UK Lap Dancing and Strip Clubs Latest

Glasgow City Council has decided to ban new lap dancing venues but has decided to allow current clubs to continue trading.

So Glasgow's three existing  lap dancing venues were given licences this week. Seventh Heaven, Diamond Dolls and Platinum Lace were granted three-year sexual entertainment venue (SEVs) licences by the city council.

Poverty creation campaigners were less than impressed. The Glasgow Violence Against Women Partnership had called for the applications to be rejected. Kristi Hay, from the Partnership, said this decisions will afford Glasgow the opportunity to become the sex capital, adding: A city for stags, sex tourism and sex entertainment.

Lawyers for United Sex Workers, a branch of the United Voices of the World (UVW) union successfully helped out against Bristol Council's bid to ban lap dancing. The group has now applied to help out in a legal case in Edinburgh where dancers are trying to reverse a moralist ban on lap dancing clubs in the city.

Lawyers for United Sex Workers have applied to the Court of Session to be allowed to participate in a judicial review of plans that will cost the loss of 100 jobs.

The council voted in March to close all four strip clubs in the capital.

For years campaigners, including Labour councillors, police and feminist groups, - have urged Bristol Council to ban strip clubs. The only problem for this miserable coalition was that the strippers themselves wanted to carry on stripping to earn a living.

Adult performers were celebrating on Thursday after persuading a majority of the city's council to reject the proposed ban on strip clubs and other sex entertainment venues.

One self-described exotic dancer told the council's licensing committee:

Stripping has allowed me to have a flexible enough schedule to pursue my dream career while simultaneously enabling me to live a comfortable life - not living in constant stress due to living from paycheck to paycheck.

Such was the strength of feeling among the female dancers and performers that Guy Poultney, a Green Party councillor, received a round of applause when he accused women's rights groups of arguing that we should discount the voices of some women in order to empower them and to restrict their choices in the name of equality and take away their jobs for their own good. He also said they were acting as if some women can't be trusted to make choices for themselves.

 

Edinburgh's moralist councillors have voted to ban lap dancing clubs. The city's regulatory committee voted to ban sexual entertainment clubs in the city from April next year by a majority of five to four.

Councillor Cameron Rose claimed that the Scottish government's policy of preventing violence against women and girls gave a national definition which included commercial sexual exploitation, defined as lap and pole-dancing as well as stripping.

Performers and managers from Edinburgh clubs gave evidence at the online meeting. Alexis, who has worked as a dancer for 15 years, said she was proud of her job and did not want to find another job because being a performer did not fit into the committee's moral values. (We are) educated women making educated decisions about what's best for our lives , she said.

United Voices of the World, a union representing exotic performers, said it would go to court in a bid to overturn the decision, and said it would request a judicial review.

Danielle Worden, legal case worker for the union, said:

The union is extremely disappointed that the council has chosen to disregard its legal obligations and the relevant evidence by adopting a policy that discriminates against women.

Not only does this violate the Equality Act 2010, it is an act of cruelty to remove the livelihoods of hundreds of workers as we enter the worst economic crisis since the 1970s.