‘A fine line between old and new’: the tricky reinvention of the working men’s club

Maurice Champeau is leafing through a scribbled notebook of upcoming events at Sheffield’s Crookes Social Club. It reads more like Pitchfork’s Best New Music section than the calendar for a former working men’s club: among the names playing are political post-punkers Deadletter, NYC cool kids Bodega and psychedelic canine ravers Fat Dog. ‘Who the fuck are they?’ shrugs Maurice.

These are possibly not the kind of bands you’d expect to be playing a traditional working men’s club in a suburb of west Sheffield. But events like these are increasingly familiar at places like Crookes. Faced with dwindling revenues and ageing members, managers like Maurice are finding new ways to keep social clubs relevant in 2024.

‘On my first Saturday night here they were sending a bucket around collecting donations to pay the electric bill,’ he tells me over a cuppa in the club’s newly-refurbed side room. Maurice had worked in the pub trade and as a music agent for several years before Crookes got in touch. ‘I agreed with the committee that I’d come along and look at the business for six months and give them a business plan of how to restructure it, rebuild it and move it forward. Ten years later, I’m still here.’

Maurice started by reaching out to the sizeable student population in Crookes, hosting medic meetings, gaming groups and Zumba classes – though students were hesitant to come at first. ‘They didn’t want to come here because it’s a working men’s club, and some were maybe too…cosmopolitan to come to places like this,’ he offers. 

Working men’s clubs have been a vital outlet for local communities since the mid nineteenth century, acting as a kind of informal union where members could socialise away from the prying eyes of bosses and managers. But they haven’t always been known for those cosmopolitan attitudes that Maurice mentioned. For instance, it wasn’t until 2007 that women officially gained equal rights in working men’s clubs.

In a neighbourhood where house prices are increasing and the local clientele changing, it’s extra important to shrug off those associations. ‘We’re still known as Crookes Working Men’s Club, but it hasn’t been called that since 1984,’ Maurice continues. ‘And there’s this preconception that it’s flat cap and whippet country. That’s how people see these places. It’s about changing those preconceptions.’

Our membership dropped from 400 to about 200 when I started stirring things up here

At Crookes, flipping those preconceptions on their head has been key to its revival. Local promoters Futuresound, who also run the festivals Live at Leeds and Get Together, soon got wind of the space and started putting on gigs in the club’s gorgeous Victorian main room. Now the event calendar is packed, and everything from Ghanaian hip-hop to Australian psych-rock have been bleeding out of Crookes’ creaky doors. However, it’s fair to say some long-time members weren’t impressed with the changes.

‘There was a clash at first,’ admits Maurice. ‘And our membership dropped from 400 to about 200 when I started stirring things up here. But I was conscious that we were going to lose a large proportion of them. Now we’re up to well over 600 members.’ 

But not all long-time members were unhappy. Peter Lonsdale first stepped foot in Crookes Working Men’s Club in July 1974, as a 17-year old. He’s now the second longest-serving member at the club and still visits five times a week. ‘It has been a massive transformation,’ he tells me. ‘But the changes that Maurice has made have been really good. We lost one or two members, but we’ve gained quite a lot more. We’ve won everybody round.’

It has been a similar story at Manchester’s Carlton Club, located a few miles south of the city centre. A crippling lack of members left it on the brink of closure by the mid-noughties, but it just about managed to limp through to 2020, when the pandemic gave the recently-elected committee a chance to freshen things up. Non-members were welcomed in, and the club’s huge outdoor space was turned into a Covid-friendly beer garden. The sight of people enjoying a Covid-era pint in its garden had a ripple effect in the local community.

‘People started coming past and seeing people out here with all this space we've got,’ acting chair Justin Anderson explains. ‘And they were like: what on earth is going on there?’

Soon, anything and everything was happening there: backgammon groups, menopause clubs, more Zumba classes. It’s a sea change from years gone by, when the door to the Carlton was permanently shut and club activities like darts and bridge were limited to current members only. Nowadays they run 600 events a year, while membership has mushroomed from 200 to more than 1,100.

