In Soho, safety fears in the small hours
A venue’s closure highlights late-night risks to London’s LGBT+ community
Morning — a lot of upset this week at news a popular gay nightclub is closing in Soho. There’s also been surprise at the reason why — the owner has blamed safety concerns in the neighbourhood, saying staff and customers have been attacked late at night. After your Sunday round-up below, we look at policing in the small hours in Soho — and the “outrageous” idea there’s a curfew on LGBT+ safety in London.
Plus: a corruption scandal brewing down south, tasering under scrutiny, and a Jeremy Vine tribute act.
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(And if that still doesn’t work, drop us a line at editorial@thelondonspy.co.uk to see if we can figure out Subtack’s wonky pledge system)
What we’ve spied
🪩 Such is life — just hours after we published our big read on the campaign to stop the MSG Sphere in Stratford on Wednesday, a shock twist in the tale. Housing secretary Michael Gove has now intervened, ordering planners to hold off on refusing permission for the super venue while he calls the application in. In other words, the Sphere isn’t dead yet, and London mayor Sadiq Khan’s decision to block it last week may get overruled. Gove’s intervention has come as a surprise to campaigners, and to the Sphere’s owners too, who had said it planned to sell off the site and build the orb-like venue in another city. So far MSG has said the plans are still dead despite the call-in, but more when the Spy has it.
🗳️ A possible corruption scandal in south London — Labour HQ has paused the selection of a parliamentary candidate to investigate claims of fraud. Local party members say the race to select who stands for Labour in the new seat of Croydon East at the next general election has been rigged, alleging that several members had their identity stolen by party bigwigs to fake votes for their preferred candidate. The scandal centres on the use of an online voting system — described as “dodgy as hell” by one insider to journalist Michael Crick, who’s been monitoring selection processes across the UK. More from Croydon: charities in the borough have unceremoniously found out their buildings could be sold off by the council. And more politics goss: the son of Sue Gray, the former Downing Street ethics adviser turned Labour chief-of-staff, is now standing to be a London MP.
👮♂️ A Met Police officer has been cleared of misconduct after tasering a 10-year-old girl in Brixton. PC Jonathan Broadmeed had been accused of disproportionate force when he tasered the girl, who had consumed cannabis edibles and threatened her mum with garden shears after her mobile phone was confiscated. Warning: there’s body cam footage of the incident, which took place in January 2021, but it’s highly distressing. Though PC Broadmeed was cleared of misconduct, Met chiefs again apologised for the “extremely rare and unusual case”. They also defended the force’s use of tasers in the capital, saying they "provide officers with the ability to de-escalate situations”. More on London policing: new statistics reveal that the rate of stop-and-searches at this year’s Notting Hill Carnival was double the rate of the previous year’s carnival. The Met says officers were responding to “intelligence weapons were being brought” to the event.
🗑️ Some good old-fashioned bin drama in Lambeth, as the borough council presses ahead with plans to cut back collections to every fortnight. The plans mean that, from April, bins in the south London borough will only be collected every other week to “reduce rubbish and increase recycling” and “help achieve net zero by 2030”. Recycling and food waste will still be picked up weekly. The Telegraph leads the charge against the plans, flagging concerns from Lambeth residents that rows will flare up between neighbours as they fight over bin space, smells and vermin.
🦠 Quite a few key points Londoners should know from Sadiq Khan’s appearance at the Covid Inquiry on Monday:
No prior warning: The London mayor said officials in Number Ten weren’t sharing information with him back in February 2020, as the pandemic loomed. Khan was left to figure things out by talking to other international cities instead
Left out: Khan also says he was excluded from early COBRA meetings, with emails from officials in No 10 showing they had decided against inviting him because they’d have to invite other metro mayors, like Manchester’s Andy Burnham. But London was a special case because of its size, Khan argues, and he told the Inquiry his exclusion cost lives
Blond bombshell: When the mayor finally met with Boris Johnson on March 19, Khan claims the prime minister had “no idea” other countries had imposed lockdowns before he ordered one for the UK. The pair had also considered doing a press conference together, but this was cancelled
My way: Khan says he was pushing for Covid restrictions throughout this early period, and even wrote to the prime minister calling for a mandatory lockdown on March 22. He told Johnson that, if the prime minister didn’t order one, Khan would tell Londoners to act like there was one in place anyway
Told you so: Later, in September 2020, Khan says he warned Johnson that more Covid restrictions were needed to stop cases rising after the first lifting of restrictions in the summer. If the prime minister had taken the advice on board, the second, full UK lockdown in autumn could have been avoided, Khan claimed
Trust issues: Khan also told the Inquiry that he regularly collaborated with the UK’s other metro mayors during the pandemic, checking in by Zoom, but that Downing Street did not seem to trust the group. If the government “can trust us on issues to do with terrorism, counter-terrorism, and other issues, you’d think they’d be able to trust us when it comes to issues to do with a civil emergency, a crisis like the pandemic,” Khan said
Missing data: Finally, Khan told the Inquiry that the government had “no understanding” of the importance of gathering data on the impact of Covid on different ethnic groups, once it began to emerge the virus was disproportionately affecting black, Asian and minority ethnic communities in London
📱 With great virality comes great responsibility, as Tube Girl found out after her new partnership caused a backlash from pro-Palestinian influencers. The capital’s current ‘It girl’, Sabrina Bahsoon, who rose to fame on TikTok by dancing confidently on Tube carriages, recently announced she was partnering with refugee charity Choose Love to sell shirts on Black Friday, with proceeds going towards humanitarian aid in both Gaza and southern Israel. Some responded angrily that Bahsoon was undermining the pro-Palestine boycott of Black Friday and helping to raise funds for Israeli settlers, saying she had become “a cog in an apartheid state’s propaganda machine”. Of particular derision was the motto on the back of the shirts — ‘delulu is the solulu’ (translation: ‘delusion is the solution’). Bahsoon has now deleted the video announcing the partnership and swiftly returned to her usual yassified uploading schedule, but Palestinian flag emojis are now a regular sight in her comments. Elsewhere in Tube life: crime on the Underground has surged 50 per cent in the past year, fuelled by a surge in thefts and robberies.
