Nov 22 Nick Hanrahan – Working The Doors…

This interview was conducted in October 2005

Steve Rowe talks to Shi Kon martial artist and night club doorman Dennis Jones and this month we invited long time friend and fellow doorman Nick Hanrahan to join in with the conversation.

Nick has been a lifelong friend, training partner and fellow doorman alongside Dennis Jones right from the start.  In the early 1970s he started karate and then switched to Kyokushinkai Karate when Dennis was a 8^th kyu blue belt. They struck up a friendship, forging mind body and spirit together in the fires of those early days of Kyokushin and subsequently ‘watching each others back’ through 25 years ‘on the door’ and all manner of confrontation right up to the present day.

Nick has also had a lifelong love for the Japanese sword, studying Kendo and Iaido for many years under Phil Wright of the Hatamoto Kendo club in Gillingham Kent. Both he and Dennis (who also trained under Phil) have the greatest respect for Phil as a person and his ability in the Martial Arts. Nick is a collector of swords, and brought with him a 500 years old samurai blade to the meeting for us to inspect.

After working on the doors for all those years, Nick now runs his own security company, operating many of the nightclub doors in the Kent area.  He is therefore very involved with the issues regarding the new Security Industry Association qualification and the badge that is now a requirement in most areas.

For anyone interested in the self defence aspects of the Martial Arts, or in door work and the related social issues of protection Nick is the person with the longest and widest experience because of his involvement at all levels. Put him and Dennis together in my office with a tape recorder and the results are fascinating……

SR How did you get into door work Nick?

NH  25 years ago Dennis got me a job on the door at   ‘Scamps’ nightclub in the Pentagon Centre in Chatham.  They were great days with Dennis, Rob Griffin, Fred Sommerville and myself.  I was useless to begin with, but these guys were great teachers.  The situations that we had to deal with in those days were very different it was the Bruce Lee era, most doormen trained in the Martial Arts, boxing or related combative arts.

There were hardly any drugs around and if anyone took them they were ostracised by the rest of society.  Fights were usually one on one and the loser went home or to hospital and the winner went back inside the club.

DJ  There were no gangs running around picking on innocent individuals, beating them up for no reason, like there is today, it was a very different mentality.

SR  The advent of the Security Industry Association registration and badge must have affected you, what are your views on it?

NH  The idea was introduced in Medway around 8 years ago.  The courses were run in ‘Zones’ nightclub here in Gillingham by Dennis and went very well, he taught personal and social conduct (how door supervisors should conduct themselves), talked about the licencing laws, fire safety, restraint techniques and so on. A specialist came in and taught first aid and over the following years we forged a very good relationship with the local council.  We may not have always agreed with the council, but we did have a good ‘family type’ relationship.  If the Licencing Officer was thinking of taking action against a doorman for a misdemeanour I could always ring him up and negotiate.  I could perhaps arrange for the offender to be put under my supervision rather than lose his licence.  It sometimes meant that we didn’t take the livelihood away from a good doorman who may only have been convicted of a ‘domestic argument’ or other situation where there were mitigating circumstances and he could be ‘retrained’ by me.

SR  Is it true that doormen are not now taught first aid?

NH  That’s right.  It’s very worrying.  The majority of a doorman’s job is first aid we’re usually the first people on the scene and have to make all the decisions as to whether to call an ambulance, give life support or just take the them to the first aid room and clean their wounds and check to see whether they have concussion etc..  The SIA don’t require first aid we’re just told to call an ambulance.

DJ  What about the people that are rejected by the SIA?

NH  I know of many good doormen who have only been cautioned in the past by the police and have been rejected.  This week I heard of one guy who was rejected for that very reason and was accepted into the metropolitan police the following day!

The SIA readily admit that rejection from them doesn’t mean that you can’t join the police or hold a firearms certificate etc, but it does seem a bit weird!

DJ  As I’ve said previously, doorman are now so afraid of losing their SIA registration that members of the public are being hurt because the doorman can’t chance ‘stepping in’ on their behalf.

NH  The problem is that every time a doorman ejects someone from a premises he  risks being charged with common assault and then losing his SIA registration.  At the forefront of his mind now is the fact that if he gets involved in anything, his livelihood is out the window. This is something the SIA didn’t think about the ‘unintended consequences’ of their zealousness…public safety is no longer the priority, what’s important is having the correct paperwork.

SR  What’s the procedure to get SIA registration?

NH  You have to take the 4 day course and written examination and then you send of for the badge and certificate, mine took about 6 months to arrive.  All the existing doormen in our area believed that we had ‘grandfather rights’ with the local authority as we all had our training and CRB checks and had been doing the job for many years, we assumed that we would just be given our badges……  not so!

However, there are now many inexperienced 18 yrs olds, who have done the 4 day course and the exam and now have the SIA badge and think that they are professional doormen!  When they meet their first 40 yrs old 18 stone, drunken or drugged thug, I believe they stand a very real risk of being seriously hurt. Who’s going to tell these people how dangerous the job could be? It would’ve been useful if the people that run the SIA had done some door work themselves. I can’t imagine a director of a Japanese company not having first hand knowledge of what it’s like on the shop floor.   

SR  I assume that the training covers powers of arrest, search and questioning, from what you said earlier, it doesn’t cover first aid, what about physical restraint?

NH  The training takes them right up to the point of physical confrontation and then….  nothing!  No training in how to subdue, restrain or eject a violent or abusive customer and when you can legally do it.

SR  So all these newcomers are flooding the market after a 4 day course, and a ‘multiple choice’ exam paper and all the experienced doormen are leaving because they are either unable to qualify, can’t take the time or afford the cost of the new qualification?

