitter)
Bath Ales Gem
Black Sheep Bitter
Boddingtons Bitter
Brains SA
BrewDog Paradox
BrewDog Punk IPA
Butcombe Bitter
Caledonian Golden Promise
Courage Best Bitter
Davenports Bitter
Dorset Piddle Cocky Hop
Everards Sunchaser
Fullers Discovery
Harveys Sussex Best Bitter
Holts Bitter
Holts IPA
Jennings Cumberland Ale
Leeds Brewery Best
Lees Mild
Ramsbury Bitter
Sambrooks Wandle
Shepherd Neame Master Brew
Storm Brewing Storm Damage
Woodfordes Wherry

Heavy fuel

Not sure what to make of this one. Do ten readers of this blog really believe that drinking 15 pints of Stella or Abbot a week makes someone a “heavy drinker”? That’s hardly two pints a day. Or did they interpret it as “what is the official government line?” Even that is 50 units a week, which in the terms of the poll would equate to 20 pints.

If this reflects the genuine opinion of blog readers, it’s hardly surprising that the pub trade is on its knees.