CHAIRMAN’S STATEMENT

“CAMRA SW London has been in existence for over 30 years, previously having been part of the larger South London Branch. We exist to promote the cause of real ale in the SW postal districts south of the Thames plus Mitcham & Morden. The only exceptions are SW13 & SW14 (covered by the Richmond & Hounslow branch) [www.rhcamra.org.uk] and the parts of SW16 and Mitcham in the London Borough of Croydon (Croydon & Sutton Branch) [www.croydoncamra.org.uk]

We hold an annual beer festival in February at Battersea Arts Centre. [www.bac.org.uk] The 2010 festival was our 20th at the BAC after we previously held seven smaller festivals in Wimbledon and West Norwood and an outdoor one on Tooting Bec Common for a rock concert held there. For members who work at the festival, we run a trip to the lucky brewery whose beer the customers voted beer of the festival.

We hold regular meetings in various pubs in our area, which are business meetings but punctuated by beer breaks and end at a reasonable hour. We also have many socials and pub crawls all over the branch area. One longer meeting we have is when we choose our selections for the annual Good Beer Guide when every member has the right to come and vote for the short listed pubs. We also write to all members asking their views on which pubs should be short listed. All members also receive a postal vote to select the annual Pub of the Year. We are also publishing a series of local pub guides which will eventually cover the whole of the branch area

We have close contacts with our newly established local brewer, Sambrook’s Brewery in Battersea, [www.batterseabrewery.com] and with what is now the Young’s Pub Company, [www.youngs.co.uk] (following the merger of their brewing operation with Charles Wells [www.charleswells.co.uk] - creating the Wells and Youngs Brewing Company [www.wellsandyoungs.co.uk] - and the closure of the Ram Brewery at Wandsworth after it was acquired by Minerva PLC).

All people are welcome to join us in CAMRA - we have over 100,000 members nationwide and over 1,200 in our own area. Come and join us in our quest for decent pubs, decent ale and full pints in our excellent South West London drinking area.”

Martin Butler (SWL CAMRA- Chair)