You’ll never live like common people
Never fail like common people
You’ll never watch your life slide out of view
And then you dance and drink and screw,
because there’s nothing else to do….

PULP’S words still resonate deeply with me. I felt they were telling my life story. When I discovered club culture it was like finding my home. A working-class girl from an ignored council scheme with a dead-beat dad and a worn-out mum and no way of getting to university, I suddenly felt alive and connected.

I learned about friendship, trade unionism, the social disadvantages leading to lack of life choices and the healing power of human connection in bars and clubs in a way I never did at school in the Thatcher years of “greed is good”.

I became politicised at those dance venues, I joined the anti-poll tax movement. I was given my first dog eared copy of The Women’s Room which started my full-on feminist fire.

The poorest of kids need club culture. Not for us the foreign holidays, tennis clubs, gymkhanas and the grouse shoots Boris Johnson has made sure can still go ahead.

That’s why it’s so important clubs survive this pandemic. Dance culture isn’t frivolous party ... it’s vital.

And the clubs and bars are also a way young working-class students traditionally earn money. Without that further education becomes the preserve of the privileged.

I am beyond proud and grateful that universities are free in our country but the harsh reality is these kids need to earn to eat and live and buy books and catch a bus. Where do those kids work? Almost solely in the night-time industry.

Without it only those whose parents can afford to help them through university will be able to go. As ever when reality bites the vulnerable and the poorest suffer most.

Of course, governments have a moral duty to prioritise health and to keep clubs closed and restrict numbers in bars until it is safe to stop.

I know also that my friends and colleagues in hospitality want to do the right thing. Most have spent considerable sums making their premises safer. Some know first hand the pain of losing close family members to this virus.

They just need a helping hand with their businesses, they want to keep their loyal staff in jobs. And we need them to succeed. This is an economically significant industry that injects £2 billion a year into the Glasgow economy alone.

History tells us prohibition does not work. The 1994 Criminal Justice Act, which gave police the power to shut down events featuring music that’s “characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats”, failed.

Worse than that, it alienated a generation, which is exactly what must be avoided at a critical time when it’s so important that we pull together as a nation, government and citizens, young and old.

We know we cannot open the clubs just now but we need to listen and help them to do so when possible. And we need to keep the businesses alive in the meantime.

The best way of doing that is to have a government with full control of all the financial levers of our economy and an ability to properly compensate the businesses that make up Scotland’s night-time economy.

The first time that government legislated against club culture was when I was 23 and the Section 63 of the 1994 Criminal Justice Act gave police the power to shut down events featuring music that’s “characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats”, This law was ushered in with barely a word of opposition from the shadow home secretary, a man intent on power and dragging the labour party to the centre right and creating his vision of a New Labour.

I felt part of something for the first time ever. It was life changing, I gained a sense of community and belonging and I wanted to be part of making life better for kids like me. That a is a legacy of the transformative influence of youth culture, music, dance, collective power and solidarity but it also made me deeply distrustful of ‘the establishment’ it created a ‘them and us’ situation.

Prohibition rarely if ever works. Every generation of young people needs to access music and nightlife in safe and professionally managed environments, and I fear that a huge swathe of Scotland’s best operators are on the verge of going out of business entirely, leaving the way open for illegal and unlicensed and unsafe events to exploit the inevitable demand that exists.

This is exactly what must be avoided at this critical time when its so important that we pull together as a nation, government and citizens, young and old students and carers and even me and those like me, “the middle edge” gradually becoming more hip replacement than hip.

I feel really sad and frustrated and impotent at the curfew and continued closure of bars and clubs, This is not a frivolous industry but an economically significant one that creates £2billion pounds a year for the Glasgow economy and employs over 16,000 people.

These businesses must be listened to and properly compensated and supported so that this culturally vital and vibrant sector can weather this storm.