There’s this preconception that it’s flat cap and whippet country

Those changes haven’t been welcomed by the whole membership, however. The Carlton is currently in the midst of an ownership battle, in which the owners of the building (including some old members) are trying to oust the current management from the premises. That’s rumbling on in the background, but shows the fine line that these clubs tread between the old and new generations. ‘They won’t look forward at all,’ Peter says of Crookes’ old members. ‘[They have the attitude that] if it was good enough for my father, it’s good enough for us.’

Yet the Carlton Club’s changes have gone hand-in-hand with shifts in the local area. Whalley Range was infamous for being Manchester’s red light district in the 90s, but it has transformed since then, becoming more diverse, more middle class, and with more people looking for a place where they feel safe and welcome.

‘Times change, and you react to what the community wants in terms of activities and events,’ Justin tells me. ‘We trial things, and if they start to build interest then we make them happen.’ For example, the club hosts the annual Pride on the Range, which is now one of the biggest events in the Carlton’s calendar. ‘It’s about making sure that we support all different parts of the community.’

That sense of a changing community hits a little harder in London, where gentrification doesn’t so much creep up as burst through the doors and whack you in the face. Around a decade ago, when The Mildmay Club in Newington Green was at its nadir of about 300 members, the club watched on in wonder as the local area transformed around it. 

‘The area changed,’ explains manager Iona Dudley. ‘Once some more local people who weren’t on the committee at the time got involved, they started to spread the word and put pressure on the committee to allow more people to join.’

Previously, potential new members first had to be proposed by one existing member and seconded by another. They then had a couple of allotted days in January to submit their application and be interviewed by the committee. The process was so complicated and convoluted that most locals didn’t even bother trying to join. 

At Crookes, a pint of Stones is £3.45; at the Mildmay, a Guinness is £4.40 

But change gradually came about. Working men’s club staples like darts, comedy and bingo remain in the club calendar, but now sit alongside obscure vinyl DJ nights, novelist group meetings and hip speed dating events. The Mildmay also helps to soothe the nation’s seemingly unquenchable thirst for Zumba classes. Its membership now stands at more than 2,000.

This next gen of social clubs not only reflect their local communities, but also our changing tastes in a night out. They’re likely to put on events similar to those you might see in a nightclub, but closing closer to midnight. ‘We’re somewhere in-between going ‘‘out’’ and going ‘‘out out’’,’ says Iona. ‘People are looking for somewhere where they can go out and have a nice evening and it’s not incredibly expensive. That’s what the club has always been about, really.’ At the Mildmay, members can get a pint of John Smith’s for £4.30 or a Guinness for £4.40 – which is pounds cheaper than neighbouring pubs in the area. The member’s prices at other clubs are similarly inflation-busting: cask ales are four quid a pint at the Carlton, while at Crookes, a pint of Stones is £3.45.

Really, many of the things that used to attract people to social clubs still do: cheap pints, a sense of belonging, and events that cater to the local community. But they haven’t always been seen as welcoming places to outsiders: modern clubs are trying to change that perception. Maurice’s first action at Crookes was to bin some of the stuffy old WMC norms (you don’t have to be a member to enter, anyone can use the pool table, it doesn’t matter if someone is in your ‘usual’ seat), and he talks me through their Ask for Angela protocols so comprehensively that I start to think I might actually be talking to Angela.

Despite the growing success of these clubs today, threats still remain. Crookes is sitting on increasingly valuable land for developers, whilst the ongoing ownership battle at the Carlton is threatening the club’s very existence. But Justin believes there is ‘absolutely’ a way forward for social clubs in 2024.

‘You’ve got to find people who are passionate and the right staff to help you do it,’ he says. ‘And we’ve managed to create something here that I think is pretty bloody special, to be honest. I don’t think there’s anything like this in south Manchester, and I think that’s part of the attraction.’

The concept of a social club can sometimes feel like a relic from the past, but it seems the need to feel part of something will never get old. ‘The first time I came to the club it felt almost old-fashioned – you could chat to people and people stood near you would start chatting to you,’ says Iona. 

‘It’s not like other venues in London where you have to keep yourself to yourself or just chat to your friends. It's a place where you immediately feel at home and part of the community. You don’t really get that anywhere else.’