By Paul Bracchi
The sign bearing the name of the club is difficult to miss. It's spelled out in big, illuminated letters outside the entrance: Wiggle. In case there was any doubt about the nature of the establishment, a photograph next to the sign shows a woman clutching her naked buttocks.
No so long ago, this Victorian building was a register office where couples exchanged wedding vows. Now, inside, a brunette in G-string and stilettos calling herself Georgia approaches a customer. 'Hi, would you like a dance?' She leads him to a small private booth.
The seedy performance in which she removes every scrap of clothing and dances seductively just feet away from the man, is over in a few minutes and costs £25.
Naked ambition: Over the past four years, the number of 'gentlemen's clubs' across the country has doubled to around 300
To the men who pay to come here, it may seem little more than a titillating diversion. To the neighbours who have to live with the presence of such a club, it is an abhorrent stain on the community.
'This has become Sin City,' says a despairing David Clutterbuck, 70, a local councillor for the past 19 years, and chairman of a 1,000-strong residents' committee.
So where do you think we are? Soho perhaps, or maybe the Square Mile of London's financial district, where strip joints have effectively become extensions of the trading floors. The answer, of course, is neither. This is Bournemouth.
It is a town which used to stand for gentle strolls along the seafront for couples of a certain age, afternoon tea, and sedate hotels with a piano playing in the background.
And now? Well, let's go on a tour. Directly opposite the Wiggle bar in the town centre is For Your Eyes Only, where half-naked women slither up and down poles six nights a week.
Just round the corner is Spearmint Rhino, where you can pay for naked dances from peroxide blonde twins Louise and Claire, Angel, Jade, Roxanne and Co with cash, credit card or special 'Rhinochips'.
Outside the train station is the resort's fourth 'gentlemen's club'. It's Thursday, so entry to Fantasy Palace is free. Such is the competition between venues that cut price deals ('2-4-1' dances) and drink ('Buy one bottle of champagne get the 2nd free') are always available.
Good news for stag parties, not such good news for locals who have to mop up the vomit and sweep away the broken glass in the morning.
Bournemouth, however, is just part of a much wider problem.
Over the past four years, the number of 'gentlemen's clubs' across the country has doubled to around 300 - and counting. Inside, girls gyrate in their underwear around poles on stages, then offer themselves to customers who will pay around £20-£25 for a private nude dance. In theory, at least, a 'no touching' rule is in place. No town, it seems, is safe.
The explosion of such venues came under the spotlight this week after it emerged that delegates at the Tory Party conference in Birmingham had been offered discounted entry to a lap-dancing club in the city. Could there be a more depressing indicator of just how much they have become - for some - an acceptable part of the modern High Street?
Along the South Coast from Bournemouth, in Plymouth, to the fury of locals one venue has now been licensed to open within sight of the celebrated Mayflower Steps, where the Pilgrim Fathers set sail for America three centuries ago. Puritans and pole dancing - it's a combination few would have thought possible.
In Harrogate, that most genteel of spa towns, a building formerly occupied by the Salvation Army is now Wildcats. Leamington Spa has Shades. North Cornwall has five pole- dancing clubs, including Divas and Halos. Stourbridge in the West Midlands has Heaven and very soon Barbarella's as well.
Meanwhile, even in Tunbridge Wells, it emerges, there are now plans to open a pole-dancing venue.
Local authorities and most police forces are opposed to such establishments - which are blighting small towns and residential areas up and down the country - but are powerless to stop them spreading.
The reality is it is now as easy to open up a cafe serving capuccinos as a lap-dancing club serving up sleaze.
Often, residents get no warning that the bar down the road is 're-opening'. There is usually no consultation, and even less they can do about it once the inevitable has happened. Apart from protesting, that is, which people are now doing in increasing numbers, from Burgess Hill to Bridlington.
So how on earth did we arrive at this situation? The reason can be traced back to an inglorious day, November 24, 2005, to be precise, when new licensing laws (which also heralded the advent of 24-hour drinking) came into force.
New Labour claimed the legislation 'swept away considerable red tape at a stroke' by reducing the number of licensing bodies from nine to one.
One piece of 'red tape' which was 'swept away' was the so-called 'nudity clause'.
In the past, councils could oppose a Spearmint Rhino, say, or Wiggle bar opening on the High Street on moral grounds, or impose any number of discretionary conditions, which made it all but impossible for an application to be granted.
Under the new legislation, a premises' licence can be rejected only on the grounds of preventing crime or safeguarding public safety. In other words, strip clubs would be treated no differently from restaurants, karaoke bars and pubs.
Morality was taken out of the equation and, many would argue, common sense along with it.
Of course, it was never the Government's intention to create an explosion in lap-dancing and pole-dancing. But in the process of making the licensing process more streamlined and efficient, it left a loophole which has been ruthlessly seized upon by men like John Gray.
A change in licensing rules has been blamed for the growth in lap-dancing clubs
Gray, who has a mansion in Buckinghamshire - and has also used the name John Luciano, among others, back in his native America, where he has a string of criminal convictions for offences including carrying a concealed weapon - is the boss of Spearmint Rhino, which means he has a foothold in Bournemouth.
