Fact #126223
When:
Short story:
Greater Manchester Police advise The Hacienda club (co-owned by Factory Records and New Order) of their intention to revoke its licence.Full article:
Tony Wilson (owner, The Hacienda) : There was violence going on all the time. You cannot understand how powerless we felt, sitting in the Tuesday morning board meetings, discussing the fact that one of our employees had been bottled by some gang member. And we knew that if we took a decision to bar some asshole from the club because he’d hurt one of the staff, we were effectively putting the lives of our doormen on the line the following Friday night. They could get shot.
The police gave us no back up at all. We asked them to come and stand on the door with us and they refused. We said we’d pay them, like they do in America, to have an officer on the door. They would have nothing to do with it. We said “But you do it at football matches.” And they said, “Ah, but that’s different.” When we challenged them to explain how it was different, they said in the manner of bad parents everywhere, “It just is.”
They had this theory that, if you close the club the gangs go to, you’ll get rid of the gangs. That’s brainless. The gangs just move to another club. In fact, our gang troubles had started the week after they’d closed The Gallery club. And the week after the police closed us down, they moved into the Gay Village. There seemed to be a contest on between the police and the gangs to see who could behave the most mindlessly.
(Source : not known)
Tweet this Fact
The police gave us no back up at all. We asked them to come and stand on the door with us and they refused. We said we’d pay them, like they do in America, to have an officer on the door. They would have nothing to do with it. We said “But you do it at football matches.” And they said, “Ah, but that’s different.” When we challenged them to explain how it was different, they said in the manner of bad parents everywhere, “It just is.”
They had this theory that, if you close the club the gangs go to, you’ll get rid of the gangs. That’s brainless. The gangs just move to another club. In fact, our gang troubles had started the week after they’d closed The Gallery club. And the week after the police closed us down, they moved into the Gay Village. There seemed to be a contest on between the police and the gangs to see who could behave the most mindlessly.
(Source : not known)