#WeAreTheBlackCap protest outside the Black Cap on Camden High St, April 18 2015
By Ben Walters, 12:00, July 21 2016
The campaign to reopen the iconic Black Cap as an LGBTQ+ venue scored a major victory yesterday (July 20 2016) as a scheme to convert the venue into a generic bar-restaurant fell through and its backers admitted defeat.
Venture-capital company Ruth & Robinson had planned to turn the site of one of London’s oldest LGBTQ+ spaces into a mainstream bar and eatery called Hollenbecks. This was intended to start a new chain.
The plan was fiercely resisted by the Black Cap Foundation and #WeAreTheBlackCap community campaign (of which I am a member), which demand the reopening of the site as an LGBTQ+ venue called the Black Cap.
Yesterday, just months after signing a 25-year lease on the site, Ruth & Robinson managing director Sarah Weir told the Camden New Journal: “we are unfortunately going to have to take our investors and their money, and my time and energy, and invest it somewhere else.”
The Black Cap campaign operated on many fronts: through dialogue with Ruth & Robinson; engagement with Camden Council; weekly neighbourhood awareness-raising vigils; and online community coordination.
Those efforts have now paid off, demonstrating the value of grassroots campaigning and clearing the way for new investment that takes seriously the welfare – as well as the spending power – of London’s LGBTQ+ community.
Ruth & Robinson’s withdrawal echoes that of café-restaurant chain the Breakfast Club, which gave up on plans to add the Black Cap site to its portfolio in 2015.
The Black Cap has been an iconic London site of queer community and culture since the 1960s, when gay sex was still illegal.
In April 2015, it was closed without notice by freeholder Kicking Horse and operator Faucet Inn, which has a track record of closing popular pubs with an eye to commercial exploitation. Prior to its closure, the Cap was commercially successful and culturally dynamic, despite years of underinvestment by the owners.
The closure prompted an immediate community campaign that has remained active and dedicated for 15 months, gaining support from the likes of Paul O’Grady and Stephen Fry as well as Camden councillors, local MP Keir Starmer and Mayor of London Sadiq Khan.
In recent years, dozens of LGBTQ+ venues have closed in London, as in many other cities worldwide. This might not be a problem for those who are comfortable in mainstream spaces but for more vulnerable LGBTQ+ people it can be a crisis. According to Camden LGBT Forum, demand for help with acute isolation and mental health problems trebled in the year following the Cap’s closure.
The Black Cap Foundation has recognised that Ruth & Robinson attempted to engage with the community and, following meetings with campaign representatives, proposed minor concessions to LGBTQ+ use of the site, such as occasional cabaret nights or use of meeting rooms. But such proposals lacked short-term detail and long-term guarantees.
The Black Cap campaign developed detailed good-faith proposals for a plan that would support both the reopening of the Cap as a queer space and Ruth & Robinson’s overall corporate strategy. But the company refused to consider reopening the site as an LGBTQ+ venue called the Black Cap, leading to an impasse.
Now Ruth & Robinson have thrown in the towel, the community campaign moves on to its next stage.
This will involve working with Camden council and sympathetic new investors to reopen the site in line with its unique half-century of heritage, its proven recent commercial viability, and the wants and needs of an LGBTQ+ community with a right to safe spaces where we can have our kind of fun.
It’s a challenge, all right. But also a great opportunity. And the Black Cap campaign – like many other campaigns for queer, alternative and grassroots venues around the world – has repeatedly shown that it has the passion and the firepower for the job.
When it comes to defending our history, our community and the places we call home, we simply won’t give in.
Just ask Ruth & Robinson.
