“You can regenerate the city but you can’t get rid of the scum”

St Mary Street in Cardiff was closed off to vehicles after too many road accidents involving revellers

GRAINY, late night CCTV footage of groups of boys beating 10 bells out of one another in grimy, junk food-strewn city centres is something that we’ve seen increasingly in recent years. But it appears that many people have grown less rather than more tolerant of drunken behaviour.

The latest video to prompt a debate appeared on the South Wales Evening Post‘s website. It was published by the paper after it was used in the conviction of six men – one of them a soldier praised for his service in Afghanistan – following a brawl outside a chain pub in Swansea’s Wind Street – the so-called ‘cafe quarter’ of the city. The Post reported 9,000 plays of the video and scores of comments.

One, Welsh Exile, said: “Disgraceful. What an advert for Swansea. It just proves how you can regenerate the city but can’t get rid of the scum that go out to Wind Street on the weekend purely to look for a fight.” Another, Tim from Hampshire said: “Moved away from Swansea three years ago. In the past three years I have visited Swansea about 25 times and it is progressively going down hill. Unfortunately, it’s not until you move away that you realise how bad it’s got. There’s no way I would want my children growing up among that lot.” Another former Swansea boy, Al, remarked: “I’ve witnessed three very minor scraps in the four years I’ve lived in Brighton. I usually see at least the same amount whenever I visit Swansea. I’m proud to be Welsh but ashamed that I was born and raised in Swansea.”

Aled, from Neath, added: “Over the past few months scenes like this happen on a daily basis. Also blame the pubs’ £1 a pint during the Champions League final – buy one, get one free. That’s where your problem starts from.” He concluded ominously: “Expect a lot more of this especially over the summer period.”

Interestingly, it was the police and not the council, as the licensing body, that received the lion’s share of the blame for the fight after its participants. Readers said they had not reacted fast enough, even though they arrived within five minutes. That criticism, and Aled’s remarks, lie at the heart of what is wrong with Welsh drinking culture.

It is plain that forces are becoming overwhelmed by the scale of the problem. Speaking at the launch of the Enough is Enough initiative last year, South Wales Chief Constable Barbara Wilding called Wales “a very violent place” that stood out on one issue: “Alcohol and the impact it is having”. She added: “Something quite clearly needs to be done to change the culture that exists in Wales where drinking to excess is widely accepted.”

The Wales Centre for Health estimates that alcohol is a factor in 50% of all violent crimes, one in six A&E attendances for treatment (rising to eight out of 10 at peak times, and 45% of arrests for criminal damage and assault. It also claims that one in five violent crimes takes place in or around pubs and clubs, while nearly one in three city centre arrests involves alcohol. Most worrying, one in three reported rapes happen when the victim has been drinking.

The facts keep on coming. Research by Cardiff commercial property agents Stephenson and Alexander some five years ago, which found that visitors to the capital annually spend £241m on alcohol – far higher than comparable cities such as Bristol, Birmingham and Edinburgh – prompted Iestyn Davies, then of the Welsh Council on Alcohol and Other Drugs, to comment: “Cardiff is becoming the capital city of booze. This might cater very well to a younger market and to the sporting punter in particular but doesn’t present the image of a diverse and culturally-rich city that can cater for the wide-ranging leisure market. Cardiff is in danger of becoming known for binge drinking and violence associated with it”

The facts keep coming and yet everything stays the same. Mr Davies added at the time: “The City authority with the support of the Welsh Assembly Government needs to examine the future of Cardiff’s licensing system in order to assure all its citizens that they live in a capital city that we all can be proud of.”

Some six years on, and there is little difference. As recently as last month, Newport night club Mojo was criticised for offering an all-you-can-drink for £8 night on Fridays. Professor Jonathan Shepherd, consultant surgeon at the University Hospital of Wales, told Wales on Sunday: “The answer to binge drinking is not for clubs to sell alcohol irresponsibly like this, but to up the quality of the products they provide. But the answer for the licensed trade is not to carry on reducing prices. It’s a vicious circle that does no-one any good.”

And when Wales was placed higher than the US in an international poll measuring violent incidents, crime expert Professor Martin Innes, director of the Police Science Institute at Cardiff University, said: “Much of the violence that puts Wales high in the overall league table is not especially serious and relates to issues associated with the drinking culture of the night-time economy. So a significant proportion of what is being captured here is young men assaulting young men in the town centres of Wales on Friday and Saturday nights.”

In May, the Government announced plans to crack down on all-you-can-drink promotions, but that has yet to translate into action, as Mojo demonstrates. And despite a wealth of crime, health and photographic evidence – most recently from photographer Polish photographer Maciej Dakowicz, who spent three years documenting Cardiff nightlife – the council has yet to close down a single establishment.

In addition to the extra work this has placed on overstretched emergency services, as well an increase in assaults on NHS staff, highlighted last week in a report from the Assembly’s audit committee, a reluctance to rid city centres of binge drinkers and late night fights gives lie to claims that Cardiff – and, to a lesser extent, Swansea and Newport – are cosmopolitan, modern European cities. And, by making those centre no-go areas for all but the wildest (anecdotally, even 20-somethings are preferring locals in outlying suburbs these days), both the council and the the companies that run the establishments are turning their backs on an older, wealthier and better behaved clientele in favour of misbehaving teenagers with little to spend, and who manage their drinking less wisely.