Behind the bar of Stubshaw Cross Social Club, Tasha Duffy is serving lunchtime alcohol-free pints, crisps and lemonade to a string of thirsty Labour activists coming in from a sunny morning’s canvassing.
“It’s not our usual crowd,” the 35-year-old bar manager says, smiling, “but having Andy Burnham’s headquarters at the club has been great for us.” Until a few weeks ago, the club had expected the World Cup to be this year’s biggest money-spinner, with all the games lined up on its cinema-style 200-inch TV. Now, after the club became the official HQ of Team Burnham, an unexpected by-election has the till ringing from morning until night.
Tasha reveals the Club’s licensee Adam Arstall got married here on Friday to his fiancee, with an unexpected guest at the wedding. The King of the North turned out not to be a social club cabaret act, but the Mayor of Greater Manchester. “I think he loved it to be fair,” she said.
Since opening its doors to a flood of out-of-town canvassers and local campaigners, the club has found itself in the national spotlight. And visitors find themselves just nostalgic for its prices – £3.95 to members for Andy’s preferred tipple, a Guinness – but a remembered sense of community, and a thousand childhood memories of carpeted lounge bars and draughty toilets.
Over the past year, the Mirror has been visiting clubs like Stubshaw Cross all over the country, as communities battle to save them, and policy-makers come to the realisation they hold many of the solutions to the ills of modern life. Today, a National Lottery funding boost aimed at revitalising social clubs in deprived areas across England is to be announced – in a concerted effort to reclaim one of the UK’s strongest social legacies.
A £2.7million investment from the National Lottery Community Fund’s Solidarity Fund to Stir to Action’s 21st Century Social Clubs programme will support social clubs in areas of deprivation including coastal, rural, metropolitan and coalfield areas like Ashton-in-Makerfield.
“It’s great to see a Labour MP use Stubshaw Cross Social Club as its campaign base for the current by-election in Makerfield,” says Jonny Gordon-Farleigh, founder of Stir to Action and programme director of 21st Century Social Clubs. “I hope it inspires the labour movement to rediscover these vital member-owned spaces in our communities. Over five years, we will support social clubs to increase and diversify their membership, strengthen their trading model, and adapt their role to meet the changing needs of local communities.”
On a freezing February weeknight, we visited one of the fastest-growing social clubs in the country, Clacton Railway Club. Escaping pouring rain and deserted out-of-season streets, the club inside was warm from the glow of a packed darts tournament. A signed Phil ‘The Power’ Taylor shirt hung in a frame on the prefab wall.
In 2023, the Railway won Best Club in England, and was still holding the Darts Club Award 2025 when we visited. At the club – which has just celebrated its 75th birthday – the Guinness is just £3.60 a pint for members. Club Secretary Alan Kirkham tells us the Railway is a “second home” for many of its members.
Vice-Chair and volunteer Wendy Haywood, 65, also runs the tiny club kitchen, serving everything from Sunday roasts to themed meals on tribute nights. She lists an exhausting array of activities, from chair aerobics to a keep-fit club, wakes to weddings, cheese and dominoes to ‘bingo-bongo’.
The darts alone regularly attracts 100 people of all generations to matches, with teams’ names chalked up on the board. In one match Designated Drivers were losing to the Reformers. “Nothing to do with politics,” someone said hastily. In fact, Alan says the club says has made a deliberate effort to throw its doors open wide to people of all backgrounds – transforming a traditional members’ club for workers on the East Coast Railway into a thriving community hub. “We put all sorts of music on here,” Alan said. “A lot of young bands get their very first chance to play live here.”
Some 80 miles from the Essex Coast in London’s Stoke Newington, the Mildmay Club is holding a benefit night for 21st Century Social Clubs. Comedian Rachel Porter makes way for headliner Stewart Lee, who has regularly used the club to record his Comedy Vehicle series.
Founded in 1888, the former ‘Mildmay Radical Club’ is one of the last untouched clubs left in the capital, with a baroque facade dating back to 1890. Inside, its varnished veneer and flock wallpaper – like stepping back decades – have made it a favourite for film, television and music videos.
Taylor Swift added it to the Taylorverse when she filmed her video for Opalite here. John Newman’s Love Me Again video has been seen over 300 million times on YouTube. Artists from Oasis to Florence and the Machine have all made use of its historic vibes, while films like Made in Dagenham, and TV shows like Call The Midwife regularly come calling.
The club’s hidden gem is the vast original Victorian snooker hall downstairs, equipped with nine tables and a 3ft brass clock. Like all clubs, the Mildmay has its ghosts. The walls are lined with the padlocked cue cases of men who will never return to collect them. “These cues tell their own story,” says Tom Campbell, the club’s membership secretary. “Some of them belonged to members who fought in World War I. Men who never returned.”
He shows us a picture of a group of Mildmay members the day before they left for the Western Front, near a roll of honour listing men lost between 1914-19. The club also holds moving letters from those sending supplies of chocolate and cigarettes to the front. Guinness at the Mildmay has a London premium at £5.10, a pinch in a city where £10 pints have recently been recorded.
As we head back upstairs to the main room, Campbell reels off a musical heritage “from Vera Lynn to Taylor Swift”. A decade ago the Mildmay had just 300 members left, but that has risen to 3,400 in recent months. “It’s wonderful to know there are 2,000 clubs around the country that are like us,” Campbell says.
Nick Plumb, Director of Policy and Insight at Power to Change, which is partnering on the project puts it another way. “Social clubs are, in many ways, decades-old community businesses,” he says. “We’re excited to get cracking, putting these institutions centre stage again, in their communities and across the country.”
Stubshaw Cross Club makes up for what it lacks in Victorian splendour in 1970s charm, a sunny beer garden, and mini-golf. And next Friday will see it either drowning Andy Burnham’’s sorrows, or hosting an ecstatic celebratory party to rival any England game. Tasha’s boss Adam and his new wife will miss it all, as they’ll still be on honeymoon in the Dominican Republic. “I think he’s a bit gutted to be honest,” Tasha says, “missing out on all the excitement. But next Friday’s my birthday. I hope I’ll be celebrating that and Andy winning too.”
In Makerfield, Burnham’s signature is on the wall, alongside those of hundreds who have come to canvas for him. Leaving Clacton Railway Club, when I come to sign the visitors’ book with Jonny, I notice a familiar name above the space where I am about to sign – ‘Nigel Farage’ – “Great pint,” the Reform leader had written. On this, at least, we are agreed.
