Can you strip in Sheffield? After six years, the jury’s still out

Good afternoon, readers — and welcome to this week’s Thursday edition of The Tribune.

It’s now been just shy of six years since Irene Gladdison, a local grandmother who despises strip clubs, had her day in court. She was up against Sheffield Council, furious at its refusal to create a policy banning any future “sexual entertainment venues” from opening. On that day in June 2018, she scored what appeared to be a decisive victory in her personal war against working girls, as the council agreed to think again about “the right policy for Sheffield”. The city’s only club, Spearmint Rhino, shut down two years later.

Gladdison may have won the battle, but the war still rages on — only some of its most determined soldiers appear to be missing in action. The council still hasn’t made a firm decision about whether it will ever allow stripping to return to Sheffield, even the fact it promised to do so seems to have slipped most people’s minds. The former staff of Spearmint Rhino, however, haven’t had the luxury of forgetting.

But first, flickerings of unrest at Sheffield Hallam University and a last-minute push to get a DIY venue off the ground.

Your Tribune briefing

🫢 There were stirrings of trouble at Sheffield Hallam University this week, as the local branch of the University and College Union called an emergency meeting about alleged plans to shut the language department, before swiftly deleting the post. When contacted by The Tribune, a Hallam spokesperson confirmed some courses will close next academic year, including Language with international Business and Language with Tourism, but existing students will continue to study until they graduate. Professor Conor Moss — dean of the College of Business, Technology and Engineering — said the university is “committed to providing the opportunity for students to undertake foreign language learning during their studies” but, like many universities, has “seen significant decline in applications to some languages courses over recent years”.

🛠️ After six months of hard work trying to build a new independent venue, the team behind Gut Level, who originally hoped to open next month, have hit a last-minute snag. Earlier this month, the council’s environmental health department informed the team of volunteers that they would need a ventilation system, CCTV and extra urinals if they hoped to secure a licence — a final blow that comes after “numerous setbacks and challenges” during building work. They have “officially run out of money,” they revealed on Instagram earlier this week, but thankfully a fundraiser to get them over the final hump has already raised almost £10,000.

🍽️ Joro — one of Sheffield’s finest restaurants, which opened in a shipping container in Shalesmoor in 2016 — is finally on the verge of moving to its new home on the edge of the Peak District, on Oughtibridge Mill. As a send-off, the Times sent restaurant critic Giles Coren to give his verdict, which he summed up as: ‘Such good food for so little money’. (Maybe to someone with a Times salary.) As we reported recently, it’s not all good news for Sheffield’s fine dining scene at the moment — expect a longer piece on that from us in the weeks to come. 

Things to do

🪧 On Saturday and Sunday, a free exhibition at the Samuel Worth Chapel in Sheffield General Cemetery will celebrate the Chartist women of Sheffield who founded the very first organisation calling for female suffrage. As well as the exhibition, on Saturday there will also be a talk by Dr Matthew Roberts of Sheffield Hallam about Radicals, a new film made in the cemetery which tells the story of those who began the fight for votes for women. To book your place click here.

🌷 On Saturday, the Sheffield Orchid Show comes to St John’s Church Hall on Abbeydale Road South. A display of carnivorous plants and orchids that are easy to grow in the home will be on show and Spiceotic, the UK’s leading suppliers of orchids and exotic plants, will also be selling plants during the day. The festival is keen to support new growers of orchids and experts will be available during the show to offer advice. The event runs from 10am-4pm and tickets are £5.

🎭 On from now until Saturday at the University of Sheffield’s Drama Studio is Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Presented by The Company, a collective of local theatre creatives, there’s no need to make the classic tragedy “relevant” for a modern audience. Its themes of loyalty and betrayal, geopolitical brinkmanship, the power of oratory and the dangers of populism feel almost painfully relevant to today’s world. Tickets are £10-£12 and doors open at 7.30pm.

Can you strip in Sheffield? After six years, the jury’s still out

What do you need to be a stripper, other than a nice set of lingerie and some heels? A modicum of sex appeal, if you want to be any good — or at least stage presence, an inviting smile, a certain je ne sais quoi, etc. A room to do it in, ideally a safe one.