🚕 An unexpected alliance this week, with news Uber is courting London’s black-cab drivers. Once mortal enemies, the ride-hailing app says it now will be letting cabbies join its platform, and has claimed a “small number” have already signed up. War may still rage though — the Licensed Taxi Drivers' Association (LTDA), which represents more than 10,000 members, said it was not consulted ahead of Uber's "unilateral announcement", and said joining Uber would be "sullying" the trade. In other biz news, London is now the redundancy capital of Britain, with a new survey finding one in six companies in the capital are planning to cut staff — the highest share of any British region. The cutbacks are being blamed on downturns in the tech and construction industries.
🔍 And finally, we leave you with:
A day out pretending to be Jeremy Vine, the scourge of London drivers
The return of weekly carol singing on Columbia Road in the East End
A stranger returning Tory mayoral hopeful Susan Hall’s lost wallet
Backlash over the replacement of a vintage water fountain in central London
Grim footage of a London paramedic being pushed out of an ambulance by a patient
The new design for the old City Hall building by Tower Bridge
Early snaps of the giant Christmas tree being delivered to Trafalgar Square
Airspace above a home in Battersea being auctioned off for £10,000
The limits of a safe Soho
On a busy Friday evening on April 30, 1999, the neo-Nazi David Copeland detonated a nail bomb in the Admiral Duncan pub in Soho, killing three people and injuring 79 others. It was an attack on the heart of London’s gay community, born out of Copeland’s hatred for LGBT+ people. It was also remarkably recent: the three murder victims — Andrea Dykes, Nik Moore and John Light — would all still be in their fifties if they were alive today.
Much has changed in the 24 years since the bombing of the Admiral Duncan, but any complacency that today Soho is always safe for London’s gay community has been interrupted this week. The popular gay bar and nightclub G-A-Y Late has announced its closing, with owner Jeremy Joseph citing safety concerns. In a statement on the closure, he said both customers and staff had been “attacked on their way to and from the venue” late at night, once other venues in Soho had closed. He blamed a lack of police support and patrols. He wrote: “the fact is there are not enough police protecting Westminster and when you are a standalone venue it’s impossible to guarantee customer and staff safety once they leave the premises.”
Though London police have reacted with some defensiveness, stressing it’s proud of safety improvements made in Soho so far, the Met has also conceded Joseph’s point about resourcing in the early hours. “Soho is a very diverse ward bringing together people from all over the world and a haven for the community,” said PC Andy De Santis, the LGBT+ community liaison officer for Westminster, in reaction to the closure. “This is both unique and challenging as it can make for difficult resourcing for the night time safety.”
G-A-Y Late opened around 20 years ago in Soho, with its 4am license making it the late-night alternative to sister venue G-A-Y Bar, which is staying open on Old Compton Street. With news of Late’s closure, patrons have recalled fond memories of “messy nights”, and lamented the loss of “the few remaining staples of London clubbing where you can feel confident and free to be queer”. The club’s legendary status was cemented in 2013 when Lady Gaga made a surprise performance, and since its success in Soho, the G-A-Y brand has expanded to other cities, like Manchester. Overall there are upwards of 20 other LGBT+ venues in the Soho area, but many are bars and pubs, long closed before 4am. And from the Spy’s ring round of other venues in Soho this week, the early-closers didn’t all share G-A-Y Late’s safety concerns. “We’ve not had any problems, but then we close at 12am,” one venue told the Spy. “I live above the pub and I’m a bit of a hermit after hours.”
