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Ansells brewery dispute 1980/81

Stevehanson said:
Does anyone remember the Ansells strike of 1980/81 or is this another Birmingham memory that's lost forever.
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Was this the strike by the draymen? If so I recall it was one where the management said if they strike they would close down the whole site. There was a strike, so they did.
 
Janet Hunt said:
en.wikipedia.org

Ansells Brewery - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
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My recollections are, Ansell’s had been bought out by (I Think) Allied Brewery’s. They had a very modern plant in Burton on Trent.

I had been told that the Aston brewery was quite old and antiquated. An accountant I knew at the time, who was also quite a sharp businessman told me that he had recently visited the Aston plant and found it was like something out of Charles Dickins. Very old and antiquated machinery etc. It sounded to me like Ansell’s never really made much in the way of investment into new equipment or modernisation.

There were suggestions that Allied Breweries were just waiting for an opportunity once they had acquired the Ansell’s brand to dich the Aston plant.

After the strike and closure that’s exactly what happened. Saying that, Allied Brewery’s did seem hell bent on only brewing and selling larger. It was much cheaper to manufacture. Fortunately, CAMERA started their campaign for real ale that proved to be very effective and I believe was the start of the smaller model brewery’s.
 
That was the impression I got too Morturn. I will add, though, that I can remember in the 1960s it was claimed that lager was more expensive to produce , which was used to justify the higher price.
 
Remember switching over to drinking bottled when the taps ran dry, then when the bottles ran out, went to the M&B pub down the road.
A lot of past customers never went back to Ansells.
 
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