Is the world moving towards 24-hour alcohol licensing? Is that a good thing?
This autumn Montreal will become the first Canadian city to declare itself “24 hour”. What does this mean? Aren’t all cities “24-hour”, we hear you cry, unless perhaps they are situated in a specially warped bend of space-time dimension? Well, yes. But not in terms of alcohol licensing, the most important measure out there.
In Toronto venues have to close by 2am, and it is 3am in Vancouver. Over here in London, revellers of the night have it hard. Most bars and restaurants must stop serving up booze at 11pm – unless you have a special licence (which, hospitality venues say, it is increasingly difficult to obtain).
For libertarians, and others, this is a sorry state of affairs. These pro-revellers point to Berlin, Las Vegas, New Orleans and Tokyo in awe and envy, coveting their 24-hour club scene. Fun and frolicking is one thing. Economic benefits are another. For them, those 12 or so hours we typically determine as night time are little more than a clamp on the cogs of the national economy.
‘Vikings loose in the piazza’
Not everyone is pro. Residents who live in lively areas might not want crowds of clubbers or night owls crawling the streets at 5am. People who fret about alcohol misuse are also anti. Indeed, as alcohol licensing became more liberal following the 1990s, alcohol consumption in Britain ballooned. In 2006, The Economist memorably described the legal relaxation as “akin to letting Vikings loose in the piazza”. Those who are concerned about night workers’ rights and welfare highlight the paucity of early-hours transportation. Likewise, if the club is open till 4am but the Tube isn’t, the ravers won’t be quite as keen.
But in general, the 24-hour party people are riding a wave of enthusiasm: Canada’s move is part of a broader trend. Amsterdam was the first of what is now a group of 100 metropolises to inaugurate a “night tsar” back in 2012. London has one: her name is – hilariously – Amy Lame. She is working with City Hall apparently in the pursuit of making London a 24-hour city. A document published in 2017 detailed a 24-hour London vision. It notes – for example – that more people are drinking at home, and less people are drinking out – the Mayor’s office wants to change that.
However, Lame’s reign has been the subject of many a venomous columnist – noticing that the capital’s nightlife is dwindling rather than thriving, and that her salary is in the region of £130,000. According to the Night Time Industries Association, one third of the UK’s nightclubs, over 1,000 venues, have been forced to close since the pandemic. Last year, a journalist cobbled together a map of all the pubs in London that were open until 2am (hardly the deep, dark end of the night) – he could only find 167 venues for a population of 9m. In response to Mayor Sadiq Khan’s claims that London is a city that never sleeps, Michael Kill, chief executive of the Night Time Industries Association, said, simply: “It’s not the case.”