CLUBS (TEMPORARY PROVISIONS) BILL. (Hansard, 4 November 1915)

§ THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTON)

My Lords, as I explained to your Lordships at the close of our proceedings yesterday, I propose to ask you to pass through all its stages to-day this measure, entitled the Clubs (Temporary Provisions) Bill, which I introduced into your Lordships' House on behalf of the Home Office. This Bill, which has already passed the House of Commons, is a war measure. It has arisen out of the conditions of the war and will cease to operate with the termination of the war. It is designed to put an end to a great scandal—namely, the rapid and unarrested growth of what are commonly known as night clubs, but are really haunts of temptation and dens of iniquity in some of our great towns. These institutions are not clubs in any proper sense of the term—that is to say, places of legitimate social intercourse. They are snares which have been devised by bad characters to trap unwary men. Open as these places are all through the night and in the early hours of the morning, they have become scenes of drinking, gambling, and immorality. I have myself read the reports submitted by the military authorities with regard to the cases of large numbers of young officers who have been tempted into these places, swindled of their money, drugged, sometimes turned 164 out into the streets, and afterwards blackmailed in order to avoid exposure.

These places are found not merely in London, where, of course, the largest number exists, but in great provincial towns in the interior of the country, and also in places on the South Coast where troops have been stationed in large numbers for the purposes of the war. The military and police authorities are united in their protest against the continuance of this scandal, and it is at their urgent instance that this Bill has been introduced by the Home Office. Under the existing law the authorities are powerless to enter these places unless evidence can be called which in the opinion of the magistrate will justify interference, and your Lordships can easily see the opportunities that, under such a system, exist for evasion and delay and a successful defiance both of public decency and of the law of the land. Accordingly this Bill has been prepared, and is now, I hope, to pass into law. It is intended to apply not to all clubs, but only to clubs in certain areas scheduled for the purpose and because of the necessities of the ease.

The Bill contains two main provisions— one giving the Secretary of State power, by Order, to close all clubs in any specified area during such hours as may be prescribed, so long as it is not earlier than the hour at which licensed premises are closed at present, that is not earlier than 12.30 in the morning in London and eleven p.m. in the provinces; and the other giving power to police officers, and in the case of clubs frequented by military men to the military authorities, to inspect these places—a power which I need hardly say exists only for the objects which the Bill has in view, namely, the regulation of these night clubs, and not in order to harry or persecute either the West-end club with which we in this House are familiar, on the one hand, or the respectable workingmen's club on the other. The penalties for offences prescribed in the Bill are—First, that the offending club may be closed; secondly, that the persons frequenting it are liable on summary conviction to a fine; thirdly, that the persons responsible for the control and management of the club are liable on summary conviction to imprisonment.

165 I am confident that in the public interest every section of society will willingly submit to the very slight inconvenience—I think the use of the word hardship would be an exaggeration—which the operation of this Bill may entail. I say "very slight inconvenience" because, if I may take the case of the West-end clubs with which we are all familiar. I am sure your Lordships will agree with me that after midnight in war time these places are cheerless and untenanted wastes where no one would go either to find society or seek refreshment. Secondly, the inconvenience must be very slight because power is given in the Bill to grant exemption to clubs on special occasions and also to institutions such as Press clubs, the conditions of whose existence require them to be open at late hours of the night and in the early hours of the morning. I do not think I need say more to commend to your Lordships and induce you to pass without further delay what is really a very necessary and moderate measure, designed to extirpate a scandal which is great and growing and is a menace both to the efficiency of our fighting forces and to the decencies of public life. I beg to move.

The LORD ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY

My Lords, I desire to say a word in support of the Motion for the Second Reading of this Bill. I am certain that among the emergency Bills which have seen the light during the last year and a-half there is none which could be more truly called an emergency Bill of a really necessary kind than this. The facts that have come to the knowledge of those of us who have some measure of responsibility for the safeguarding, so far as we can, if the moral life of the community are simply heartbreaking, because in case after case it is not men desiring or even dreaming of direct evil who are the victims of what is now going on; it is men unfamiliar with London, unfamiliar many of them with England, coming from across the sea and totally unacquainted with life and conditions in this country, who find themselves suddenly plunged into the middle of difficulties which they are unprepared to face, and the results of which may be simply disastrous. I have heard no one 166 who has looked into the facts take any exception to the action which is now being proposed—no one, I mean, whose opinion we should desire to listen to and to give weight to. It is perfectly easy to say, when the matter is merely mentioned, that there will be a difficulty in proper discrimination between one kind of club and another, but any one who knows the facts of the case will be aware that that is an argument which vanishes into air when we look into the facts in the light of the knowledge which the Home Office and the police have on the subject. In short, the objections, if there be objections, which are to be heard to-day are objections on the part of those who have never made real inquiry into what is happening in London at night. I venture to hope that without any doubt or hesitation we shall endeavour, in the speediest way the conditions of the time admit of to make effective a Bill which is urgently needed if ever a Bill was.