Whither Soho’s nightlife? Withered; Soho’s nightlife.
There may certainly be a problem. For many, the spark has gone out of London’s once naughty square mile, no longer holding the allure it once did; for all its newly-found shininess, the London’s playground needs some fixing.
According to a recent piece in City AM, Soho is ‘dying on its feet’. And chief among its problems are its local residents. Westminster Council is, apparently, ‘in thrall to organisations like the Soho Society’ who complained sufficiently about the al fresco dining areas that became a feature during Covid to have it stopped. The full article can be read here.
The piece goes on:
‘Areas change, of course, and residents should not have their formerly peaceful homesteads blighted. Those who have lived in Soho since before, let’s say 1680 have every right to complain. Otherwise, it’s caveat emptor: if you move to an area synonymous with nightlife and complain about late noise, you cannot expect a straight-faced hearing - except from Westminster Council, it seems.’
Assuming any letter of objection will be ignored if it’s written by someone under the age of 18, any complainant to a licensing application would have to be 361 years old to be taken seriously according to this measure.
Firstly, in defence of Soho residents.
For more than six years I worked in the West End, focused especially on Soho and Covent Garden, almost embedded in the community. I would attend school fetes, festivals, birthday parties and social gatherings. And dozens of licensing hearings, week after week, frequently the only person other than councillors and officers in attendance. And yes, societies like the Soho Society frequently did oppose licensing applications to extend hours, or create outside drinking zones.
It was not the millionaire flat owners to whom I was speaking on the whole, but those who lived on social rents in central London. The Soho Housing Association, for example, provides homes for more than 1,500 people in central London, the vast majority of whom are on social rents, paying less than 50% of market rate levels. They are not financially nimble, able to pick and choose where they live with the flexibility of their wealthy neighbours.
And yet, I never met a single Soho resident who wanted to shut down Soho’s nightlife or, indeed, its sex industry; they were all truly remarkable with what they were happy to tolerate.
For example, in the early 2000s, any child leaving St James’s Residences in Brewer Street for Soho Parish Primary School (‘our village school in the heart of central London’, and one, incidentally, which charts its history back to 1699) would have to directly pass a parade featuring at least four sex shops. Just across the road was a pornographic cinema. The greatest concentration of the sex shop trade was less than a stone’s throw away in Walker’s Court, also home of Raymond’s Revue Bar’; Green Court, which housed many illegal sex shops, was just over the road.
Literally adjacent to the school was a clip joint, where young women would try and lure roaming men with promises of a strip show or even sex only for them to be fleeced for hundreds of pounds by men wielding weapons, often frogmarched to cashpoints. Frequently operated by lingering vestiges of Maltese criminal gangs, Westminster Council was, at that time, struggling to close such venues down as their ownership was so opaque that local agreements were made that they wouldn’t operate during school hours.
Thankfully, those wretched joints are finally a thing of the past. Meanwhile, however, the number of licensed premises in Soho has increased in the last 17 years. In July 2006, there were 360 entertainment premises; in July 2022 there were 466, 25% of which being late licenses.
Soho has the highest concentration of licensed premises in Westminster. In Old Compton Street, Frith Street, Greek Street and Dean Street, licensed premises have a capacity of about 10,000 people between 12am and 3.30am, more than 2,000 of which are in Old Compton Street. There are at least 164 flats in Old Compton Street. (All figures via Westminster Council). Some will be the homes of the newly minted, eager to live in the West End; many, however, are not.
There is no doubt that the views of residents have long had an impact on Soho’s late-night economy. I remember the Coach and Horses in Greek Street trying and failing to extend its opening hours until midnight to catch the crowds leaving nearby theatres; refused by Westminster Council despite being close to far noisier venues operated far later.
A major reason as to why the street drinking zones of Covid were closed was due to far greater numbers of people gathering than the official licensing numbers allowed. They were drinking alcohol not purchased from any Old Compton Street pub but instead bought from nearby off-licences.
To this extent, therefore, the City AM piece is correct. Similarly, I’m at something of a loss as to what impact Amy Lamé, London’s night czar has had. A support fund of £2.3million is miniscule in comparison to a nighttime economy worth £26.3billion.
But, I would argue that the impact of residents on the success of the area’s nightlife is far smaller than many other factors.
Soho was once a far more mixed economy. For decades, the major landowner - Soho Estates - was controlled by the reclusive Paul Raymond. It wasn’t inactive, but there was a level of benign stagnation. But since his death in 2008 and the transfer of ownership to his granddaughter Fawn Ilona James and her stepfather John James, the firm is far more involved in the area’s property wealth. This has helped rents, already increasing for years, continue to soar.
One of the consequences of this is maintaining a presence in Soho is especially difficult. It’s incredibly difficult for small owners to survive. Individuality is a very hard thing to sustain. It’s hard to imagine places like Jimmy’s or Angelucci’s, both once in Frith Street near Bar Italia, ever returning (Angelucci’s, thankfully, still trades online https://angeluccicoffee.co.uk/).
Another spin-off from this is fewer and fewer operators know much about nor care for the history of Soho. Yes, they want their venues to be a success, but they would regardless of their location. Appreciating that people have long lived in Soho and maintaining the balance is crucial; and the more that disregard this, the worse it is for other operators, regardless of how sensitive may are.
Pedicabs are also a huge nuisance. Since they first arrived in the early 2000s, Westminster Council, successive Mayors of London, local MPs, have all wanted to licence these vehicles and control them. They have all failed. The early rickshaws had the benefit, at least, of owing more to similar vehicles that can be found in south-east Asia - namely that they were relatively silent. Now each vehicle carries its own amplified music system. The most recent attempt to licence them was dropped in January this year when the government discontinued its Transport Bill. They have almost replaced clipjoints in their talent for fleecing unsuspecting tourists. They remain a law unto themselves.
The lingering impact of Crossrail - or the Elizabeth Line - continues. Historic venues, such as the Astoria, were closed to make way for building work but the knock-on impact has been huge. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been told by venues that they’ve suffered egregiously due to construction work, often having to cope with rising rents while punters have been deterred by disruption. More widely, other great music venues, such as Borderline, have closed.
The most crucial factor, though, are prices. A pint of beer in Soho is regularly over £7. Combine that with more than one drink, food, a visit to a nightclub, the cost of a night out can easily slip into three figures, possibly several times over, and that’s before one even considers the cost of transport. Considering the state of the economy, inflation and personal finances, that’s a huge outlay of cash. Gone are the days when a pint of Guinness and a ham sandwich can be bought from the Coach for £3.
Christopher Howse, in his book Soho In The Eighties (the dust jacket of the hardback edition, incidentally, features a painting from the early 2000s by Rupert Shrive, that includes among others, Coach & Horses regulars and Howse himself) writes:
‘For me, Soho in the eighties was a love affair, if a dangerous liaison. It was no great achievement to survive it, for it was Soho that fell away from me and disintegrated.’
In a similar way, my Soho from the early 2000s has disintegrated and this is what the City AM’s writer now fears. Sentimentality may be inevitable, but it doesn’t rebuild what has already vanished.
It is, though, fair to say that the area is probably under the greatest threat it has ever faced from commercial forces and the tedious creep of homogenisation. The spark that is being extinguished is one of individuality. The local population is a crucial aspect of this individuality; without them, what’s left of Soho’s soul will evaporate.
Rather than pitching one against the other, it is far better one appreciates what the residents of Soho can bring to the area’s nightlife, keeping the flame alive and help sustain the vibrancy and individuality of the area, rather than heap undeserved blame on their vomit stained doorstep.