Charter For Pubs

No one is listening. CAMRA's in disarray. The pubs crisis is becoming a catastrophic chapter in British social history the nation is sleepwalking through. We have to change the game. We have to get this recognised for the calamity it is. Communities, and pubs, need real help.

In 1848 the Chartists raised a petition and reached almost two million signatures. We ought to be able to reach that many people FFS - what's happening is hitting everyone everywhere, it's becoming an epidemic - the end of the British Pub.  Well apart from the kinds of pubs that the British Pub Trade Press drool over and the pubco's create, copy and recreate.

I asked James Watson this by text just now and posted the below to Real Ale Up North on a post he did about the growth in Micropubs. We have some of the most eloquent and best informed people on pubs in the UK right here. Much of what's needed for wording a Charter has already been written by us already. It has to have a solution, some clearly achievable objectives. I have some ideas. What about this marvellous forum?

Real Ale Up North:

There's no doubt you're right. The movement will gather pace. It will become a seismic, self fulfilling prophecy unless the squeeze, the stranglehold, on pubs that has been created by pubco's, ably supported by weak planning laws and a pathetic parliament perpetually ignoring the wishes of the populace, is loosened for good.

Would you be interested in helping draw up a Charter For Pubs and putting it out on 38 degrees? We can get a group of licensee together with some high profile people and really get it going. Pressurise CAMRA to attend to its responsibilities...

We might persuade beer writers to contribute. I have a feeling Roger Protz and Pete Brown might be persuaded. And try for some high profile people too, Stephen Fry and Johnny Vegas have shown sympathy, if we can get a few like that to agree to say something about the value of good pubs to communities it would likely be spreadable. If we got that far before going public two million ought to be within reach.

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