Bournemouth (pop: 168,000) now has exactly the same number of lap-dancing clubs as Glasgow (pop: 578,790). The new licensing laws do not cover Scotland, and it would be difficult to imagine a more damning comparison to highlight the shortcomings of the system south of the border.
Now, some liberals may argue that strip clubs provide no more than a bit of harmless fun for men on a night out. Yet the sheer numbers of such establishments rather undermines this defence.
So does the growing evidence that in areas where they operate, the fear of crime rises, as does crime itself, and that some clubs themselves may be a front for prostitution.
A study by a London-based charity found that in the three years since four large lap- dancing clubs opened in Camden, incidents of rape rose by 50 per cent and sexual assaults by 57 per cent. There was also a rise in anti-social behaviour.
Those who run clubs, of course, insist they are well-regulated and that the women who work in them are supervised to ensure nothing of a sexual nature occurs between the 'girls' and their customers.
It is a claim which is dismissed by the young woman who is now sitting opposite me in a London cafe. We shall call her Sarah.
Sarah is well-spoken. Her father works in the City. She left school with three A-levels, but by the age of 23 she was drinking heavily and had developed a cocaine habit. Unable to hold down a job, she ended up becoming a lap-dancer in the capital.
The most she ever made on one night was £205. On most nights it was just £50. The personal cost was much higher.
'It's not glamorous, and only a handful of girls, who had been there a long time and had regular customers, were making much money. Many of the other women were students, single mothers or even nurses.
'The management always took on more women than were needed in a night, so it really became dog eat dog. I came to realise that you had to break the "no touching" rules to make any money at all.
'I did things which I'm not proud of, but other girls, especially those from Eastern Europe, went further in the club's private rooms. They came from clubs abroad where prostitution is normal and accepted.'
Sarah, who is now working has a photographer, finally left after a year. 'If I had a boyfriend now and he said he was going to a lap-dancing club, I would consider it to be infidelity.'
Lap-dancing recruitment sites on the internet are now aggressively trying to hire girls from Eastern Europe, presumably for the reasons Sarah gave. One advert reads: 'Constantly looking for Polish, Russian, Czech, Romanian, Slovak, Hungarian girls with different looks - blondes, brunette, long hair, short hair - to work for club.'
Girls like these are performing across the country, at establishments just like these.
One club in Burgess Hill, a quiet commuter town in West Sussex, has attracted the wrath of local residents.
One day the club, not far from the local Waitrose, was just a bar - the next, 25 dancers were parading themselves at the venue, which featured a booth where customers could be shackled by their wrists to a chair during 'one-to-one' performances.
Outraged residents mounted an internet campaign and letter-writing blitz to protest at the arrival of Club Redd. Just three weeks after it opened in July, the building was destroyed in an arson attack.
But manager Leo Valls warned: 'We will rebuild and re-open as soon as possible.'
This week a public meeting - about Club Redd - was held in the town. It is one of many such meetings now being staged all over the country.
'Residents were very keen to point out how much better their lives have been since the club burned down,' said local councillor Anne Jones.
'With these establishments opening in town centres or near schools, what example are we setting - and what moral guidance are we giving to our young people?
'Burgess Hill is a small town, and our town centre is small, so establishments like Club Redd do impact on residents' lives.
'Local authorities should be given the power to create decent places for people to live. We are constantly being told to be champions of our community and look after our residents' interests.
'But at the same time central government is making it harder and harder for us to meet the needs of the people we represent. Where is the local democracy in that? We find it very frustrating because our efforts seem so often to be in vain.'
Her comments will strike a chord with local politicians, particularly in Bournemouth.
'I don't think lap-dancing clubs do the reputation of the town any good,' said David Smith, who has been a councillor there for 14 years. 'It is far too easy to open a lap-dancing club now because you no longer need a separate licence.
'The situation with Wiggle [which opened in 2006] was that the owners wanted an entertainment licence. They didn't have to be specific about what entertainment they were going to provide.
'We all knew what was going on. We heard from behind the scenes that it was going to be adult entertainment. But we couldn't do anything about it - our hands were tied.'
Back at Wiggle bar on Thursday night, we asked a number of girls if they provided 'extra' services - 'no', they said, laughing. But one dancer who used to work there told us: 'The girls did things they shouldn't have done. 'They did give "extras". I don't know if it's like that now. But when I was there it was sleazy and that is why I left.'
Today, belated efforts are under way to close the loophole which has resulted in this disturbing proliferation of lap-dancing clubs, and have them classified in future as 'sex encounter' establishments, thus handing the public and councils the same powers of opposition as exist with X-rated cinemas and sex shops.
'Gerry Sutcliffe, the licensing minister, has acknowledged the growing public concern about the lax rules.
In a letter to local authority chief executives, he wrote: 'It is clear that the protection and regulations set out in the 2003 act and elsewhere do not go as far as some people would like to control the proliferation of lap-dancing clubs and similar establishments.'
He asked for their views on how the system could be tightened up. It still remains unclear whether any new legislation would apply retrospectively and allow the siting of existing clubs to be challenged. In other words, for towns like Bournemouth it may already be too late.
Original here
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment