Oxford community-run bar under threat from local cops

East Oxford Com­mu­ni­ty Social Club is a social club run for and by its mem­bers, based in a local com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre for which it rais­es mon­ey. It’s unique not just for the way it’s run but also because of its diverse, inclu­sive and friend­ly atmos­phere, cheap prices and avail­abil­i­ty as a com­mu­ni­ty venue.

A per­son­al account and call to action. Cor­rec­tions and com­ments wel­come!

THE BACKGROUND

In Feb­ru­ary 2007, secret col­lu­sion between com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre bureacrats and unelect­ed coun­cil offi­cers came to light dra­mat­i­cal­ly when it emerged that the Coun­cil were plan­ning to shut the club down — at the request of the Com­mu­ni­ty Asso­ci­a­tion (which runs the cen­tre)! Rather than talk to the Social Club com­mit­tee about the prob­lems they had with the club, they went behind every­one’s back to try and seal the fate of the club before sup­port could be mobilised. They failed. A flur­ry of last minute activ­i­ty — packed emer­gency meet­ings, let­ter writ­ing cam­paigns to coun­cil­lors, peti­tions etc — bought the club time to sort its act out and a last chance to stay open.
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/oxford/2007/02/363768.html
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/oxford/2007/02/363408.html

With the threat of clo­sure, the author­i­ties clear­ly had the club over a bar­rel and pro­ceed­ed to issue all man­ner of demands — every­thing from hand­ing over finan­cial con­trol to installing CCTV on the build­ing. The club gave in to almost every request and many a com­pro­mise was made.

A new com­mit­tee took over, and through a huge amount of patience and hard work pro­ceed­ed to rebuild the club; it became safer, more organ­ised, was redec­o­rat­ed and grad­u­al­ly began pay­ing off its debts.

THE CRISIS

Fast for­ward to the present day and changes in the atti­tude of the police may final­ly fin­ish the club off for good, tram­pling all the work done over the years by count­less vol­un­teers. See, the club has also his­tor­i­cal­ly been a place where (shock! hor­ror!) cannabis was smoked. The police had always turned a blind eye to this aspect of the club’s cul­ture and there was an unof­fi­cial under­stand­ing that it was con­ve­nient for them to con­tin­ue doing so. In any case the Feb­ru­ary cri­sis and the smok­ing ban ensured that peo­ple stopped skin­ning up in the bar, though of course those that want to can always smoke out­side in the street.

A few months ago the pol­i­cy changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly; snif­fer dogs patrolled bars and pubs all along Cow­ley Rd, and the club was raid­ed repeat­ed­ly, with some arrests tak­ing place. The police want­ed to be seen as ‘tough’ on drugs and were will­ing to bul­ly their way to that rep­u­ta­tion.

Now they have threat­ened that unless the Social Club turn its alco­hol licence over to a sin­gle named indi­vid­ual (whom they can then per­se­cute indi­vid­u­al­ly as they choose) thus ceas­ing to be a mem­bers-run club, they will use their influ­ence to ensure the entire com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre has its licence revoked.

The Com­mu­ni­ty Asso­ci­a­tion, led by Sarah Lasen­by (who it seems has always want­ed a more sani­tised, mid­dle-class-friend­ly bar) went along with this, and despite attempts at com­pro­mise and dia­logue by the social club, gave us 28 days notice to leave. To be fair to the Com­mu­ni­ty Asso­ci­a­tion, they can rea­son­ably claim to have been giv­en lit­tle choice by the cops, at least if they want to hold onto the licence in some form or anoth­er — and it’s clear the cen­tre would col­lapse with­out the abil­i­ty to hold events.

But they *could* have done things dif­fer­ent­ly. They could have worked with the club to try and find a solu­tion instead of reject­ing their attempts. They could have kicked up a fuss when first threat­ened by the cops, con­tact­ing local coun­cil­lors, news­pa­pers, and com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre users to point out what was hap­pen­ing. In the ensu­ing con­tro­ver­sy, the cops might have been forced to back down. The way to stop a bul­ly is to stand up to them and to shout loud­ly for oth­ers to help you, not to give in and hope they will go away. Soon­er or lat­er the same forces may come after the com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre as a whole, and they need to be con­front­ed soon­er rather than lat­er.

