Club UK in Wandsworth: Love, Ecstasy and Crime

Heading out to Kew Gardens over Christmas, we drove through Wandsworth. As always on that journey through South West London, my partner and I reminisced incredulously about how we used to drag ourselves for miles across the capital by public transport to visit that part of the city. And we weren't alone - because from 1993 to 1996, Wandsworth was the home of Club UK, attracting people from all over London and beyond to queue in Buckhold Road next to the Arndale Shopping Centre.

Like many new clubs at this time, it was launched in a blaze of publicity about its luxurious decor and facilities. Like most, the reality was that the money was mainly spent on the sound system, and it was in fact a 'utilitarian, cavernous warehouse' (to quote DJ magazine), with 3 different music rooms - the 'techno room', the 'pop art room' and the main room . Promoter was Sean McCluskey, who was also involved with the Leisure Lounge.

There were two main nights. On Fridays, it was Final Frontier, a techno/trance night put on by Universe (who promoted the Tribal Gathering festivals with the Mean Fiddler). The flyer below exemplifies the rhetoric of that scene, with its talk of a 'our weekly marriage of spirituality and technology in perfect harmony' and its call for 'No rules, no limits and no sell out'.

Final Frontier flyer, January 1995 (click to enlarge)

Saturdays was a house night, with a dominant soundtrack of the kind of anthems despised as 'handbag house' by tedious musos, but which I loved (and indeed still do- hooray for funky!). Yes lots of disco diva vocals and four to floor rhythms. When I think of Saturday nights at Club UK, the tracks that come to mind are things like Your Loving Arms by Billy Ray Martin (the Junior Vasquez Soundfactory mix), To the Beat of the Drum by La Luna, Wildchild's Renegade Master, Push the Feeling On by the Nightcrawlers. Oh and that piano break track with the sample of Blur's Girls and Boys (Pianoman - Blurred).

Club UK flyer, February 1995 (click to enlarge)

What made Club UK special was a crowd of 1400 people for which the term 'up for it' seems completely inadequate. I can still vividly picture walking in there for the first time on a Saturday night - as soon as we stepped through the doors it felt like we were in the middle of an explosion of energy. The track playing was Reach Up (Papa's got a brand new pigbag) by Perfecto Allstarz - the whole place was erupting, there didn't seem to be any sense of a separate dancefloor, everybody in the place was dancing including the bar staff. You would meet all kinds of people there from public school kids (there were press reports of Etonians being suspended for taking drugs there) to squaddies - I remember on that first visit chatting to a couple who had done a bunk from a local children's home to be there.

Club UK was the opposite of cool, in every sense of the word. It was a sweatbox with little or no air conditioning, condensation dripping off the ceilings and sometimes unbearably hot and crowded. One night when we there they had to open the fire exit into the Arndale to let people breathe - so there was an impromtu chill out area on a balcony overlooking the deserted shopping centre (pretty sure this was on their second birthday party, July 1st 1995, with Danny Rampling playing). I remember sucking ice pops to try and cool down. The place was ecstasy fuelled, so many people would go the whole night without buying a drink. Many dubious clubs at that time used to turn off the water in the bathrooms so that people had to buy water from the bar. I don't recall Club UK going to that extreme, but sometimes the cold water taps were reduced to a dribble and they certainly made a small fortune selling their own brand of bottled water. Like in many clubs, there were many random acts of kindness as strangers offered each other sips of water on the dancefloor.

South London Press, 17 October 1995 (click to enlarge)

One hazard was the sporadic police raids. The first one was in December 1994 on a Friday night. Then in October 1995, 150 police raided it on a Saturday. Operation Blade involved dogs, horses, and the Territorial Support Group. 800 clubbers were turned out on to the streets, and many searched. 10 people were arrested. The police raid on Club UK was carried out with TV cameras in attendance, correctly described by the clubowners as a 'media circus'. It seems the raid was deliberately timed to provide a story on which to hang the launch two days later of a new anti-drugs campaign called SNAP (Say no and phone). Ironically the police launched this campaign at Club UK's South London rival, The Ministry of Sound, a place where drug use was just as widespread.

 

Mixmag, November 1995 (click to enlarge)

With hindsight, there were though some dodgy people around Club UK. As in the United States when prohibition of alcohol led to the Mafia control of drinking clubs, the prohibition of drugs like ecstasy created a huge market for UK gangsters to fill.

