The Doorman – The Man Who Guarded the Rules of the British Social Club
Mention the word doorman in connection with a British social club and many people will immediately picture two large men standing on the door, arms folded, looking for trouble. The modern image owes something to the sort of club depicted in Phoenix Nights, where the doormen are very much part of the security operation. But the traditional British working men's or social club doorman was usually something quite different. He wasn't necessarily there to keep troublemakers out. His real job was to make sure the club remained what it was supposed to be, a members' club.
The principle was simple enough. You didn't just walk into the club because you fancied a pint. You belonged. Membership meant paying your 'subs', your subscription, and keeping those payments up to date. In return, you had the right to use the club and its facilities. It was a principle that could be rather heavily enforced, although perhaps 'enforced' isn't quite the right word. Sometimes it was more a case of making a point.
At the height of their popularity, when clubs were full most nights and absolutely packed on a Saturday, they could afford to be rather selective about who they let through the door. Yet, strangely enough, you rarely saw people actually being turned away. Everybody knew the rules, and everybody knew that the rules were there, but there was often an element of simply being awkward for the sake of being awkward. The doorman might know perfectly well who you were, who you were with and that there was nothing wrong with you, but that didn't mean you were going to get through without going through the proper procedure.
The traditional doorman was often not the large, intimidating character that the word suggests today. More often he was an older club member sitting in a small booth or behind a desk close to the entrance. He knew the members, or at least he knew most of them. He knew who had paid their subscriptions, who hadn't, who was a regular visitor and who had turned up with somebody who had never been inside the club before.
For regulars perhaps you simply nodded and showed your membership card. But if you weren't a member, there was the inevitable question: "Who's signing you in?"
Because visitors normally had to be signed in by a member. The member was effectively taking responsibility for the person they had brought with them. The visitor would be entered into the visitors' book and, at least in theory, the member who had signed them in was responsible for their behaviour while they were in the club.
That was taken reasonably seriously. Woe betide the member who brought somebody into the club and then had trouble with them. The visitor might go home at the end of the evening, but the member would still be there the following week, and the committee could always have a quiet word.
Membership itself had its own rituals. Paying your 'subs' was one of the most important. There were no emails, apps or automated reminders in those days. If you hadn't paid, you could eventually find your name appearing on a list of non-payers displayed on the club noticeboard. A person's failure to pay their subscription wasn't hidden away in an accounts system; it could be sitting there for everyone to see.
For clubs affiliated to the Club and Institute Union, there could also be a wider sense of belonging. Your own club membership gave you access to your local club, while CIU affiliation connected clubs together across a much wider network. Depending on the rules and circumstances, membership could allow people to visit other affiliated clubs, giving the whole movement a sense of being part of something considerably larger than the building on their own street.
So the doorman wasn't merely checking people in. He was maintaining that whole idea of membership.
And he had another job that has largely disappeared from modern clubs, the cloakroom.
In the days when people dressed properly to go to the club, particularly on Saturday nights, coats soon became a problem. The doorman could take your coat and give you a numbered or coloured raffle / cloakroom ticket. One part of the ticket was attached to the coat, while the other was handed to you. The coats would then be hung behind the booth, waiting until the end of the evening.
That little ticket suddenly became rather important at closing time. You handed it back and the doorman disappeared behind the coats to find yours. If you'd lost it, you might find yourself having to convince him that the coat really was yours.
The entrance could become a fascinating place on a busy Saturday night. By today's standards, some of those packed Saturday nights would probably raise questions about capacity and crowd management, but at the time that was simply what a successful social club looked like.
The bar became three or four people deep and the concert room filled with members waiting for the evening's entertainment. Yet the doorman wasn't necessarily standing there searching everyone for weapons or looking for people who appeared troublesome. Most of the people coming through the door were regulars. They were members. They knew the staff, they knew the committee and they knew the rules.
The doorman was there to keep the system working.
And there was another great peculiarity of the traditional club: the rules became rather more flexible when the club was quiet.
On a Saturday night, or during a major function, the formalities were much more visible. Visitors were signed in, subscriptions were checked and the entrance was busy. But on a quiet Tuesday or Wednesday evening, the doorman might not be there at all.
You could walk through the entrance and find nobody sitting in the booth. The club was quiet, the regulars were scattered around the bar or games room, and the whole place had a much more informal atmosphere.
That didn't mean an unfamiliar face would necessarily go unnoticed.
If somebody walked through the door whom nobody recognised, heads might turn. You would see people looking across the room, quietly wondering who the stranger was and how they had got in. In a small club where most of the members knew each other, an unfamiliar face could be surprisingly conspicuous.
And if there happened to be a committee man on the premises, the newcomer might occasionally be challenged.
It wasn't necessarily confrontational. More often it was simply the club looking after its own rules.
As the traditional social club declined, so did this particular character. Smaller memberships, fewer busy Saturday nights, changing licensing arrangements and the financial pressures facing clubs meant that many could no longer afford to maintain the old arrangements. The little entrance booth disappeared from some clubs and replaced with a visitor book, the cloakroom became a thing of the past and the visitors' book lost some of its importance.
The old doorman represented the slightly bureaucratic, slightly paternalistic and occasionally wonderfully awkward side of British club culture. He was part of an institution where membership meant something, where your name was known, where bringing a guest meant accepting responsibility for them and where the rules were often taken very seriously.
You didn't simply walk into the club. You belonged.