Tasting the fruits of workers' labour
Did you know there is a pub in Clapham, south-west London, called the MA? As I sauntered down Clapham Manor Street last week I stopped short at the sight of a large blackboard outside a pub that announced "MA tonight's pub quiz".
Would I, I wondered, find the assembled seekers-after-truth at the Morning Advertiser supping pints and sharpening their Biros as they battled with the quiz questions? Unlikely, for on closer inspection I discovered that MA is short for Manor Arms, not Morning Advertiser.
It would require dedication beyond the call of duty to journey from Crawley to Clapham for a pint, even though the Manor Arms listed in the Good Beer Guide offers such delights as Adnams, Black Sheep, Fuller's and Tim Taylor.
Tempting though the beer list is,I didn't pause for refreshment at the MA as I had an appointment at another hostelry in the same road. The Bread & Roses had organised a beer festival that featured most of the beers that have won the Champion Beer of Britain competition since the 1970s and I had selected six of them for a tasting and seminar in an upstairs room.
The Bread & Roses must be unique a pub owned and run by local trade unions.
There are thousands of working men's clubs, many of them with union connections. But I do not know of any other pubs, open to the general public rather than members, which are run in this way.
Until 1996, the pub was called the Bowyer Arms, named not, I suspect, after a certain pugnacious footballer. It was, in the shorthand of the Campaign for Real Ale, a "fizz pub", which meant it sold only keg beer.
Then Battersea & Wandsworth Trades Union Council bought it. The council also owns the Workers Beer Company that acts as a wholesaler and supplies beer to such major events as the Glastonbury Festival.
The Bread & Roses has a comfortable main bar, a conservatory at the back, where the beer festival was staged, and large upstairs rooms, one of which is the head office of the trades council. The walls are decorated with photos of trade union events from Victorian times to the present day, along with some striking Canadian oil paintings of union struggles.
A large and receptive audience joined me in tasting Cottage Normans Conquest, two Woodforde's beers Norfolk Nog and Wherry Best Mauldons Black Adder, Tim Taylor's Landlord and Ind Coope Burton Ale.
With the exception of Belgium, it would be difficult to think of another country in the world where just six beers offered such variety of aromas and tastes. I explained how darker grains give colour and flavour to beer and, in particular, the coffee and chocolate character in Black Adder that comes from the use of heavily-roasted black malts.
We revelled in the nose-tingling, piny, resinous and citrus fruit delights of such hop varieties as Challenger, Fuggles, Goldings and the Styrian Golding from Slovenia. The last named is actually a derivative of the English Fuggle, but the Slovenes found it difficult to say Fuggle and used Golding instead.
The only disappointment among the beers was Burton Ale. It won the Champion Beer of Britain accolade in 1990 and it was then and remains today the only beer produced by a national brewer to have won the title. In those days it was owned by Allied Breweries and, as the name suggests, it was brewed in Burton-on-Trent.
It was a sumptuous beer, bursting with ripe marmalade fruit, juicy malt and a powerful punch of hops, including the good old Styrian Golding. And it had that famous whiff of sulphur from the gypsum-rich waters of the Trent Valley.
But Allied is no more. The brand is owned by Carlsberg and brewed in Leeds. It is a disappointingly thin beer, lacking the richness and ripeness of the original.
The name Bread & Roses comes from an early 20th-century poem used by American trade unions in their campaigns. The full text says: "Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes, hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread but gives us roses."
And a decent pint of Burton Ale as well.
