On Our Own Terms

Growing up, I thought I didn’t like art.

I didn’t like art because art was for posh people. My lack of knowledge about art made me feel small, lesser, around those who had a more rounded cultural education and liked to show it off. So as a knee-jerk-reaction I decided that art had to be bad, because of how other people who were using it as a way of social gatekeeping made me feel.

Over time, thanks in large part to the extremely sensible decision to make London’s gallery spaces free in 2001, I grew to love art on my own terms.

Now I can quietly laugh to myself when I overhear some pompous ass jabbering at an obnoxiously loud volume during an exhibition, but I’ll never forget how uncomfortable and inadequate those types made me feel as an undergraduate, parading their knowledge in my face as I squirmed in my ignorant shame.

This is very common in the UK. People like to make others feel small and weak so that they get to feel superior.  The class system is the last bastion of prejudice and judgement that is still pretty much completely socially acceptable.

Our social class bleeds through our choices, our values, our judgements.

Most are learned and established in our minds by the time we reach adulthood. Who watches certain types of television show, who listens to certain types of music, who wears particular brands of clothes, eats in certain types of restaurants, drinks in certain pubs, speaks with particular accents and shops in certain stores. 

This idea of what is suitable for whom runs artery-deep through our society, its roots dating back thousands of years through British history into the feudal system in whose shadow we still labour. Whether it’s a kid getting beaten up for wearing the wrong trainers or an aspirational graduate struck from an interview list for having the wrong accent, classism is as much a source of bullying, bigotry, prejudice and exclusion as its good friends racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism and transphobia. 

People gloss over classism, make light of it and accept it in a way that we necessarily wouldn’t with other sources of prejudice because of its tightly interlinked relationship to capitalism.

It’s easy to excuse classism on the grounds that well, not everyone can afford those trainers and that’s just the way it is. Which is true, not everyone can afford those trainers, and short of a highly unlikely worker’s revolution in the offing, that is not going to change any time soon. However, this truth does not make it okay for us to pass judgement on the people who can’t afford those trainers – to make predetermined assumptions about who they are, where they are from, what they are like and conclude that it’s their own fault that they don’t have those trainers because they’ve made poor life choices so they don’t deserve them. 

Anyone who has followed the recent hoo-ha regarding Cloudwater Brewing’s collaboration project with four small minority-owned breweries (Queer Brewing, Rock Leopard, Good Karma Beer and Eko Brewery) that will be released exclusively at Tesco will see where I’m going with this.

While some independent bottle shops have cited understandable concerns about how this may affect their market share, a more significant and concerning backlash has come from many craft beer drinkers who seem to feel that craft beer does not ‘belong’ in supermarkets and its supply should be restricted solely to independent specialist bottle shops. 

While no-one, least of all Cloudwater and their collaborators, are denying the importance of indies to the beer trade, this small but angry group of nay-sayers seem to feel that the sanctity of their hallowed turf has been threatened, and are acting up with a vitriolic degree of barely-concealed classism. 

While many of these individuals are accusing Cloudwater of ‘hiding’ their money-making ambitions behind minority ‘foils’, they seem utterly oblivious to the fact that they are hiding their own classist judgements behind a skin-deep concern for the welfare of independent bottle shops. 

Their disdain at the thought of us ruffians who buy our groceries at Tesco getting our grubby mitts on their precious beer is nothing less than cultural gatekeeping on a par with saying ‘there goes the neighbourhood’. 

How we choose to react to these arrogant and proprietary attitudes speaks volumes about what we really want for this industry and how seriously committed we are to a diversity that takes into account the full meaning of that word, the full spectrum of different people in our society and whether we are sincere about wanting them in our space. 

How many craft beer drinkers do you know who will spout loftily ‘oh you’ll never catch me in a Wetherspoons even though they sell craft beer now, I only support independent pubs’? Do you nod along, either out of a desire to avoid conflict or an equal disdain for the chattering classes who can’t afford to drink anywhere else? 

Would your reaction be the same if they had said they would never go to a curry house? What about a kebab shop? Or a gay club? 

Yes, Wetherspoons has serious issues with regards to its politics and treatment of staff, but for many people it provides invaluable access to a lifestyle of drinking (and eating) that they simply could not afford at other venues.

Are those people not deserving of a pint in the pub? Are they not deserving of a craft beer from Tesco? 

The industry needs to be aware that every time it says where craft beer does and does not ‘belong’, what we’re also implying is; whom it does and does not ‘belong to’. We’re not just tipping our hats to the capitalist status quo – we are making an active statement that we believe there are people who don’t deserve what we have, and up to a point we’re blaming them for that. 

One thing we should all have learned from the pandemic is that any of us can get financially fucked over at any time and have it not be our fault. After nearly 18 months of furloughing and job losses, people still have the temerity to judge others for not being able to afford to buy all their craft beer from indies, and to judge businesses for wanting to supply those people with good quality beer at prices they can afford. 

Many of those people being judged spent the pandemic delivering parcels, meals and beverages at risk to their own health and on disgracefully low wages, but sure, let’s tell them they don’t deserve Cloudwater beer. The rest of us need to stand up to this attitude with the same diligence and concern that we express over issues of racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism and transphobia. We need to make it clear that beer really is for everyone – and that everyone means everyone, not everyone who can afford to buy it from its most high-end outlets. 

We should be welcoming new craft beer drinkers who have discovered our flavourful world through buying beer in the supermarket, not kicking them away because they don’t have the right bloody trainers. My own journey into craft beer began picking up bottles of Sierra Nevada, Lagunitas and Rogue from Manhattan corner stores, tearing off the tops and slugging them, often out of brown paper bags, not sipping elegantly from a hand-crafted flight board in a sleek upscale taproom. Does that make me a bad beer lover? A bad beer drinker? A bad person?

I’m not writing this to undermine the role of independents in the industry, or the passion of their staff and advocates. I’m writing it because the drinkers of supermarket beer and chain pub beer need equally passionate advocacy of their own. 

This isn’t about the ins and outs of Brewdog’s troubled history with diversity issues or Cloudwater changing their minds about supermarket distribution.

It’s about the huge opportunity that has been afforded not just to these four incredibly exciting, barrier-pushing minority-owned breweries, and to all the drinkers who will be able to access their beer and enjoy it.

It’s about saying no to any classist gatekeepers who want to clutch craft beer to their comfortable moneyed bosoms and act as though they’ve done something special to deserve it. Because they haven’t. Accessibility and representation apply as equally to class as they do to every other group.

Wherever you buy your beer, you are welcome in our community.