We deserve the right to work in a safe environment

Bristol City Council keep asking the public if they should impose a nil cap on sexual entertainment venues, effectively closing down the city’s two strip clubs and forcing over 100 of us into unemployment.

They asked in 2019, and the people of Bristol responded in favour of keeping the strip clubs open, in favour of the workers’ rights. Yet here we are, after a pandemic that has cost us our jobs and our income for over a year, only three years after the last consultation, fighting again to prevent our workplaces from being permanently closed.

We don’t know why the council are still asking the same question and expecting a different response. What we do know is that it’s not the clubs, the council, nor the public that will be impacted the most if there is a nil cap implemented in Bristol, it’s us, the dancers, the bar staff, the cleaners.

Our workplaces are heavily regulated, with strict rules for both the dancer and the patron. Rules – and importantly, our consent – are enforced by the security presence both inside the club and outside on the door, there’s CCTV everywhere.

Often, we feel safer inside our venues than we do in many of Bristol’s regular clubs and bars. It’s a sentiment that’s reflected in the Avon & Somerset Police crime statistics, where the strip clubs have some of the lowest numbers of reported assaults, whereas clubs like Prysm top the list.

If the nil cap is implemented, we’ll lose access to those safe spaces and be forced into working private parties, without the club’s security, without the safety of our regulated workspaces.

We’ve spoken to strippers in cities that have already implemented nil caps (Swansea, Blackpool) and the answer is always the same, the risk of violence is higher, the danger they face is greater.

And we will have to put our safety at risk because, unfortunately, whilst our income might be eradicated overnight, our need to pay our bills, rent and the cost of living won’t be.

When the question of implementing a nil cap is framed, as some groups seem intent on doing so, as a necessary measure to combat violence against women, it completely erases our safety.

The majority of us working in the strip clubs are women, yet somehow the very real violence we might face if our safe workplaces are shut down, does not seem to count. If our safety has to be excluded for the nil cap to work, then it is not a measure that is in the best interest of all women.

We deserve the right to work in a safe environment, and we deserve to have our voices heard.

If you’d like to support us, then please sign our petition.