Welcome 50 years of| Norfolk campaigning NIPS | Norfolk NIPS
years of campaigning Even if you’re a member of CAMRA, you might not know much about the history of the organisation, or the activities supported by your subscription. From fighting for real ale in 1971, to lobbying for the 1989 Beer Orders, to supporting pubs during lockdown in 2020, CAMRA and its members have helped make sure beer and pubs are still part of the British way of life.
1971-2021 Adapted from an article on camra.org,uk
CAMRA
was formed in March 1971 by Michael Hardman, Jim Makin, Bill Mellor and Graham Lees on a trip to Ireland. At the time, the ‘Big Six’ brewers (Allied, Bass, Courage, Scottish & Newcastle, Watneys and Whitbread) had monopolies on entire regions of the country, owning hundreds of pubs that could only sell their brews. They were pushing tasteless kegged beer onto consumers because it was easier to produce, store and serve, and as a result quality real ale was incredibly hard to find. In fact, there were just five bottleconditioned beers in existence in the world. 40 | Autumn 2021
Spreading the word The early years were marked by the recruitment of members and setting up what would soon be Europe's largest consumer organisation. In 1972 What’s Brewing newspaper was founded, followed shortly by the first edition of the Good Beer Guide in 1974 - originally a short pamphlet compared to the ‘bible’ produced 48-years later. These were some of the first beer and pub centric publications produced in the UK. Birth of the modern beer festival That same year the first-ever beer festival in modern times took place in St Albans,
