Fresh hope for Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club as talks with union progress
There is fresh hope that The Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club may remain open as a performing arts venue.
Owners had said they were selling the building, effectively ending the arts programming that has platformed some of the capital’s most experimental drag and cabaret shows over the past 20 years.
But after a petition to save that venue gained 12,000 signatures in a week, owners have said they are in talks with arts trade union Equity to preserve the building as a performance space.
“We are in active and constructive discussions with Equity,” a spokesperson for the Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club told City PM “We are committed to working towards an outcome which secures the use of the club for the performers and the best outcome for our members.”
At a rally outside the venue on Monday involving more than one hundred Londoners, a spokesperson for Equity said: “We’re pleased we’ve entered into a dialogue with the committee of the club at the end of last week. A petition with over 10,000 people on it has certainly focused some minds over how important this club is to save and it’s going to be a huge community effort to save it.”
Equity added: “It’s a democratically run organisation, working member’s clubs are by their very nature constituted in that way, so there are lots of avenues to protect it. This place matters so much. It is literally people putting food on their [performers’] tables. We’re a trade union, this is a workplace – it’s the same as shutting a factory.”
Equity said questions remain around the “intentions” of the BGWMC members, as well as “how committed” they are to protecting the venue.
Event programmer Warren Dent is also a tenant in the building. The BGWMC is owned by its members and opened in 1887.