Yahoo News Sheffield strip club keeps licence despite opposition by feminist coalition
A strip club in Sheffield had its licence renewed after the council ruled covertly recorded footage of dancers breaking no-touching rules should not force its closure.
Dancers at Spearmint Rhino celebrated the ruling on Tuesday, made after eight hours of heated testimony from both sides on Monday. Dancers had accused campaigners who made the undercover recordings of “revenge porn tactics”. A coalition of feminist groups that had sought the club’s closure condemned the decision and said they would continue to fight for the venue’s licence to be withdrawn.
It is the latest episode in a long-running row over the club’s presence in Sheffield, which intensified this year after the campaign group Not Buying It hired investigators to go undercover and make covert recordings in the club in February. The footage led to a council investigation which found that some dancers had been sexually touching customers, themselves and each other, resulting in 74 breaches of licensing conditions and 145 breaches of the club’s code of conduct.
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Despite the breaches, the council said the renewal application would be granted. It said it would publish a full notice explaining its reasons soon.
Meera Kulkarni, the chief executive of the Sheffield Rape and Sexual Abuse Centre, which is 350 metres from the strip club, said the charity’s decision to oppose the renewal was made after consultation with male and female clients. She said the response to the club had been “overwhelmingly negative”, with clients saying the venue was an “inappropriate” reminder for those seeking to recover from abuse.
Kulkarni emphasised the objection was never against individual workers. “We recognise that a number of dancers in clubs such as Spearmint Rhino are survivors of sexual abuse and sexual violence. We support and will always support clients who identify themselves as sex workers.”
However, the dancer Celia Lister said she and her colleagues were “over the moon” at the news and called the case a “huge milestone in breaking the social stigma that surrounds sex work”. She said she hoped to work closely with the council to create a licence that took into account dancers’ experience of the stripping industry and “build on workers rights alongside our trade union, United Voices of the World”.
Heather Watson, another dancer, said there was still work to be done to make the industry “safer and fairer”. She said it had been a difficult year for dancers across the country, who had been “subject to objectification, dismissal, revenge porn tactics” and “ignored by feminists claiming to rescue us”.
The undercover filming followed several previous attempts to shut the club, including two successful judicial reviews, which campaigners launched when they felt their objections to the council were not being taken on board.
Charlotte Mead, the branch leader of Sheffield Women’s Equality party, said she was disappointed with the decision despite the council’s own investigation finding “serious contraventions of the club’s licence conditions, including sexual contact”.
She pledged to continue the battle to close the club. “We have little faith that Spearmint Rhino will ensure that further breaches of its licence do not take place and will continue to campaign to change the council’s policy on strip clubs, including campaigning against the renewal of Spearmint Rhino’s licence next year,” she said.
Julian Norman, the barrister for the coalition that included the anti-strip club campaigners Not Buying It, Zero Option and Object, the Rotherham child exploitation survivor Sammy Woodhouse and the Sheffield branch of the Women’s Equality Party argued last year’s licensing committee had said there was no evidence the club had breached its conditions, and this year, they had been given the evidence. The campaigners also argued the club contributed to gender inequality and made passersby feel unsafe.
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In support of the club, dancers, academics and Sheffield Hallam’s student union said closing it would force them to work underground. The dancers said being secretly filmed had affected their mental health, and could not be described as a feminist act.
Objecting to the licence renewal for the fifth year, Mead told the licensing committee “strip clubs contribute to a culture where men feel entitled to women’s bodies”. She read statements from former dancers, including some who had worked at Sheffield’s Spearmint Rhino, complaining of frequent sexual harassment and assault.
Sasha Rakoff, the chief executive of Not Buying It, said the decision was “shocking news”. She argued the overwhelmingly positive accounts given by those working at the club demonstrated the “stranglehold” the company had on its dancers, which they have denied.
The tensions of the last seven months were laid bare as women spoke at the council hearing of the abuse they had been subjected to for opposing the club. One objector spoke of the ageism she had faced and said campaigners had been described as “ugly” and called “anti-feminist and old hags”.
Not Buying It was criticised by some of the dancers during the hearing for refusing to meet and talk to them. Watson was one of many dancers at the club who described being filmed as a violation. “We are not sex objects as we have been described,” she said. “We are as complex and multifaceted as anyone else and actually, customers treat us as people, more than the supposed feminist objectors.”
Rosa Vince, a local resident and academic specialising in sexual objectification, said: “As feminists we must care about consent to sexual contact, and this involves believing women when they say that consent is present, as well as when they say it is absent.” She argued that if there was a problem with exploitation, or poor working conditions, the solution was not to shut the venue down, but to improve the rights of the workers.
Spearmint Rhino has been approached for a response.
