In Britain today, if you are in the business of fighting crime, then you have to be in the business of dealing with alcohol. 'Binge drinking' culture is intrinsic to urban leisure and has come to pose a key threat to public order. Unsurprisingly, a struggle is occurring. Pub and club companies, local authorities, central government, the police, the judiciary, local residents, and revelers, all hold variously competing notions of night-time social order and the uses and meanings of public and private space. Bar Wars explores the issue of contestation within and between these groups. Located...

The night-time economy poses one of the biggest crime problems in Britain today. This book highlights precisely how and why this threat developed at the time it did. It charts the rise of a 'night-time high street' and highlights the struggle that is occurring over the way in which such nightlife areas develop. This unique and hard-hitting analysis of social control in bars and clubs, courtroom battles between local communities and the pub trade, and street-level policing gets to the heart of the political debates on binge-drinking and anti-social behavior.