In December 1995, three men were found shot dead in a Range Rover in a country lane near Rettendon in Essex: Tony Tucker, Pat Tate and Craig Rolfe. There are different versions of why they were killed, as they had many enemies from their involvement in violence and drug smuggling. But it is well established that Tucker ran security at Club UK. According to Tony Thompson in 'Bloggs 19: the story of the Essex Range Rover Triple Murders' (London: Warner, 2000), 'Controlling the doors of a club instantly means that you control who sells drugs inside. Tucker began to charge dealers 'rent' of around £1000 per week in return for granting them exclusive access to the club... in March 1994, twenty-year old Kevin Jones died at Club UK in south London after taking ecstasy. In a bid to track the source, police put two of the club's suspected dealers under surveillance and discovered they had been paying Tony Tucker, the man responsible for security at the club, £1000 per weekend for the exclusive rights to sell ecstasy and cocaine'. Thompson also suggests that Tucker supplied the ecstasy to a dealer at Raquels nightclub in Basildon, the source of the infamous E that caused the death in November 1995 of Leah Betts at her 18th birthday party.

In a statement to police after the murders, Christoper Hall of the (unrelated) Club UN in Tottenham stated: 'I first met Tony [Tucker] when I was operations director for 'First Continental' the Hollywood chain of nightclubs. The directors of this company was Marios George Ellides and Chris George Ellides. My duties at that time included the operation of each club my role was a supervisory management role. At each club the security staff were controlled by Tony Tucker. The clubs were Hollywood Romford, Hollywood Ipswich, Club Art Southend, Club UK Wandsworth'.

The Rettendon events are fictionalised in Jake Arnott's novel True Crime, where one of the characters declares: 'It's who runs the doors, Gaz. That's what this thing is going to be all about. It doesn't matter who runs the club, who promotes the event or whatever. It's who's in control of security, that's going to be the thing. That way you decide who can bring in drugs and deal inside the place'.

 
The real story of criminal gangs in the 1990s club explosion remains untold. That gangsters like Tucker controlled the drugs trade in clubs is not surprizing, but as they made more and more money it seems likely that some must have crossed over to investing profits in buying and running clubs. It would be interesting to know where some of the money came from for some of the high profile new clubs that opened in that period. And its a sobering thought that in any counter-culture/alternative scene where drugs are prominent, you are only ever a few degrees of separation away from a thug with a gun.

But still... who can forget those nights in Wandsworth.

More memories, flyers and mixes on the Final Frontier and Club UK groups at Facebook. Great to remember all the good nights, but let's not forget those who didn't make it: Andreas Bouzis (18) and Kevin Jones (20) who died after collapsing at the club.

See also Clubbed to Death

Pakistan: Eunuch Dancers Protest

The Hijras of Pakistan, sometimes described as 'eunuchs', are generally gay transvesites/transsexuals, some of whom have had some kind of sex change operation. Life for them is tough, with harrassment and poverty. For many of them, dancing at weddings and other functions is a key source of income. They have been organising in defence of their rights, as shown in this week's protests following the arrest of several Hijras on their way home from dancing:

'Over 100 eunuchs on Tuesday protested against Taxila police’s alleged excesses outside the senior superintendent of police’s (SSP) office. Shemale Rights President Bobby led the protestors, who carried placards and banners with messages against police. A large number of policemen and traffic wardens stayed up there until the eunuchs dispersed following the suspension of three policemen accused of torturing, looting and detaining five eunuchs in Taxila...

Bobby told reporters that the three policemen in question had held five eunuchs from a village on January 23 night when they were on the way home after performing at a dance function. She alleged policemen tortured eunuchs and snatched Rs 150,000 cash, jewelry and five cellphones from them during confinement. She demanded that eunuchs be released and culpable policemen be punished.

(Pakistan Daily Times, 28 January 2009)

As many as three eunuchs sustained wounds in police baton-charge when they tried to go to the SSP’s office for withdrawal of an FIR [First Information Report] against their colleagues who were booked at a function in Taxila and sent to the Adiala Jail. Police baton-charged eunuchs, including Bobby, Sana and Gul, in front of the SSP’s office near Peshawar Road. They were protesting against the arrest of eunuchs at a function in Nawababad, Taxila. Police had arrested Sitara, Aalia, Robina, Saim and Akmal when they were dancing at a function on January 23 and sent them to the Adiala Jail. All Pakistan Eunuchs Association President Bobby told ‘The News’ that the Taxila Police had arrested five eunuchs when they were dancing at a function and sent them to the jail after registering cases against them. Police also snatched Rs150,000 from them, Bobby added. According to Bobby, the arrested eunuchs had not committed any crime rather they were dancing which is the only source income for them. Bobby said that eunuchs wanted to stage a peaceful protest but police baton-charged them in which three eunuchs were wounded...

