A COMMON PROBLEM – CLAPHAM’S ONE PUMP, ONE CUSTOMER PUB

October 2024. Clapham.

On a roll now. More than a single new GBG pub for the first time in ages, and a belated return to Clapham on the Northern Line.

Everyone loves Clapham, surely ?

Well, I couldn’t think of any highlights apart from the Common and the seven branches of Gail’s Bakery that define the town (is it a town ?).

Didn’t there use to be a Craft Co. here ? Looks all cafe culture now,

and Guide newbie the Apollo isn’t a 1969 estate pub as I hoped.

In fact, the Apollo feels more function room than pub,

and I have that deep joy of guessing how it got in the new GBG.

The staff looks almost worried as I tip up on a weekday, distracted from their laptops, and I inwardly rejoice at a lone hand pump.

But a lone London micro, surely? Or is Butty Bach the new Purity Mad Goose ?

What can I say ?

Not bad enough to return, another victim of zero cask trade (NBSS 2) and zero pre-supper custom.

And a dimple jug.

It could only be South-WEST London.

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Published by retiredmartin

Retired NHS, doing long walks around UK and the world to record the great bits. Focused on Good Beer Guide pubs and live music.

21 thoughts on “A COMMON PROBLEM – CLAPHAM’S ONE PUMP, ONE CUSTOMER PUB”

  1. I’m a now retired member of a civil service union whose headquarters adjoins the station there, popularly known as Clapham Injunction because of the number of writs served on its steps in the factional battles for control which led to us being nicknamed the Beirut of the labour movement. The fulltimers always used to drink and plot in the Falcon round the corner.

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      1. Really depends on the grade, Paul. The admin grade union I joined back in the nineties had lots of militant rank and file members, and its successor has been under the control of the left for the last twenty years or so. The First Division Association which represents Sir Humphrey and his pals is another story.

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      3. That’s not an easy question to answer, Martin, given the complicated and factional history of civil service trade unionism. Very briefly, up to the late seventies, it was the Communist Party, and then after that Militant (now the Socialist Party) became the leading left group in the union. They had an acrimonious split a few years ago and the battle line in the union is now between their ex-members who still hold full-time jobs at headquarters and an alliance of their remaining, mostly rank and file, members and independent lefties, which has a slim majority on the executive.

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      4. But what does “left” mean, when “right wing” seems to have been appropriated by people who want an end to immigration ?

        Not making a point, just interested.

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      5. As an ‘Industrial’ Civil Servant I was active in the TGWU, then as a ‘non Industrial’ it was the IPCS – IPMS – Prospect.

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      6. Martin, left and right are obviously relative terms, and most trade union right wingers are left of centre on the general political spectrum, middle of the road Labour types, but the ones who ran my union until we kicked them out in the early noughties were a particularly strange Cold War outfit (part funded by the CIA through a pro-NATO front group based at the US embassy, and with links to the British security services, the Scottish wing of Catholic Action and the Polish government in exile here since the war).

        Paul, I’ve got the official history of CPSA, the union I joined when I became a civil servant in 1997. It’s called From Humble Petition to Militant Action (some wag later suggested we should add “and Back Again” ☺️).

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      7. Martin, I think it can mean two things now. One is economic, believing in free markets, privatisation, low taxation, a small state, deregulation and the promotion of business and individualism, which doesn’t exclude being liberal/progressive on social issues. The other, as you say, is social conservativism, taking a strong stand against immigration, abortion, gun control, same-sex marriage and trans rights, exemplified by Trump, Reform, the right wing of the Tory party, and some of the regimes now in eastern Europe, which also doesn’t exclude being liberal/progressive on economic issues (as the traditional Labour right was, and the Polish Law and Order party is today). The two strands sometimes overlap, and were once both encompassed within the Tory party when it was a broad church of the centre right, obviously much less so now, and especially since Brexit as those supporting the former position have largely defected to the Lib Dems.

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      9. You’ve nailed it Matthew I think.

        The more serious division these days though, seems to me to be between those who regulate themselves according to the reason of the modern, post-Enlightenment mind, and those who don’t, but instead perhaps submit to the bidding of the tribal folkmind, with its commitment to believe whatever myths and claims – however unsubstantiated – unite its kin. Primitive obscurantists, that is.

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  2. Matthew, the infighting and factionalism amongst the left, is reminiscent of the situation in Barcelona, during the Spanish Civil War. George Orwell, who was a volunteer on the Republican side, described what was going on at that time, in his book, “Homage to Catalonia.”

    The infighting amongst various left-leaning factions on the Republican side, ultimately led to the defeat of what was the legitimate government of Spain, and handed victory to Franco’s fascists.

    Orwell was lucky to escape with his life from Spain, and was left totally disillusioned with socialism, communism, Marxism and all other “ism’s”. Not that far removed from CAMRA these days, or am I being facetious?

    ps. A pub with no obvious cask trade, that can’t shift sufficient volumes of its single cask ale (NBSS 2), gains an entry in the prestigious Good Beer Guide. How on earth did that happen?

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      3. Not a bad average, Martin, but the inclusion of pubs like the Apollo, which only seem to offer cask as a token gesture, does make me think there is some truth in the story that some CAMRA branches are struggling to fill their quotas for the guide.

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      4. Well there we’re in complete agreement, Paul.

        On the other hand, I’ve no doubt you could take me to a dozen pubs in the Tonbridge Wells and Tonbridge Wells area that aren’t in the 10% of pubs in the Guide but serve an enjoyable pint, and on our most recent tour of Stafford we went in some excellent unsung pubs.

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      5. I certainly didn’t expect my Bass and Hobgoblin Ruby to be murky.
        On the other hand in Stafford’s Railway Inn yesterday lunchtime soon after I’d sat down with my Bass its haziness was pointed out to me with an offer of a Landlord instead, an offer I declined as it still tasted fine which can happen where each cask only lasts two or three days.

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      7. You were probably just unlucky Martin.
        It’s usually two out of three from Bass, Timothy Taylors and Wye Valley, though the lessee has recently added a Greene King cask beer as the he takes a lot, mostly keg, from them for his five pubs.
        The Railway Inn has recently had a lick of paint which is all it’s ever needed, certainly not the substantial refurbishment suggested nearly a year ago.

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  3. Very different but that Apollo reminds me of Holts’s Apollo opened during 1974 at Heywood Street near the brewery and closed quite a while ago.

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