The greatest 'save the pub' campaign ever
How many pubs reopen after 12 years due to the defiance of their clientele?
The latest NewJournal+ bonus feature is a blow-by-blow account of an extraordinary campaign to save a pub. Not just any pub – the famous Black Cap pub in Camden High Street. Expect lots of headlines all around in March when it opens its doors again after 11 years, but just think how long the campaigners have been waiting and fighting for that day to come? They have achieved something which once seemed impossible.
Dan Carrier has followed every step of their journey for the Camden New Journal.
THE Victorian craze for a pub on every street corner created a local landscape which has shaped our neighbourhoods ever since.
But in recent years, institutions which have lasted generations have suffered from rising property values, higher alcohol prices and changes to how we spend our leisure time and disposable income.
Over the last 20 years and more, our newspapers have covered many campaigns to save cherished pubs, including the success which saw The Pineapple in Kentish Town saved from the claws of developers in 2002.
But for every victory, there have been more pubs lost to time: who remembers the old Camden Falcon in Royal College Street? the much-missed Crown and Goose in Delancey Street or the Brecknock Arms in York Way? Perhaps the long-demolished Tally Ho or the redeveloped Castle Tavern also in Kentish Town? We could go on and on across Camden and Islington – feel free to put your lost favourites in the comments.
When the last pint was pulled at The Black Cap in Camden Town in 2015, many could be forgiven for thinking another one had bitten the dust and that the loss of these shared places, so much part of the national culture, was simply an irreversible fact
But this spring, get ready for a rare moment to buck this trend as former regulars at the bar will be able to return for the first time in nearly 11 years. The Black Cap, after an astonishing and defiant campaign, will be back. You will meet campaigners who never gave up.
This story of demise and an unlikely rebirth encapsulates the changing market and how pubs have been seen as buildings to buy, sell and redevelop, assets measured by property market prices rather than the unmetered social value to the community.
A company called Faucett Inn saw opportunities in London when it formed in 2001 and began buying up several pubs. At one point its portfolio covered 15 in the capital and five outside. The name became familiar in north London when it bought the Sir Richard Steele in Belsize Park and the Dartmouth Arms in Dartmouth Park. Then it turned its attention to The Black Cap, an iconic LGBT+ venue, loved locally and known nationally.
There were soon signs that not everything was rosy. A plan to build flats above the Dartmouth Arms was fought and Faucet Inn then boarded the pub up. The locals there launched a campaign, which at one point saw regulars traipse down to the firm’s offices at 5pm on a Friday evening and occupy its foyer, drinking cans of beer to protest that they could not go to their usual spot to unwind after a week’s work.
Eventually – and after the upstairs rooms had been lost to private flats – the Dartmouth Arms was reopened with a lease given to a company specialising in food-led nights to run the venue.
There was also a long-running row over the upper floors of the Sir Richard Steele. This ended with the first-floor function room and staff quarters lost and the garden reduced in size – but it too eventually reopened.
For The Black Cap, there were hopes that it might be protected by both the fact it was always busy, and the most important element – the role it has played in London’s LGBTQ+ history. Sadly for singer and cabaret star Alex Green, he soon began feeling that looking after this treasured jewel was not the priority for the new owners.
“Soon after the ownership changed, it felt that for all the hard work of the staff, the pub was being run down,” Mr Green told NewJournal+.
“There seemed to be a desire to make it as uncomfortable as possible. Repairs weren’t done, leaks weren’t fixed, toilets were not maintained. And we had begun to notice they were applying for planning permission for the other places they bought.”
The company’s managing director Steve Cox tried to smooth furrowed brows. He had said he was running a pub business and not a property firm – but to help support the bars they would look at each site and maximise income. This meant building flats in first-floor function rooms and getting rid of the live-in managers’ quarters. Objectors said this staff accommodation helped keep good people behind the bar and that the function rooms were themselves vital amenities.
Mr Green, who has spearheaded the campaign to save The Black Cap, first stepped inside the venue in 1982. He had moved from Leeds to London to pursue a career in the music industry after earning a record deal.
“At the time there were the new romantic and punk movements and the Cap felt very much part of that,” he said.
While it was a warm and welcoming space, gay sex was still illegal for people under 21 and the Thatcher government was introducing Clause 28, seen as a direct attack on the LGBT+ community. It made the bar an even more important place for many.
“I lived in a squat in Georgiana Street and I remember a mate saying let’s go to The Black Cap,” Mr Green said. “I had a Billy Idol hairstyle and a snakeskin suit. I walked into the Cap and immediately thought – wow. There was a leather queen in the corner and a flamboyant person behind the bar, and great music on the jukebox.
“It struck me that it was just like a working men’s social club in Yorkshire, places I had grown up in – a real mix of everyone from the community in there. I felt I had found my place, a place for punks, gays, queers, trans – it was a fabulous mix. It was Camden in a nutshell and that was why I loved it.”
Mr Green even recalls the performance he saw that day.
“The Disappointer Sisters – what a fantastic name! – were on stage,” he said. “I had seen drag acts in working men’s clubs but this was really something else.”