But after Feb­ru­ary 2007 we are used to such breach­es of sol­i­dar­i­ty from the Asso­ci­a­tion, and we have to be clear that the main cul­prits are the cops.

WHAT CAN WE DO?

1) Come to the club’s AGM this Sat­ur­day (29th) at 6pm in the bar (East Oxford Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, Cow­ley Rd). Doors close at 6.30, and every­one gets a free drink at the end about 7.45pm. We need every­one’s ener­gy and ideas to talk about what we can do.

2) Con­tact your local coun­cil­lors to let them know if in your opin­ion the Club is a safe and friend­ly place; whether it improved dur­ing 2007; and whether it would be bet­ter off run by the EOCSC com­mit­tee or by a fran­chisee. Con­tact details are here:
https://lists.riseup.net/www/arc/oxford-activism/2008–03/msg00014.html

You might want to ask them to get the police to clamp down on the big pow­er­ful venues that are the real source of Cow­ley Rd’s late night prob­lems instead of bul­ly­ing small com­mu­ni­ty out­fits.

3) Watch out for news of a spe­cial emer­gency Com­mu­ni­ty Asso­ci­a­tion meet­ing to hold those respon­si­ble account­able for their recent actions and try and reverse the deci­sion.

4) You could also con­tact the social club: 01865 640059 enquiries@eocsc.co.uk to offer your prac­ti­cal sup­port and join if you aren’t already a mem­ber.

5) Con­tact Sarah Lasen­by to ask her to over­turn the deci­sion to kick out the social club, and to work with the social club to try and keep the club open:

sarahlasenby@breathemail.net
01865 725991

Sarah Lasen­by
EOCA
Princes St
Oxford OX4 1HU

THE FUTURE

Ulti­mate­ly we can only secure the long-term future of the social club and spaces like it by re-assert­ing com­mu­ni­ty con­trol over East Oxford itself. It’s *our* club, it’s *our* com­mu­ni­ty and those are *our* streets. We should keep remind­ing our­selves of that! It’s all part of a wider strug­gle against cap­i­tal­ist gen­tri­fi­ca­tion of our spaces and cul­ture, and they have to be fought every step of the way.

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Anoth­er account of recent events that has cir­cu­lat­ed:

So as far as I under­stand,

Despite ful­fill­ing ALL the cri­te­ria out­lined in an ACTION PLAN last year by THE POLICE and THE COUNCIL.…

at the TIME, ENERGY AND PERSONAL EXPENSE of the Social Club Com­mi­teee mem­ber­ship and sup­port­ers who are all local VOTERS which includ­ed com­plete­ly redec­o­rat­ing the whole space, bar and cel­lar and man­ag­ing to clear all the debts left by the com­mit­tee from years ago in ONE YEAR !.….

and DESPITE the fact that the Social Club is now run­ning the BEST it has EVER been run.….

and DESPITE fact that there is a FULLY FUNCTIONING MEMBERSHIP WHICH many HUNDREDS OF LOCAL VOTERS Have sub­scribed to for 08/09.….

THE POLICE sim­ply do not want this UNIQUE INDISPENSIBLE COMMUNITY RESOURCE which is run BY THE COMMUNITY FOR THE COMMUNITY to stay open.….

And that they have SUGGESTED to the Asso­ci­a­tion (whic runs the build­ing) the unless they abol­ish the social club, the POLICE will SUGGEST that the LICENCE for the ASSOCIATION will NOT be renewed either.……

AND as event s are the bread and but­ter life and soul of a com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre (By the Peo­ple for the Peo­ple) the Ass­so­cial­tion will go bust and the build­ing will become anoth­er great white ele­phant like like so many oth­ers run by a Coun­cil appoint­ed (ie unelect­ed) manger (prob­a­bly Sajid Malik from the Asian Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre) who will decide what is allowed to take place in the build­ing from which the Coun­cil will recoup ALL the income.…

(in this love­ly reju­ve­nat­ed build­ing redec­o­rat­ed by unpaid labour…)

OR they will sim­ply sell it off for more stu­dent hous­ing aor anoth­er STARBUCKS as the prop­er­ty alone is worth mil­lions — which means the end of FUSION and RAP and OX POTS THe OXFORD BEFRIENDING NETWORK and the CLAIMANTS UNION — and afford­able use of the space by the local com­mu­ni­ty.