'Trashy Swerfs' in Licence Objection Failure

Spearmint Rhino's Sheffield branch has been the focus of repeated licence removal attempts by activist group 'Zero Option Sheffield' who work in conjunction with NotBuyingIt and a local grandmother, Irene Gladdison (although that's not her real name, but more of that later). As you probably gathered from the above frame grab, the besieged clubs most recent licence application was successful despite intense opposition from everybody with an interest in seeing them close. In fact I have to say that the anti club gang threw everything they could at it because they badly needed the win, but before we look at that issue, lets see what took place in Sheffield.

In The Begining...

There was a concerted PR campaign in advance of the hearing, with Sasha Rakoff blaming Sheffield Council for anything bad she could think of such as the explosion in local prostitution as the quote below illustrates...

The problem with the '400% increase in prostitution' is that is has nothing to do with the City Council, as you can see if followed the hyperlink embedded in the article...

So as we can see, the so called 'sex-industry bias' is not a factor, but austerity most certainly is and when you consider Sasha Rakoff highlighted this issue in support of an objective that would have left 40 dancers jobless...

A Tale of Two Hearings...

We are lucky here because we can view matters from the perspective of both the clubs supporters and those in opposition. NotBuyingIt sent someone along, I presume it was Nikki Bond who tweeted her way through the hearing. You can see the tweet thread below and for the sake of easy reading the first tweet is at the top of the frame grab and progresses downwards...

So as you can see, NotBuyingIt were keen for readers to understand that the council offices were well attended by objectors and we can see a photo of them below...

Sheffield UKIP Spearmint Rhino objectors in full SWERF mode

What they failed to mention was the group of supporters that were also there...

Dancers and their supporters turned out in force, much to the surprise of NotBuyingIt.

As you saw, the NotBuyingIts tweets hardly provide much of a flavour of what occurred during the hearing, so its lucky that local resident, Rosa Deluxemburg generated a far more detailed account of proceedings...

As you will see, Rosa's account is far more interesting because it includes the evidence free allegations of Councillor Douglas Johnson and NotBuyingIt Nikki. Lets look at what she had to say...

Rosa makes a very good point in that dancers were not asked for their views about whether or not they might be OK about losing their jobs. Given that a central plank of the NotBuyingIt argument is that dancers are exploited, you would imagine they would be very keen to support this belief with actual evidence, but they didn't bothering asking anyone, probably because they knew what kind of answer they would get...

So the Green Partys answer to Chris Grayling, Councillor Douglas Johnson, decided to make it up as he went along when he stated the dancers at SR were physically abused by the clubs management. He then launched into an impassioned argument that it as the clubs staff are employed and the dancers are self employed, surely it would be better if both parties were unemployed. 

Now maybe we start to see why no dancers were consulted, the objectors had already decided for themselves what the truth was...

Did you notice that in NotBuyingIts view, SR accused Sammy Woodhouse of lying about working in the Sheffield branch. Yet in the above frame grab, we see an alternative viewpoint and maybe as a result we can also see NotBuyingIt demonstrate the hyperbole that is the trademark of their sister group, Continuity Object. I like the fact that Ms Woodhouse highlighted the fact that dancers apparently exploit customers. But hang on, according to NotBuyingIt, dancers do not earn anywhere enough money, but now apparently they earn too much...

NotBuyingIt and Zero Option Sheffield managed to produce around 150 written objections to the granting of a new licence for Spearmint Rhino. Granted, most of the objections were standard letters, but one of the few that was written by someone that actually cared enough to write something original, was written in support of the club...

Sasha and Zero Option had managed to facilitate 150 letters of objection, that combined with what they hoped was compelling testimony from the objectors they managed to rake up, made them, it seems, feel confident they would prevail. The above letter was very important as it was written by a 22 year old female student at the university who stated the obvious - that closing a club that adheres to its licence terms and provides employment to 40 dancers, is quite simply 'not feminist'.

Anyway, as we now know the licence was granted. But our story doesn't end there...

An Unpleasant Aftermath

NotBuyingIt and Zero Option Sheffield were rather upset by the decision to grant the licence to SR because removal of the licence was tactically very important in terms of the their longer term aim of closing every club in the country. Because they were thwarted, they and their allies took their anger and frustration out on those that dared support the dancers and the club where they work...

Sasha pals, the Critical Sisters were very unhappy, but received an appropriate response...

Local councillor Sophie Wilson was similarly annoyed with the Sisters as well and made her views very clear...

Julie Bindel was also very angry and let loose with an astonishing array of childish insults aimed at 'bearded woke dudes', 'privileged neo liberal idiots' and 'student union clap trappers'.

No Julie, you are what 'Orwellian feminism' looks like and furthermore, how can you justify calling people who are about to get hit with £50k of student debt 'privileged'?

However, the best response comes once again from Sophie Wilson...

It was amazing to see students, Labour activists, local politicians and members of LGBTQ community come together to support dancers, amazing, but not necessarily unforseen. The feminist school of thought embodied by Rackoff, Bindel et al have just received an enormous shock as their 'wisdom' has been rejected by a younger generation of people with different values who are just as capable of managing effective campaigns to support what they believe in. So we can see a clear change in the landscape of thought around clubs and dancers. 

There was another change, the current anti club campaign seems to have a very dark heart, a stench that would have been noticed by the younger generation of activists and that is what I intend to write about next...

One more point before I sign off. Off the people that complained about the successful licence application, there was one that seemed to be missing - Irene Gladdison.