When the night is yet young

But within the unusual environment of a nightclub for grown-ups, and at the height of the day, a blood-pounding beat rattles walls and froths up the blood, as 900 youngsters aged between 13 and 18, dance faster than the eye can see. And in the thin spaces within the rhythm, where the skinny pistons thrash and stamp and the beads of sweat vibrate down their faces, if you look closely enough you can almost see growth itself accelerating right there in front of you.

Yet what kind of growth could it be that takes place in an environment commonly associated with drugs, violence, alcohol, and brief physical liaisons? It is the question no doubt asked every week by the parents of around 2000 teenagers who all leave their homes early on a Saturday afternoon and don't return until late in the evening. And, in the near future, such concerns will undoubtedly be raised in the minds of an increasing number of parents as clubbing events for under-18s grow in popularity.

''We often get phonecalls from concerned parents,'' says John Bowman, manager of Glasgow's Archaos nightclub in Queen Street. ''Some ask about security on the door and supervision inside of the club, others call because their children haven't come home yet, and they said they were coming to our nightclub. And also we get calls from parents wanting to know why their child was turned away at the door.''

For the clubs themselves, the events amount to big business. The Tunnel and The Sub Club have long-established Saturday fixtures for teeny-clubbers, Archaos began its ''club class'' in September of last year to great success, and the recently re-opened Tin Pan Alley will soon begin staging its own regular event for the West of Scotland's young and restless.

But, if the situation out on the city centre streets is anything to go by then parents are right to ask questions. Not only of what their children are getting up to, but of what dangers they are being exposed to. Strathclyde police have reported a need to crackdown hard on the behaviour of teenage clubbers who descend upon the city centre streets. On one such initiative, two teenagers were prevented from gaining entry to a club when found concealing an axe and a machete. And this is compounded by reports of conflicts between rival gangs, and youngsters being robbed and attacked as they travel home. Another crackdown at the beginning of March resulted in 22 teenagers being arrested for an array of infringements including the carrying of offensive weapons, possession of drugs, and drunkenness.

It seems many nightclub novices are young, free, and sinful, and for such offenders, to grow up quickly means to grow up awry. But what of the goings-on behind the closed club-doors? Merely schools for scandal? Simply training grounds for tyranny?

Deep inside the vast hulk of Archaos nightclub, a hard-hat beat strikes with never-ending insistence like carpet bombs detonating, second upon second, across the dance-space, while small, quick-moving feet skip and leap constantly as if to avoid shrapnel. Under the dim light and the tracking coloured beams, the dry-ice billows headlong through the concentration of thin, little bodies like napalm crawling over a mass of soldiers.

And yet soldiers, no matter how tough, are rarely seen to laugh and giggle as they perform their final throes as this mass of youngsters does. For all the belligerence of the punishing sound that batters around in the club's main arena, the faces glowing with perspiration and the bodies speeded-up and delirious, tell a different tale, and paint a different picture than does the preconception. The atmosphere is alluring, and every one of the diminutive souls seems united under a brash banner of overwhelming sound and movement.

''The place is brilliant!'' exclaims 15-year-old Joanne from Glasgow's Trinity High School. Classmate Brian adds: ''If we weren't here we'd just be walking about the streets. And the good thing is that if you act like an adult here, then the stewards treat you like an adult.'' Paul, also 15, says of his favourite venue: ''We all feel safe when we are here. Sometimes you get fights breaking out but the stewards step in quickly to break them up.''

Some would say that, like their elder counterparts, such enthusiasts are probably high on ''something''. Whatever the reality, anti-something agencies seem uninterested. ''It surprises me nobody from the Scotland Against Drugs campaign has expressed any interest in what we're doing here,'' says Peter Brown of The Tunnel nightclub. A query echoed by other club managers in the city centre. With concern being raised about drugs being dispensed in playgrounds and smuggled into nightclubs, it seems self-evident clubbing events for under-18s should at least be raising even the least demonstrative of political eyebrows.

But club management are left to police, judge, and supervise their events, devoid of external scrutiny. With respect to Archaos, such responsibilities are executed with a great deal of care and attention. Door control is even more fastidious than for adults; all entrants receive bag and body searches and are scanned with hand-held metal detectors, and boys wearing rings are told to remove them lest they be used as knuckle-dusters. Inside, only the stewards best able to handle wound-up youngsters are placed on surveillance duty, cigarette machines are switched off, soft drinks are sold in plastic cups, and the toilet areas contain posters that tell anyone being hassled or bullied to contact the nearest steward.

Likewise, The Tunnel has successfully operated an under-18s event for the last four years, even while other nightclubs shied away from the duty through fears of teeny terrors making mayhem. To counter such a threat, The Sub Club has put its energies into building up an enviable membership scheme. ''At the moment around 80% of our clubbers are members of the scheme,'' says club manager Mike Grieve. ''We feel the scheme adds to the youngsters' over-all safety and their feeling of security within the club.''

On the surface all seems well in miniature-clubland. Except for the small matters of increasing numbers of rude, rebellious hard-boys slicing through the city centre streets in search of heads to hammer, and the possibility, ever present, that one day such clubbing events - even outwith the current vigilance of club managers - will become linked with drug abuse, and nightclubs will have levelled at them a new charge of corrupting youth, as well as compounding the adverse habits of adults. Put in such a light, the staging of such events seems more of a time-bomb than a trip.

There is, though, much to applaud. This young fraternity of clubbers seize their opportunity to dance in notorious night-spots with a freshness and urgency lacking in similar adult events, where alcohol and ''something'' stimulation are the prerequisites to letting-go. Such sobriety and simplicity of pleasure is rare indeed.

Shame, then, it's over so soon, as growing-up fast whisks away decades of ground from beneath their feet. But then again, maybe it's not the early entering of such adult environments that applies the years so thickly, but the trouble-bound travelling to and from the venues that quickly erases the bloom of youth.