PROTESTERS staged a lively protest outside the City Chambers today and called for the Arches venue to be placed into public ownership.
Artists and theatre bosses joined Arches staff and public supporters at John Street at 9am urging council bosses to re-instate the venue's licence.
A petition was handed to officials as a meeting of the council's Licensing Committee got underway at 9.30am.
Around 150 protestors chanted "Save Our Arches" and waved banners that read: "Don't let cops close our club" and "Save Jobs, Save Arts, Save Clubs, Save Culture."
Mark Brown, a theatre critic, called for the venue to be placed into public ownership.
He said: "The council say 'people make Glasgow'. It's all very well to use a slogan like that but actions speak louder than deed."
"The Arches belongs to the people of Glasgow.
"We can't allow the cops to be closing down one of the city's most important cultural institutions.
"Whatever the business model of the Arches is, the licence must be reinstated.
"We don't want the Arches to become a G1 venue. We don't want to it to become a Wetherspoons.
"This is a quarter of a century of culture. That should be celebrated by Glasgow City Council.
"The idea that closing a club is going to stop anyone taking drugs is ridiculous."
Kieran Hurley,writer and theatre maker, shouted a series of questions at campaigners including: "Do we want to live in a city that protects its cultural institutions." They were all answered with a loud "Yes."
The venue went into administration following a decision by the council to force the nightclub part of the operation to close at midnight.
The ruling followed a series of police complaints about drug misuse and disorder.
A spokesman for Glasgow Licensing Board said: "We fully respect people's right to protest.
"All decisions by the board are based on the individual merits of the case in question and in accordance with the Licensing (Scotland) Act 2005.
"Changes to this legislation can only be made at the Scottish Parliament."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article