Give Us the Night

In response to the announcement by the government last week of plans to pass the Liquor Licensing Bill 2008 within the next three weeks, bar staff, DJs, music promoters and other industry folk gathered outside the Dail today to stage a demonstration urging politicians to save our nightlife. For those of you who are as yet unacquainted with the above mentioned bill, here’s a quick run down;

If the bill is passed this will mean the closure of ALL late night venues at 2.30am Monday to Friday and at 1am on Sundays. At present, while nightclubs must stop serving alcohol at 2.30am, they are allowed to remain open for another half hour with music playing to allow people to finish their drinks, listen to some tunes and filter out gradually. If the government get their way, everybody will be turfed out at 2.30 on the dot. Furthermore, venues such as theatres, which used to have the right to stay open til 4am will now be forced to close up with the rest of them, an hour and a half earlier than before.

The aim of this bill is apparently to target Ireland’s alcohol problem and to reduce public order offences on weekends. However, does it not seem likely that tightening what are already widely considered to be outdated and ill thought-out licensing laws will only make matters worse? Such a move seems ridiculous when you consider that people will now be more likely to horse drinks into themselves before closing time, following which they’ll all be turfed out on the streets together, tanked up and let’s face it, more likely to get into fights than had they been able to space their drinking out over a more prolonged period of time.

Furthermore, enforcing such a strict Sunday night curfew ignores the needs of shift workers for whom Sunday is their main going out night. The government in this case have failed to acknowledge that not everybody fits the 9-5 worker mould. The attitude that people should be resting up for the working week ahead seems to have affected this decision, demonstrating the government’s “Nanny State” attitudes towards its population. Moreover, how many clubs are even going to bother opening for 2 hours on a Sunday now? Such a move could result in job losses for people who work as bar staff, bouncers, cloakroom assistants and so on.

Asides from job losses and public order though, we must look at this move in terms of its potential effects on the Irish clubbing industry. At present, Ireland lags behind other European cities in terms of nightlife. This is not for want of promoters. Indeed in Dublin we see excellent promoters such as Bodytonic, Shock, Choice Cuts and countless others bringing big name acts to our fair city every weekend. However, despite their best efforts, nights here will never live up to those in Barcelona, London or Berlin quite simply because the relative shortness of the night places restrictions on the number of acts you can have playing back to back. Dublin is a city that could have huge potential as a clubbing destination, given its population includes a great number of regular gig goers and people who are genuinely passionate about music. However, its licensing laws hold it back and with the bill scheduled to be passed, it seems increasingly unlikely that Dublin will ever benefit from the degrees of youth tourism that one sees in other cities on the continent. Of course, we’ll still have the stag and hen parties puking on the streets in Temple Bar at noon but I somehow doubt that’s the kind of people the government are trying to attract, what with trying to eradicate the Irish “cuture of drinking” and all.

Tourism aside, the new stricter laws will effect promoters in that the earlier closing time could potentially discourage acts from coming to play here. Venues such as the Tivoli, which holds a theatre license, are perfect for playing host to big name DJs. In the past few months alone it has seen Villalobos, Kenny Dope and Erol Alkan amongst others rock the house to mega crowds. Forcing it to close an hour and a half early will no doubt change the type of gigs it plays host to and result in loss of money for venues and promoters alike.

What’s funny about the whole thing is that the government seems to consider that everybody who enjoys going out is an irresponsible yob, who needs to be nannied. The bill ignores the hundreds of thousands of people for whom going out is about the music, about dancing, meeting people and simply unwinding a bit not just about getting pissed. Why should we pay €30 or so on going to see a DJ we rate, if we’re going to have to go home within 2 hours of entering in the venue? Maybe I’m just being optimistic but I do believe that if people didn’t feel they have to get as many drinks in as possible before 2.30, then maybe they’d pace themselves out a bit more and we could do something to improve Irish nightlife as opposed to restrict it even more.

The people who showed up to the peaceful protest today were not pilled up ravers, nor were they drunks as the government might have us believe. They were nightclub industry professionals, promoters, DJs, publicans and so on concerned about job losses and indignant at what appears to many to be a very shortsighted move. The protest was organised by Give Us the Night whose page you can check out here. Speeches were given highlighting the gaping holes in the bill’s plans and DJ Tukai (Sp?!) entertained those in attendance with a mix of hip-hop, dub, soul and reggae. These folks were not the kind of people you see beating the brains out of one another on George’s St of a Friday, nor were they the kind of people you’d see puking on shop fronts. We are not louts, or hooligans or whatever the people in the Dail care to label us. We simply want to save our night and expand our night lives in terms of creativity and originality.

If you feel strongly about this, or even just mildly miffed at the prospect of an earlier bedtime, PLEASE follow this link and sign the petition. It’ll only take a minute and may help stop the backwards thinking of our current government.