South East London CAMRA – the first 50 years.
Monday 15th July 2024 is the 50th anniversary of the inaugural meeting of CAMRA South-East London branch, which serves all the SE postal districts other than four outer ones served partly or wholly by Bexley, Bromley and Croydon branches. It therefore covers the Boroughs of Greenwich, Lewisham and Southwark and part of Lambeth.
CAMRA was founded in 1971, but did not have a London branch until 1972. It was going through exponential growth at the time, and meetings rapidly outgrew pub meeting places, so in 1973 the London branch was split into North, South, East and West London branches. In June 1974 it was decided to split the South London branch into SE and SW, and a meeting to test support in SE London, held at the then Lord Derby pub near Plumstead station, attracted 100 members. Following this, a meeting to set up the branch was held on 15th July at the same venue, again with 100 members, with a Committee headed by Mostyn Lewis as Chair and Carl Payne as Secretary.
The Branch began work immediately on developing a database of pubs and beer in its area, nominating selected local pubs for CAMRA’s national Good Beer Guideand then running the first Greenwich Beer Festival which was held in June 1975 at Thames Polytechnic in Woolwich (later for many years Greenwich University), with Greenwich Council sponsorship as part of the Greenwich Arts Festival. It was quite homespun with firkins of beer weighing down trestle tables! Barrel storage was in a nearby closed pub (Duke of York) which the Council loaned while it was conveniently vacant pending redevelopment.
The Festival was held again at the Polytechnic in 1976 (with rather less primitive arrangements!) but after a break, it moved in 1979 to a more suitable self-contained venue at the then Greenwich Borough Hall near Greenwich Station. This continued to be popular and successful until the venue was lost in 1992 through the Council being forced by rate-capping to outsource the management of the Borough Hall to a Dance Charity. The Branch managed to transfer its Beer Festival to the then Catford Theatre for another decade until refurbishment moved it on again, briefly back to the Greenwich Royal Naval College, then Kidbrooke, and very recently to Dulwich.
Throughout its 50 years, the Branch has campaigned for improving the availability and quality of real (cask) ale, which is mostly to be found by dispense through handpumps in pubs. It has supported new pubs and fought against many pub closures, which have particularly accelerated in the last 25 years, to the detriment of local communities.
It has successfully promoted increased real ale choice, helped by the growth of small London breweries. For example in Greenwich, typical of many Boroughs, only 17 pubs (10%) in 1974 sold real ale, compared with 67 (64%) today. By contrast, however, in common with national trends, pub numbers have declined significantly. There were 176 pubs trading in the Borough in1974 compared with 104 today (a net loss of 40%). Of those, 31 are newly established pubs and pub/restaurants, mainly operated by larger pub owning companies, which means that a total of 109 traditional pubs have been converted to other uses or demolished since 1974. The new openings do however include five very welcome independently run micropubs in former shop units, a type of conversion redolent of the trend in the Victorian period following the Beer Orders of 1830.
To help spread the word, the Branch has gathered information and disseminated it through beer magazines and pub guides. In the early days it published its own Hopvine newsletter and helped produce the annual Real Beer in London pub guides covering the whole of Greater London. From 1979 it has contributed to the London Drinker magazine, published jointly by the 13 London Branches every two months, and from the 1980s, it also produced a succession of South East London Pub Guides.
London Drinker magazine, published every two months, and delivered to many local pubs by CAMRA members, contained for 30 years the ‘Capital Pubcheck’ column compiled by local member Roger Warhurst, which tracked changes to pubs and beers London-wide, until superseded by CAMRA’s on line WhatPub comprehensive guide to pubs across the UK, which the Branch regularly helps to update.
The best real ale pubs chosen by Members are included in the annual Good Beer Guide published nationally by CAMRA. In 1974 only 5 SE London pubs (out of 1500 across the UK) were deemed suitable for inclusion. Each Branch now has an allocation based on number of pubs, population, visitors etc. The Branch currently has an allocation of 35 (out of 4500 across the UK), and there are now 298 real ale pubs (60% of the 496 pubs in the Branch area) from which to choose.
We are looking forward to another 50 years of campaigning to protect our beer and pub heritage in South East London.
Mostyn Lewis & Roger Warhurst, 9/7/24
