I got my first lap-dancing related hate mail the other day. The writer (who was not anonymous) suggested that I had nothing better to do with my time and argued that I belonged in the Stasi.
One of the hazards of politics is that you occasionally take a clear public view and someone doesn’t like it. My crime was to have issued a statement in support of the new rules on sexual encounter establishments.
Since the 2003 Licensing Act, lap-dancing clubs had been subject to the same licensing regime as pubs and restaurants – in particular, there was a presumption in favour of a licence being granted and objections could only be raised on a limited range of grounds.
Residents could not object to a lap-dancing club on principle or because it was something they didn’t want in their neighbourhood. This, with the strong support of the Local Government Association, has now changed.
There are major issues for Liberals here. Do we support people being able to object to pubs on principle? Clearly not. Do we support people who might object to a pub being opened near a school? Probably not although we would not be tolerant of a pub which was keen to sell alcohol to school children.
So: on what grounds can we object to lap-dancing? Because it involves exploitation? The evidence for this is doubtful. And if we are worried about exploitation we should deal with that rather than intervene in adult entertainment, freely entered into by both performer and consumer. Rules to protect performers are possibly overdue although many of the well-known names are meticulous.
Perhaps we could object because it objectifies women? All sorts of things do that, from top shelf magazines to channels freely available on cable and satellite. We also live in a culture that objectifies and commodifies men – a fact that marketing people around footballers and male models have not been slow to grasp. Most Liberals would balk at banning all such materials.
What about crime? There is usually a suggestion that these establishments are associated somehow with serious crime and prostitution but the evidence is again poor. The clientele tend in fact to be of little interest to the police compared with the assorted drunks and hoorays they have to cope with on a Saturday night.
So we are left with the niceness test. Some people (possibly a majority of women) find these clubs distasteful and don’t want them near their homes or children. Or possibly husbands.
This sort of objection is one ultimately of planning. As such it is arguably fair enough.
But it is a fine line and you can see why there are those who find the new rules illiberal.
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15 Comments
I don’t think its credible to try and claim lap dancing clubs are not distasteful; that’s the whole point of them, but the recent change is a step backward. There are few logical reasons for it as you say, it’s a question of getting the planning right. If you are faced with a wall of rhetoric and anger and no actual facts, maybe the circular file might be the order of the day.
Perhaps we need to hear less from outraged people who don’t go to the clubs, and more from the people who work there and what they think about it.
People don’t seem to be able to grasp the idea that it’s possible to object to the existence of something without trying to ban it.
“So we are left with the niceness test. Some people (possibly a majority of women) find these clubs distasteful and don’t want them near their homes or children. Or possibly husbands.
This sort of objection is one ultimately of planning. As such it is arguably fair enough.”
Would it be fair enough if they were objecting to a gay pub, for example?
Just get the residents to campaign for CCTV if there are any incidents — that’ll soon deflect the punters!
Would it be fair enough if they were objecting to a gay pub, for example?
Well said – critical point. For a long time people did have continual moral rants about gay-bars and clubs on the grounds that they were seedy. There is no planning law basis for it though, quite rightly. I’m unsure what the planning justification for objections to strip clubs are. It’s largely a cultural objection. In Japan, having a brothel next to a temple just isnt a big deal, and the Japanese have one of the lowest crime rates in the world. (Maybe because the brothel is next to the temple???)
“Just get the residents to campaign for CCTV if there are any incidents — that’ll soon deflect the punters!”
I think you may have missed the point of liberalism just slightly …
So a lap dance hate mail isn’t an extreme form of stripogram then?
Lap-dancing clubs will only operate where there is demand for them. They won’t operate in a quite little hamlet if only a couple of people want them. Seedy businesses don’t exist unless there’s seedy people to run them and seedy customers to pay. So if people don’t want such a club in their area, allowing them to block the existence of the club would be letting the rights of the (prudish) majority to trample on the economic rights of the minority.
I am wondering what Councillor White’s latest views are on his Councils decision to ban running during the City’s annual pancake race http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1251508/Health-safety-ruins-Shrove-Tuesday-pancake-race-contestants-disqualified-running.html
Mike – have you tried asking him?
“I don’t think its credible to try and claim lap dancing clubs are not distasteful; that’s the whole point of them”
I don’t think that’s right, Chris. Surely the point is that they are very much to some people’s taste, but that other people don’t appreciate what the customers enjoy and what to regulate it.
LOL at Anthony Aloysius St.
So is the 2003 licensing legislation beyond criticism? People who live near to pubs and clubs which are open until the small hours of the morning seem to disagree. Sounds like a very New Labour attitude to say that if there is demand for something people should be entitled to make money from it irrespective of what it is or how local communities feel about it.
“Sounds like a very New Labour attitude to say that if there is demand for something people should be entitled to make money from it irrespective of what it is or how local communities feel about it.”
Ladies and gentleman, I give you the tyranny of the majority.
And no, it is not a “New Labour attitude”. It is a liberal attitude.
New Labour, remember, are the ones who go for all that moral panic stuff.
“…. irrespective of what it is or how local communities feel about it.”
If something is legal, then the fact that the neighbours disapprove of it shouldn’t be allowed to stop you doing it.
Of course, if you are actually causing a nuisance to your neighbours that’s different. But in that case exactly the same rules should apply to a lap-dancing club as to any other kind of entertainment establishment.
Certainly moral disapproval of legal activities that go on behind closed doors should have no place in licensing law.