A spat is underway about the way beer is brewed and served in the UK. That is because a crowed of destructive idiots are attacking the values of CAMRA, the very organisation that has spent nearly half a century promoting the UK’s ‘traditional’ method of brewing beer and serving it to its appreciative drinkers.

It would seem to all intents and purposes, that the organisation has been infiltrated by freeloading outsiders, who are attempting to hijack it and use its prominent position for their own agenda, doesn’t it?

You see, it is not an organisation that either expected to come under attack and be hijacked, nor to have the mechanisms in place to prevent such an event, it would seem? The background to all this is that CAMRA, which stands for the Campaign for Real Ale, is an independent voluntary body, which as the largest ‘single-issue’ consumer group in the UK, runs very influential campaigns, which includes promoting small brewing and pub businesses, reforming licensing laws, reducing tax on beer, and stopping continued consolidation among local British brewers.

These days CAMRA’s remit encompasses real cider production as well, since this is also a long-established traditional British alcoholic drink, which is produced ‘naturally’ from just pressed and fermented sweet apples, and is neither carbonated nor pasteurised –that compares to the mass-produced ‘cider-in-name-only’ imposters that use modern ‘artificial’ methods, and whence it contains apple concentrate, glucose /corn starch syrup (sugar) diluted with water, carbon dioxide to provide fizz, with its taste just provided by Malic acid, plus antioxidant sulphites E number additives to provide artificial colour [sounds and tastes disgusing?]

[These ‘non-ciders’ include popular well known brands like Bounders (Bath Cider), Brothers, Bulmers, Crofter’s (Aston Manor), Dry Blackthorn, Gaymer’s, K Cider, Magners, Merrydown, Old Moors (Devon Cider Co.), Pomagne, Scrumpy Jack, Stella Cidre, Strongbow, Taunton, Woodpecker]

Now, CAMRA actually came about because just a few people foresaw back in the 70s, the impending complete demise of our brewing industry as we knew it, because cheap foreign-type, gassy, lager beer, favoured by the lager-lout youths of the 1980s, had taken centre stage and was driving out traditional ale making.

That situation was combined with a downward spiral towards poor quality beer products, lacking in flavour, that had been going on for about a decade, and was powered by the beer market’s domination by just a few big ‘money-obsessed’ companies – to the extent that many other brewers [including Fullers, nowadays an enormous brewery in West London by staying traditional], had made the decision to move away from producing our more difficult, more expensive, traditional, unfiltered, beers, which get their full flavour through undergoing a secondary fermentation in the cask from which they are served (hence carbon dioxide is retained in the beer to give it liveliness, and the beer should never be flat) – the various names often used are real ale, cask ale, cask conditioned ale, or traditional ale.

Real ale is a beer brewed from traditional ingredients (malted barley, hops water and yeast), matured by secondary fermentation in the container from which it is dispensed, and served without the use of extraneous carbon dioxide

CAMRA was most certainly NOT, a campaign against lager, keg beer or beers which lose something through filtration, carbonation and pasteurisation, or anything else for that matter, nor was it about encouraging drinking, or aiding any particular brewer, as it was solely about promoting ‘real ale’ and giving British beer drinkers better variety and choice at the traditional pub or any other bleeding bar involved.

Most certainly, it was NOT a campaign to tell people what they should drink or should not drink – surely what is enjoyed depends solely on the individual drinker, doesn’t it?

You see, by the 1970s there were just 105 breweries that had survived the swamping wave of takeovers and mergers by the dominate ‘big six’ brewers (Whitbread, Scottish and Newcastle, Bass Charrington, Allied Breweries, Courage Imperial and Watneys), who scurrilously in search of even greater profit, had abandoned traditional beer making, to instead rigorously promote the blander, fizzy, keg type beer, solely because it was cheaper to brew and was ‘ready to drink’ as soon as it hit the pub under-counter – no cellar required, nor the accomplished art of cellermanship needed then, was there?

The 105 breweries have now become over 2,000, and without doubt it is through CAMRA’s incessant campaigning, that real ale brewing is now being carried out by over 1,500 UK breweries which is up by a factor of ten. Cask beer, which was nearly dead and buried in the 1970s is now the predominant style in the UK with about sixty percent of the ale market

CAMRA has been so successful in its quest that it shouldn’t really be a massive surprise then that it has been targeted by others who are not true ‘real ale’ advocates, with the devious intention of using it as a vehicle to further their different objectives, is it?

