It’s a Monday afternoon and more than 100 protesters have gathered in front of Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club to fight the seemingly imminent closure of the iconic queer-friendly venue.
ShayShay, co-founder of the pan-Asian cabaret collective The Bitten Peach, was passionate about the need to protect the site. “Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club saves lives, and it’s up to us to save Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club,” they told the crowd. The rally was organised by the performing arts union Equity.
Though it isn’t an exclusively queer venue and has hosted names from Jarvis Cocker to Liam Gallagher, Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club is best-known for hosting some of the city’s most creative and exciting drag shows and has long been a crucial part of London’s LGBTQ+ nightlife scene. Throwing shapes in front of the light-up heart that occupies its red velvet-draped stage, and jostling for space in the venue’s infamously cosy smoking area are rites of passage for any attendee. Is the capital really going to lose this venue for good?
“There was this kind of bombshell news two weeks ago, where we found out that the committee of Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club wanted to close it as a performance space in the short term and that the long-term future of the building, and the space, and the site, is insecure,” Equity general secretary Paul W Fleming told me at the rally. “We basically mobilised really quickly.”
Equity claims that the club’s events programming team has also been threatened with eviction. Warren Dent and Charlotte West-Williams have led much of the programming for the past 21 years, striking up a “harmonious and mutually beneficial arrangement” to help make the venue profitable again when running costs soared.
They were unable to comment on the current situation at the building but said that recent developments have been “heartbreaking”. Dent and West-Williams added that they remain committed to the community. “If the lights are dimmed and we are forced to move onto ventures or venues new, remember — our iconic heart comes with us, and home is where the heart is,” the pair said.
When the Standard approached the venue for comment, a spokesperson declined to issue a public statement as its members are in legal proceedings.
“Venues like this are absolutely vital for the whole of London,” said London Assembly Member Elly Baker. “I don’t know whether people understand how important some of the smaller venues are; you don’t get everything else if you don’t have the smaller venues that people can come to, and feel safe in, and mess up in, when they’re performers [early in their careers]”.
After learning that the future of the venue was uncertain, Equity set up a petition to save the club and more than 12,000 people have signed it so far.
Since the rally, Equity and other campaigners have made huge progress, successfully fighting to have Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club designated as an Asset of Community Value by Tower Hamlets Council.
This new protection means the local community will be given the opportunity to buy the venue, and the newly formed cooperative Friends of Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club has six months to fundraise for a bid. According to Equity, the venue’s owners are open to the idea of community ownership. Over the coming weeks, the group will reportedly launch a campaign to buy the club as a community asset in shared ownership, and is “working towards setting up a community shares strategy that will allow everyone to invest and have an equal say over the future of the club”.
BGWMC is a pillar of London’s nightlife ecosystem and an important part of the queer and local community
“The decision to protect Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club as an Asset of Community Value is fantastic news and a crucial step towards saving the club,” Equity variety organiser Nick Keegan said. “The London Borough of Tower Hamlets has rightly recognised BGWMC for what it is — a pillar of London’s nightlife ecosystem, a vital workplace for Equity members, and an important part of the queer and local community.”
However, raising the necessary funds will be a “mammoth task”, Keegan cautioned. “The roots of [Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club] are really beautiful, because obviously its origins are as a working men’s club,” says Vanilla Parker Balls, drag queen, performer and host of Top of the Slops. The UK’s first paid drag contest regularly takes place at the venue and acts as a platform for emerging performers. “It’s always been about equity, and being a space which transcends class barriers and people being able to access performance.”
“It has basically been a touchstone for me, my entire drag career,” says the Canadian-British drag queen Crystal. The performer first visited Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club in 2010, attending an early iteration of the hugely influential queer club night Sink the Pink. “I just remember how chaotic and exciting a place it seemed.”
Long before rising to fame on Ru Paul’s Drag Race UK, Crystal cut her teeth at the club hosting Mariah and Friendz. Now renamed Mimi’s, the “anarchic club night” took place there regularly for six years. “I did Break Free by Ariana Grande while dressed as The Little Mermaid — it was a joke about Mariah Carey being Ursula, and stealing her voice,” Crystal says, of her first performance there. “My tail came off, and I had legs. Very early-days drag.”
“Spaces like Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club really have the potential to save lives,” says ShayShay. “Especially young queer and trans people, or gender-questioning people. The potential to enrich and save queer lives should have no price. It should be worth millions and millions and billions of pounds, especially as the Government continues to strip away rights for the marginalised trans and queer youth.”
The loss of a space such as Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club, ShayShay adds, would be catastrophic for London’s drag community. “The short-term loss of income for performers who work there regularly is massive. Beyond that, there are so many up-and-coming artists whose first performances are likely to be at Working Men’s. The programming there is so diverse in allowing still-emerging and new performers spaces to try out those early performances in a supportive atmosphere.”
Crystal adds: “As someone who’s lived in London for 15 years, I’ve gotten used to the idea that all of our spaces are constantly under threat. I really hope that there’s a way through. I think [Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club] is such a vital hub, and these spaces really need to exist in London.
“I can’t think of anything that’s going to spring up to take its place if it closes, and that’s what really worries me. I’m fine for life to happen, and things to evolve; some things to die, and new things to grow. But with the way that London exists right now, nothing new can grow in the middle, because it’s so expensive. It gets pushed further to the fringes, and that just makes me really sad.”
The Friends of Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club will share further updates in the coming weeks about how Londoners can get involved with the efforts to bring the venue into community ownership.
All will be hoping the community rallies around one of east London’s most important cultural spaces to secure its permanent future. And these latest developments mean there’s a glimmer of hope that the venue can live on.