Earlier, some 200 eunuchs gathered in front of the SSP’s office and blocked the Peshawar Road. They carried banners and placards inscribed with different slogans against police. When they tried to enter the office of the SSP (operation), police officials started beating them with batons. In retaliation, eunuchs pelted stones and eggs on police. They tore uniforms of some police officials during the scuffle that continued for half an hour. They also broke windowpanes of SSP’s office. However the situation was controlled after SSP (operation) Sardar Maqsood reached the spot. The traffic on Peshawar Road remained blocked during the clash between police and eunuchs.

(The News - Pakistan - 28 January 2009)

Westering Home

Away this week from my usual London habitat, I have instead been (re)visiting the ‘ancestral homeland’ of the Isle of Islay in the Hebrides. To my resting urban ears, listening to the waves and the seabirds has been music enough, but still as always I am curious about what’s happening musically.

Well, yes there are bagpipes in the form of the the Islay Pipe Band, an earlier incarnation of which my father played in before he left the island. He bequeathed to me his chanter, but I have never yet learnt to play the highland bagpipes – still time, still time. By the way, does anyone remember Acid Folk by Perplexer, mid-1990s slice of bagpipe sampling techno? I remember dancing to it at a party at Taco Joe’s in Brixton. But I digress.

We went to a music session at the Lochside Hotel in Bowmore, the main village on Islay. In a bar overlooking Loch Indaal, people turned up with a banjo, accordion, guitar, fiddle and mandolin. There was a really good singer, Norma Munro, with a set including The Gypsy Rover, Yellow’s on the Broom, and inevitably on Islay, Westering Home. This oft-recorded song about returning to the island is probably the best known Islay song, not excepting Donovan’s Isle of Islay, the latter a nice enough song but committing the crime of mispronouncing the island’s name to make it rhyme with ‘play’ – it’s actually pronounced ‘Isla’.

I am always interested in a pub session, it’s a different kind of musicking from the gig format – open in the sense that the line up is fluid depending on who turns up, and the set list is usually not determined in advance. It is performative, but not necessarily dependent on an audience. Every session has its own unwritten rules, and no two sessions are therefore ever the same.

Anyway if you’re ever visit Islay – and I recommend you do – you can check out a session yourself every Wednesday night at the Lochside Hotel.

(Just to be clear though, it's not all folkiness up here - at the fairground it was strictly Euro-bounce-core, while in the swimming pool the lifeguards in control of the sounds put on the rockist breakbeats of Granite by Pendulum).

'Dancing is not a crime!' - New York City

Metropolis in Motion is fighting to legalize dancing in New York City by repealing its arcane cabaret laws. They say: 'Ever since NYC Mayor Rudolph Giuliani created the Nightclub Enforcement Task Force in 1997 to enact his "Quality of Life" campaign, the city has been waging a war against nightlife culture and industry. The most lethal weapon in the city's arsenal aimed against nightlife are Prohibition-era laws known as the "Cabaret Laws". As clubs, bars and lounges are fined, padlocked and shut down, citizens lose places that foster social interaction and artists have fewer places to express themselves'

In July 2006, Metropolis in Motion held an open-air dance outside of Mayor Bloomberg's mansion to bring attention to NYC's cabaret laws. Several hundred people danced and chanted 'dancing is not a crime'.

'The NYC cabaret law was created in 1926 in an effort to curtail wild behavior in nightclubs, particularly the interracial mixing that was happening in jazz clubs. The law initially limited licenses to establishments serving food or drink featuring three or more musicians or three or more people “moving in synchronized fashion.” It also stipulated that only musicians “of good character” could be licensed to play. In 1961 the law was amended to restrict cabarets to manufacturing and commercial zones, and in 1967 the “good character” musician requirement was nixed. In the late ’80s, the courts declared the three-musician rule unconstitutional. Although musicians have won the battle, dancers are still fighting to repeal the law. Today, only 244 licensed cabarets exist.' (New York Press)