Yet, we see this kind of subversive activity even at the lowest biological level where a virus commandeers a healthy living host cell, reprogrammes it to become a virus factory, and uses the cells own resources to replicate itself, simply because it is unable to do that separately

Or consider the similar opportunist behaviour of the common cuckoo, which lays its eggs in the nests of other unsuspecting birds, basically because it is incapable of bringing-up its young itself so can only do so by hijacking the talents of others.

Then in humans, we have the glaring example in the United States where Donald Trump wanted to run for President but was unable to do that by himself, so he hijacked the Republican Party because it had the structure, and recorded success in running influential election campaigns.

While, here in Britain, we have an equally political illustration of such opportunism with Momentum’s ‘closet-Trotskyist hard-left’ successful plot to seize permanent control of the Labour party, by infiltration first, followed by its hijacking [notwithstanding ‘Militant’ having failed to do just that in 1982], as they want power, were unable to get that themselves, but knew that the centre-left Labour Party had the necessary wherewithal to do it all for them.

So it apparently seems to have been with CAMRA, eh? It was oblivious as its membership has soared in recent years to nigh on 200,000 [even on par with all the major political parties – well, the Labour Party does has more members but only due to Momentum infiltration], as to who exactly were the people joining in doves, wasn’t it? Were these new people duly paying their fees really committed believers in CAMRA’s quest to promote real ale, or were they simply parasitic interlopers intent on mischief, eh? Events would indicate that the latter definitely seems the most likely doesn’t it, when you consider their more recent dastardly actions, wouldn’t you say?

Now, what CAMRA clearly determines as constituting ‘real ale’ and therefore what the whole organisation was all about, was clearly defined as far back as 1971, wasn’t it? Yep, but nevertheless the bulk of the people who are now in it, simply have joined-up under false pretences, as they obviously don’t accept the founding core values, do they? [Who, or what businesses, or types of brewers paid their fees do you think, eh?],

No, these so called ‘members’, are those who are determined to overturn all what CAMRA has achieved, use the organisation to much different ends and objectives, misuse the influence its lobbyists have with the ear of government, re-harness its existing power and marketing prowess through its innovative establishment and the running some 200 beer festivals across the UK, and re-manipulate it all.

Yes they wanted to ‘change the rules’ within CAMRA, so that the big boy excessive-profit-driven element of the brewing industry can turn-back the clock to “the old days” of tasteless beer, and now neuter the effectiveness of CAMRA to promote ‘real ale’ – they want the organisation to stand on its head, and to turn it away from a single issue group, and into an organisation that promotes ALL types of beer, irrespective of the of brewing process or method of serving. In other words, they want a complete destruction of the original goal, eh?

Oh yes, these beer fifth columnists, have already partly had their way last year at the AGM when they forced through adoption of aims designed by other wider brewing interests to finally subdue CAMRA’s campaign for real ale – which is destined to be demoted to a subsidiary role, isn’t it? [The renowned CAMRA beer festivals will now NOT be limited to serving real ale – so there will now be a cuckoo in the nest! Expect those festivals to die out within a decade!]

Yes, there are now new objectives for the CAMRA organisation, which are contradictory to its formation aims – those included amongst others, the removal of CAMRA’s former mission statement, and it now to play a leading role in the provision of information, education, and training to ALL those with an interest in beer, cider, and perry of ANY type.

Furthermore, the interloper-squatters came within a hair’s breadth of their ultimate aim which was to enact plans to extensively extend the organisation’s remit and use it to be the voice of ALL beer, cider and perry drinkers – in other words use the organisation for the first time to equally promote lager and the other false beers, that it was actually formed to compete against. The motion to make the deadly change only failed to pass after receiving 72% of the votes when it needed 75%. Oh, that hasn’t put matters to a rest of course as the younger wreckers then began a media campaign to denigrate CAMRA and its older generation members who have (temporally?) thwarted the plan – claiming it was not inclusive and is just a pensioner’s drinking club and that the organisation was riddled with accusations of sexism and cronyism. WHY DID THEY JOIN IT IN THE FIRST PLACE, do you think? To turn it into a male-only discriminatory lager-louts club, one might suspect, eh?

[REAL ALE is NOT stuck in the past as detractors might claim as the range is astonishing wide and includes less common varieties like golden ale, new versions of India Pale Ale, porter, stout, barley wine, mild, beers aged in wood and beers with herbs, spices, fruit, coffee and even chocolate – can it be preserved. UNLIKELY]