NH  I think that within the next few years you will see a horrific change in violence in and around licensed premises in the area.  I don’t think that the SIA have taken into account the way that the public behave under the influence of drink and drugs.

DJ  Politicians keep going on about the effects and control of drink and yet the most considerable change in violence in pubs and nightclubs and on the doors has taken place because of drugs.  It is now socially acceptable for people, from all different backgrounds, to take drugs on a normal evening out…And now I suppose we’ll be expected to deal with people who smoke cigarettes, I don’t how that’s going to work.  

NH  To make that point, I recently did a search on a 38yr old guy at the door, took a bag of skunk from him and refused him entry to the Club.  He demanded it back and I told him that it was going into the ‘drugs box’ that we keep for the drugs to be destroyed.  He said that if I didn’t give it back to him that he would call the Police!  He couldn’t see that it was illegal.  He walked over to a police van and much to their mirth complained that I’d taken his drugs!

DJ We consistently have to deal with violent people who have taken all manner of drugs and if they end up in court they’re prosecuted for being drunk and disorderly. 

NH  In my experience, after taking drugs, a person can be extremely violent and unnaturally strong for a 20 minute period and can only be subdued and held down with great difficulty, the police can take up to 2 hours to arrive, by which time the user is a different person, ‘down’ and crying for their mum!  It often appeared that we had been too forceful and beaten this poor sobbing guy to a pulp. That’s why we have to video confrontations so that the police can see what we’ve had to deal with and cover ourselves.

SR  Watching the ‘street wars’ type television programmes where the police had to subdue people who were obviously on drugs, I was surprised when they subsequently charged them with drink and minor offences that definitely didn’t reflect their actions the night before!

NH  That’s partly because it’s illegal to have drugs on your person, but not to have them in your body!  So they take the drugs and misbehave and the police can’t prosecute them for the drugs.  The other problem is that their perception of what occurs whilst they are ‘under the influence’ is flawed and the allegations they make should not be given too much credibility.

SR Drug tests are available, because athletes have to take them, but they are expensive, I know it costs the Karate Governing Body £300 a test.

DJ  That’s probably why it won’t happen.

NH  A lot of the SIA training deals mainly with heroin and yet in all my years on the door I’ve never seen anyone take it.  Those that do certainly don’t frequent nightclubs… I’ve worked a lot of pubs and come across a few Heroin addicts. They keep to themselves and their own company. They’re a social problem but they’re not to us, our paths don’t seem to cross.  What is strange is the fact that a licensee of a pub can refuse, when he’s behind the bar, to serve an addict that’s ‘off his face’, but he can’t stop him or anyone that is drunk coming in to the pub unless he’s (licensee) got an SIA badge!

In a police station recently I saw a poster that stated “crime is down” I watch people insult the Police, throw things at them and physically abuse them and they don’t get arrested.  The fewer arrests they make, the better the statistics look – perception and reality are VERY different.  If I had behaved in that manner years ago I’d have a long criminal record by now.  We’ve had doormen run over, stabbed and bottled with no charges being made, and yet if it were the other way round…..

DJ  Nick, there’s a lot of negativity about the old fashioned ‘bouncers’ what’s your view of what it was like in the late ‘70’s and early ‘80’s?

NH  There was a lot more order in the nightclubs than there is now.  Doormen had far more respect and were paid a lot more.  We were valued, by both the club and customers, anyone that wasn’t any good didn’t last long.  We worked as part of a team and all played our part.  If there were 12 doormen on duty in a nightclub 9 would be good doormen and the remaining 3 were what we would call ‘shirts’ or people filling in the duties.  Now it’s just 4 or 5 real doormen and the rest are ‘badges’.

SR  Do you think that industrial security companies are ready to take over the doors with contracts like they did shops and large shopping precincts?

NH  I think that’s definitely the way it’s going.  They saw an opening in the market to bring in security guard type operatives and I think bought pressure to bear on the government.  The problem is that it’s a completely different kind of work to anything that they are used to.  Bring alcohol and drugs into the situation and these guys are not equipped to cope!

In 5 years time you will have security guards dressed like ‘American policeman’ on the door who will see and stop absolutely nothing and just make statements to the police when incidents occur.

The traditional ‘bouncer’ would step into and deal with any situation occurring on his turf.  He took a pride in his work and wouldn’t allow anything untoward happen on it.  The one thing that most of us had in common was that we all despised bullies and bullying of any kind.  The modern SIA qualified ‘operative’ will walk away and not ‘see’ anything, that way they will always have a job, never get into any trouble and never get arrested.

DJ  They essentially become professional witnesses and that won’t be much help if your getting your head kicked in and you need someone to pull the thugs off your back so you don’t get badly hurt.

NH  It’s now a requirement for licensed premises to have SIA qualified staff so there’s plenty of work for anyone with a badge.  Many premises are getting their bar staff qualified to fill in the rosters.  Good doormen have gone or are going, the free courses to qualify for an SIA badge in colleges are available only to people on the dole and who are under qualified for anything else….  What does that tell you?

SR  It tells us a lot Nick, thanks very much for your time and bringing in that incredible blade.

DJ  Thanks for coming in Nick, we need the perspective of experienced people like you to help the readers understand the bigger picture.

NH  You’re welcome guys.

Steve Rowe

Steve Rowe is a highly successful Martial Arts instructor - an International Neigong, Qigong and Tai Chi Teacher and an 8th Dan Karate with many other senior dan grades in other martial disciplines.

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