According to the Sheffield campaign group Zero Option, all of the above wouldn’t be enough. In a written statement submitted to the council in 2020, they argued that stripping “involves dehumanisation” and thus “requires a mind-body split” on the part of the performer. “Undergoing this psychological process repeatedly causes psychological trauma,” they wrote. “Similarly to women in abusive relationships, who often only come to an understanding of the trauma they have experienced once they are outside the harmful situation,” strippers who claim their spirit is not being cleaved in two by twirling around a pole simply don’t realise it’s taking place. (When I put this view to Frankie, a 27-year-old sex worker who is non-binary, they joke that they’ll need me to give them a second, so they can go “bash [their] skull on the table”.)

As a result, the only good option, according to Zero Option and groups like it, is to ensure that Sheffield is a “strip club-free” city, both now and in perpetuity. They’ve had the “now” part of that equation down since October 2020, when the city’s only strip club, Spearmint Rhino, closed its doors. While Spearmint Rhino chose to withdraw an application to renew its licence, after months of lockdown starved the club of income, it seems likely that having to fight off two attempts to shut it down in just two years hastened its retreat. Campaigners were so determined to poach Spearmint Rhino that they paid undercover investigators, with cameras hidden in their glasses, to catch performers breaking the rules. 

It’s the “in perpetuity” part that still hangs in the balance, almost six years since a local grandmother called Irene Gladdison — not her real name — took Sheffield Council to the High Court to force it to reconsider its licensing policy around “sexual entertainment venues”. Just as councils must have a written policy regarding businesses that serve alcohol or offer gambling, they must also lay out on what grounds they would accept or refuse an application for a licence to offer sexual entertainment, which can include stripping, peep shows or even just showing pornographic films. 

What campaigners like Gladdison hoped to see inserted into Sheffield’s policy was a hard limit on the number of sexual entertainment venues that can exist in the city — a limit they wanted set at zero. Sheffield’s current policy doesn’t set any limit at all, merely outlining a wide range of locations it would deem unsuitable for venues like strip clubs. Other large northern cities tend to have policies that exist somewhere between these two extremes. Leeds, for example, deems four an “appropriate number” of venues, while Liverpool is willing to have up to ten. Manchester states it won’t accept any applications for venues outside of the city centre — of which there are at least five — and would only consider new venues in the centre after an existing one shut down. 

Setting what is often referred to as a “nil cap” on new sexual entertainment venues would mean Sheffield Council was joining a select and somewhat controversial club. While places like Rotherham, Blackpool, Exeter and Swansea all have “nil caps” in place, Edinburgh Council recently went back on its decision to introduce one, instead setting a limit of four venues, after Scotland’s supreme civil court ruled that the policy was unlawful. 

Four years ago, when presented by council officers with a new draft policy introducing a nil cap, a group of Sheffield councillors voted that they needed to hear more evidence before they could decide either way, asking officers to come back to them in six months. As reported in the Star, the chair of the licensing committee, Andy Bainbridge, said at the time that he would “need to be convinced by everything” if he was to vote for such a “radical change” to council policy. “I'm not happy that the other side of the argument has not been presented to us,” he said. Committee member Joe Otten agreed, adding that the council needed to be “listening to the dancers and respecting their choices” in the process of updating its policy.

It’s been slightly longer than six months but, according to current licensing committee chair David Barker, Sheffield’s policy around sexual entertainment may once again be put to a vote later this year. “I believe a public consultation is to be undertaken shortly,” he told The Tribune, “with a view to a revised policy being presented to the Waste and Streetscene Policy Committee in June/July 2024.” 

One sex worker I spoke to seemed to echo Andy Bainbridge's complaint that the council needed to listen to dancers while updating its policy. "There's a lot of speaking for us or over us," she said, "and not a lot of speaking to us." So this week, that's exactly what we decided to do. To what extent is this city's current policy shaping sex workers’ daily routine — for better or for worse? And, should the sort of campaigning backed by Irene Gladdison be victorious, how would this impact their lives? We spoke to local sex workers (including two former Spearmint Rhino performers) about why the hand wringing over whether stripping is empowering or degrading misses the point, everyday sexism and the malaise of 9-5s.