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Fabric says its closure “sets a troubling precedent”
By Andy Malt | Published on Thursday 8 September 2016
Fabric has responded to Islington Council’s decision to revoke its licence, saying that it is too soon to say what the club’s next move will be, but that forcing the venue to close down “sets a troubling precedent for the future of London’s night time economy”.
“We are extremely disappointed with Islington Council’s decision to revoke our licence”, says the statement. “This is an especially sad day for those who have supported us, particularly the 250 staff who will now lose their jobs. Closing Fabric is not the answer to the drug-related problems clubs like ours are working to prevent, and sets a troubling precedent for the future of London’s night time economy”.
It continues: “We want to also say a huge thank you to the support we received, 150,000 of you signed the petition to support us and London’s nightlife. All of our community – fellow promoters, artists, venues, friends, magazines, blogs, ravers, all our family have backed us online offering up their platforms and resources – we have been deeply touched by seeing you all rally together behind us”.
On the future, the statement concludes: “It’s too early to comment on what our next step will be, but for now we have asked Resident Advisor to issue refunds for all the upcoming events we have sold tickets for”.
As previously reported, after a lengthy hearing, Islington Council’s Licensing Sub Committee ruled at 1am on Wednesday morning that the venue’s licence should be revoked because “a culture of drug use exists at the club which the existing management and security appears incapable of controlling”.
But in a speech to the committee, Fabric co-founder Cameron Leslie said that the suggestion that staff at the club “provide a safe haven for drugs is frankly insulting to the considerable efforts we have put in over the years … and the notion that we somehow shield this activity is shameful and I would go as far to say it is libellous”.
He also commented on a report presented to the committee that was based on an undercover police investigation – so-called ‘Operation Lenor’ – which did not seem to uncover any actual drug taking but suggested that the vast majority of people in the club were under the influence, and that an at least attempted trade in drugs was happening within apparent earshot of security staff in the venue’s smoking area. But this view of a club where the sale, purchase and use of drugs was willingly allowed to run rife did not chime with the club’s own undercover surveillance.
“I should like to point out that since 2012 we have had arrested in the region of 80 drug dealers identified at the front door; [but] there has been only one prosecution”, he continued. “So perhaps if the police want to start levelling criticism of how these so-called safe havens exist they should start by looking at themselves and the CPS, because these individuals come back the following week laughing at us”.
He then questioned how the club went from being praised in recent years as an example of best practice in tackling drugs, by both police and a judge, to the situation in which it now finds itself. “In as late as June this year Islington Police sent the management of another London venue who had suffered a fatality to us to see how we did it, citing our procedures as the best in the business”, he said. “Yet a matter of days later we are damned in a central licensing report”.
The recent investigation was, Leslie asserted, “an entirely premeditated exercise to find the evidence required to be able to serve a summary review. This team started from the end point and gathered evidence accordingly”.
He concluded: “In a climate where pills are circulating the UK with almost four times the dosage of MDMA of most found during the late 90s, what is absolutely urgent in order to prevent more deaths is not the closure of one venue, but the systematic education of young people on the risks and repercussions of the drugs they are taking, up to date and accurate information on dangerously potent batches in the current market, education on recognising warning signs of overdose amongst friends and how to respond”.
You can read Leslie’s full speech (and we really urge you to do so) via Resident Advisor here.
Although the closure of Fabric last month pending the latest licence review came in the wake of two recent drug-related deaths, the aforementioned Operation Lenor was actually triggered under the auspices of confirming that the club was adhering to new licence conditions implemented last year.
As previously reported, that previous review was also prompted by concerns over deaths in or near the venue. Fabric successfully fought off in court orders to implement ID scans and to use sniffer dogs at the door – which was “the only time we stood up to the police in seventeen years”, said Leslie this week. It was during that appeal that Fabric was described as “a beacon of best practice” by the judge overseeing the case.
At the hearing this week, Fabric said that it would now be willing to voluntarily test the use of sniffer dogs, as one of several proposed concessions in an attempt to remain open (another being the bizarre proposal to lower the BPM of music played on Friday nights). This despite a key concern that while sniffer dogs are not actually very effective at finding drugs, they are likely to frighten people queuing for entry to take all of their drugs in one go before they get to the door, thus putting them at greater risk of harm.
Following Leslie’s allegation that forcing Fabric’s closure was a “premeditated exercise”, a number of conspiracy theories have emerged. One simply being that Islington Council and the Metropolitan Police are less interested in fighting drugs, and more in shifting the blame for their own inability to tackle the problem, in part due to massive budget cuts thanks to the UK government’s ongoing austerity measures.
Then, of course, there’s the expectation that if Fabric is permanently closed down, it will be the latest building in the capital to be turned into luxury flats unaffordable to almost anyone who actually lives there. And should any investor actually take over Fabric’s property for that purpose, they will have a nice view of the redeveloped Smithfields Market nearby.
Whatever the truth is, any claims that it’s about improving safety in London’s clubbing community are likely to backfire as people move on to events – legal or illegal – where security, properly trained staff and access to medical support are not nearly as abundant as they were at Fabric.
If this is simply about boosting safety though, Vice has compiled a list of other things that should be shut down in order to reduce the risk of anyone in London ever coming to any harm.