But the idea that LGBT+ safety can be time-limited in Soho is “outrageous” to Peter Tatchell, a prominent gay rights activist. “Given the history of homophobic incidents near G-A-Y, the lack of enough police patrols to deter and apprehend assailants is deplorable and inexcusable,” he tells the Spy.
“We know the police have suffered swingeing cuts in government funding, which has cut the number of frontline officers. But LGBTs should be able to enjoy a night out without risking violent assault. Public safety should always be the number one priority for police resources."
Just a few months ago we reported on rising homophobic hate crime in some parts of London, following an attack on two men outside a gay bar in Clapham in August. The pair had been attacked by an assailant with a knife while standing outside the Two Brewers just after 10pm. But at the time, we also pointed out that Soho and the wider West End area is the neighbourhood with the highest number of reported cases of homophobic hate crime in all of London. Data from the Met shows there were 115 incidents in the year to July 2023. That’s one reported case of homophobic hate crime in Soho every three days on average.
Of those meeting with police after the Clapham attack was Amy Lamé, London’s night czar, who’s appointed by mayor Sadiq Khan to oversee the capital’s nightlife. She told the Spy she and Khan will be raising G-A-Y Late’s closure and the implications for trust with senior police leaders “to ensure every community in London feels both protected and served”.
Lamé said: “G-A-Y Late has been an important part of London’s LGBTQ+ scene for many years. I’ve enjoyed many nights out there and I’m sad that Jeremy has had to take this very difficult decision to close.
“I regularly meet with London’s LGBTQ+ venue operators and I am acutely aware of the pressures and concerns venues are facing. The mayor and I are supporting them through the LGBTQ+ Venues Forum and our Culture and Community Spaces at Risk Office.
“The mayor is continuing to invest record amounts in policing, which has helped the Met to resource dedicated town centre teams for the busiest areas of London, including the West End, he is also working closely with the Met commissioner to help rebuild confidence and trust in the police for LGBTQ+ Londoners.”
One recent move by police to repair its relationship with London’s gay community has been the reinstatement of LGBT+ liaison officers over the summer — like PC De Santis, quoted earlier. They had been first introduced by the Met in the wake of the Admiral Duncan bombing, but, by 2018, they had largely disappeared from the force. In the words of Lamé, these officers “support and advise on investigations where homophobia or transphobia is a motive and to ensure the community has a dedicated point of contact to address any concerns they may have”. The reinstatement was welcomed by campaigners like Tatchell, who in the summer had also received an official apology from Met commissioner Sir Mark Rowley for the force’s past homophobic failings. Tatchell said the reinstatement of the liaison officers meant Rowley was “backing up his apology to the LGBT+ community with concrete action”.
But the backdrop for the Met is still challenging, as highlighted by the recent Casey Review, a wide-ranging report into the force published in March that also detailed its fraying relations with London’s gay community. The Review pointed out that while trust in the Met Police is falling across the board, it’s been falling faster amongst LGBT+ Londoners. The Review also highlighted the recent case of serial killer Stephen Port, who murdered four men in 2014 and 2015, meeting his victims online, including on the gay dating app Grindr. Some believe the Met’s failure to catch Port despite striking similarities in the deaths was partly due to homophobia and, in November, the Independent Office for Police Conduct announced it was investigating officers over failings in the case.
Aside from police, the local council, Westminster, is also working to keep Soho safe after hours. When asked by the Spy about G-A-Y Late’s closure over safety concerns, the council highlighted its 24/7 inspection teams, as well as an initiative to use volunteers to help those on a night out.
Cllr Aicha Less, Westminster’s deputy leader and cabinet member for communities and public protection, said: "The safety of residents and visitors to the city is the council's top priority. We work closely with businesses and the Met Police to ensure people can enjoy the West End's world class hospitality and nightlife safely.
"The council's City Inspectors run a 24/7 service and play a crucial role in keeping Westminster's streets safe. Our Night Stars volunteers programme also operates across the West End at weekends, offering assistance to anyone who finds themselves in a vulnerable position on a night out."
To be clear, Joseph’s safety concerns around G-A-Y Late were only part of the reasons for the club’s closure. He had also mentioned the impact of Crossrail in his statement, which had meant the club had been surrounded by building works for the past few years. But with the Elizabeth Line now complete and central London reawakening, the case of G-A-Y Late suggests there are still limits to a good night out in Soho.
Uber is a company that has shown no regard for its employees, I say employees because it’s been defined in law that Uber drivers are employees. This is the same company that has shown little regard for the wellbeing of its passengers. This is the company that make a mockery of the UK tax system. This is a company that has no regard for safety. London taxis are synonymous with passenger safety, expert knowledge and regulated fares set by Transport for London. The antithesis of what Uber has proven over the last decade. Any cabbie who has sacrificed their life to gain their elusive badge, will not want to be aligned with this sham of a company. It is even timed for January, a notoriously quiet time in the trade, and who knows what other levers they might be trying to pull behind the scenes, just when London's cabbies are taking them to the High Court.