The Four Aces Club

The Four Aces Club was a pioneering music and recreational space in Dalston, London, that in the 1960s and '70s was one of the first venues to play black music in Britain, being credited with a significant "role in the evolution of reggae into dance music, from ska, to rocksteady, to dub, to lovers, to dancehall and the evolution of jungle." A host of notable Afro-Caribbean musicians appeared at the Four Aces – often referred to as "the jewel in Dalston's crown" – as well as soul and R&B artists, its clientele over the years including stars such as Bob Marley, Stevie Wonder and Jimmy Cliff. With the Thatcher era came more divisionist politics; racial tensions built in the area and the club was a target for police raids. In the early 1990s, its character changed as it became home to the early indoor "rave scene", featuring drum & bass and acid house, and appealing to a new, predominantly white audience, under the name Labrynth, where The Prodigy made their first live public appearance.

It was closed in 1997, and eventually Hackney Council exercised the right to a compulsory re-possession of the premises. Despite an active campaign to save the building it was demolished in 2007 to make way for three residential tower blocks, in the new Dalston Square development, with the new Dalston Junction overground railway station aligning with urban regeneration plans for East London in the build-up to the 2012 Olympics. Subsequent campaigns took place putting pressure on the council "to prevent the eradication of monuments which hold the memory of Black history and the story of multi-racial political solidarity in the borough", in particular the successful petition to retain the name of C. L. R. James on the relocated Dalston library known since 1985 as "The CLR James Library", which resulted in the new library on the redeveloped site being opened as the "Dalston C.L.R. James Library" in 2012.

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