You're not coming in

Andrew McNeill reviews
Bouncers: Violence and Governance in the Night-time Economy
Dick Hobbs, Philip Hadfield, Stuart Lister,
and Simon Winlow
Oxford University Press 2003

What occupation has the best claim to being most representative of modern times?

Even, or perhaps especially, those living in the old industrial cities are unlikely any longer to say miner or factory worker: call centre operative, possibly. But 'bouncer' is a more plausible candidate. Bouncers are in evidence in almost all town and city centres across the country, admittedly not always during daylight hours, but night life in our main urban centres increasingly depends on them. They are at once bully, hero, villain, gentleman and street-corner politician, according to the authors of this interesting new study of the craft which places bouncers in the context of the whole night-time economy, of which it provides a vigorous critique.

The book is a mixture: part sociological treatise, with requisite jargon; part political tract; part journalistic expose based on first hand observation, and part resource book for town centre managers. Throughout there are periodic diatribes against capitalism, here personified not by the black-hearted mill owner, whom progress if not the proletariat has forced aside, but by the rather more colourless figures who run the alcohol industry and who are wreaking havoc on our town centres. The book, in the authors' words, is not a moral panic against the young but an attack on the relentless reorganisation of society on free-market principles without much reflection on the human costs.

Some might think there is a hint of a contradiction here. If the alleged harms caused to and by young drinkers can be dismissed as a moral panic, of what real crimes are free-market principles supposed to be guilty?

The authors' political agenda is unfortunate because wholesale denunciations of capitalism do not lead anywhere. There is a lot of despair and anger about the problems afflicting town centres, especially of course, on the part of those who live in them. Telling residents that the only real solution is to wait for the total transformation of society is not much use: they may as well sell up now.

On the other hand, it must be conceded that for those who want to denounce capitalism, there is a lot to be said for selecting the plunder and pollute approach of the big pub companies.

As the authors explain, the need to regenerate towns whose old industrial base has passed into history has spurned the growth of the night time economy. The future is seen to be in leisure. The rhetoric is in terms of the meeting of culture and commerce, of the creation of an inclusive, continental-style ambience which will civilise the town centre while also generating employment and revenue.

The reality is a youth-dominated night-time economy based on the mass intoxication for profit of unprecedented numbers of young people seeking pleasure, excitement and excess. They now flood into town centres which at night become commercialised play-zones offering a cocktail of alcohol, sex and drugs.

These entertainment areas may be dead during the day, but at night they provide a passable imitation of the old American frontier. Police resources are overrun and large parts of town centres become zones of hedonistic lawlessness. Hence the bouncers. They fill the void created by the scarcity of the public police. They are barely regulated by the state and represent a powerful subculture rooted in routine violence and intimidation, but at two o'clock in the morning they may well be the only law and order there is on the street. A combination of hypocrisy and incompetence, the authors say, has ensured the night-time economy undercuts and overwhelms the state's capacity to protect individuals and communities.

The book includes a special case study of Manchester, a leading advocate of the 24 hour city and a pioneer of liquor licensing liberalisation as a means of creating a vibrant, continental café-culture. The authors explain that Manchester now has the highest overall crime rate in England and Wales, and that it appears to have lost control of door security to criminal gangs whose activities have frightened off some of the flagship elements of the city's 'entertainment offer'. As a resident of the city comments, "It's certainly very continental out there, but less like Paris, more like the Somme."

The villains of the story are the alcohol industry, the magistrates who have been handing out too many liquor licences, local authorities which have either allowed themselves to be bullied into letting the industry have its way or deluded enough voluntarily to encourage it, and inadequate systems of public control.

Of course, a new villain has now entered the stage, the Labour Government whose Licensing Bill represents a further triumph of free-market principles in relation to the supply of alcohol. Government ministers insist, and may even believe, that the lawlessness and disorder characterising the night-time economy is the result, not of the sociological changes well described in this book, or of free market principles, but of too much state control, - the imposition of 'artificially early' fixed closing times. Only abolish these, the Ministers say, and all will be well. Binge drinking and disorder on the streets will melt away. The drinking culture will be transformed. Young people will learn to drink 'sensibly'.

The trouble is, 'sensible' drinking is what the middle aged do, and if there is one thing young people are not notably keen on it is being middle aged. Moreover, the impression of a hedonistic environment devoid of restraint is central to the appeal of the night-time economy. Late night venues branded as 'sensible drinking bars' are likely to deter rather than attract the young, not at all what the pub companies which have lobbied so hard for licensing de-regulation have in mind.

Actual as distinct from imaginary evidence that abolishing closing times will lead to people becoming less of a drunken nuisance rather than more of one is very hard to find. The Bill has been pushed through in spite of rather than because of the evidence. But time will tell. If the Government is right, once the new legislation has taken effect there will be less alcohol consumed, less drunkenness, less crime and disorder, and, presumably, less need of bouncers.

If the Government's critics, who include the authors of this book are right, the Licensing Bill will exacerbate the problems and the only real beneficiaries will be the alcohol and the private security industries. If the police are overwhelmed now, how will they cope when the fun and games last potentially all night, seven days a week? In this scenario, the bouncers have a bright future, as responsibility for law and order in our main urban centres at night will in effect be further privatised, handed over to a group of shaven-headed, tattooed men accountable not to the crown, the state or the public but to the private companies which pay their wages.

One of the many problems here is, as the authors put it when they are being very serious sociologists, is that "the quasi-liminal zones that have developed in our urban centres are essentially non-conducive to normative comportment."

Mark the bouncer, quoted in the book, who knows a thing or two about normative comportment, and to whose profession the future likely belongs, puts it slightly differently:

"If it looks like it's going to get rough I'll give them a clip. if you're standing there and you've got some c*** in front of you whose letting his mouth go, you know what's going to happen. It might be a job but it's me whose going to take the dig and job or no job you're not just going to stand there are you? F***ing right you're not."