A campaign to get the Wurzels, the West Country band who had a hit with I am a Cider Drinker, back into the charts gathered pace. Various Facebook pages, set up to hijack the charts and topple Lady Gaga with the Wurzel’s distinctive folky sound, had received at least 3,000 followers.
Meanwhile the Leave Our Cider Alone campaign had attracted 21,000 followers by yesterday afternoon, with many vowing to make Sunday “Cider Sunday”, to celebrate the last day before the duty takes effect.
Simon Russell, of the National Association of Cider Makers, said: “They burned effigies of Lord Bute across the west country in 1763 when he introduced a tax on cider and perry. He was a dour Scotsman too.
“I wouldn’t want to be Alistair Darling if he dared venture down to Bristol. There is real anger around here.”
Mr Darling announced, during the Budget, that cider duty would increase by inflation plus 10 per cent, equating to a 13 per cent rise in duty, adding as much as 10p to a 750ml bottle of cider.
David Cameron, the Conservative leader, on a trip to Devon, said he supported a duty increase for the high alcohol cider such as Diamond White, but not on the traditional apple drink. He said: “The Government has
made a mistake. They don’t understand the West Country, they don’t understand this part of our country and they’ve got it wrong.
“Of course we need a higher tax on the dangerous high strength, things like White Lightning, which have as much relation to an apple as I do with Gandhi.
“But proper cider that people like to drink down the pub, we shouldn’t be having a great tax hike on that.”
Also in the West Country was Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, who was in Somerset and described it as a “smash and grab tax on an industry which is immensely important to many people here”.
“They say [in Somerset] this sudden tax, this 10 per cent tax, has come out of the blue with no warning, no proper explanation, no proper thought given to the consequences. It is not the way you treat an industry which has done extremely well, particularly in the West Country, to suddenly whack them with a smash and grab attempt to get a bit of extra money for the Treasury.”
In the Commons, Conservative MP Bill Wiggin asked environment minister Jim Fitzpatrick how he had “the nerve” to talk up agriculture, while the government hiked up duty on cider.
He added: “There are 600 businesses in Herefordshire alone producing this exclusively British drink. How are you ever going to persuade anybody to take anything you say about British agriculture seriously again?”
Mr Fitzpatrick said there was a “small cider makers’ exemption” to the increase for firms producing less than 7,000 litres a year – he estimated it meant nearly 400 UK cider makers would not be affected by the duty rise.
I am a Cider Drinker reached number three in the chars in 1976, but it would be an achievement if it were to make a comeback. However, a successful internet campaign last Christmas helped Rage Against the Machine’s protest song Killing in the Name beat the hot favourite, The Climb, sung by the X Factor winner Joe McElderry.
Mr Russell said: “I’m not entirely sure that the Wurzels being at number one will be entirely good for cider’s image. But we are thrilled at how much popular support we are getting as an industry.”
