Rave New World?

Uninvited guests in the shape of the riot squad crashed a free party in Chesterford, Essex over the bank holiday weekend. All was going well for the 1,000 or so twinkle-eyed party-goers until the Saturday, when hundreds of cops from five different forces surrounded a sound system and waded into the crowd with truncheons swinging. Some indignant punters defended themselves with sticks and, showing their commitment to preventing climate change, burnt out a cop car. Police claim the revellers acted “disgracefully”, going so far as to “attack police dogs”. Any one who’s been faced with a police dog will doubt the likelihood of anyone being daft enough to attack one, no matter how many drugs they’ve taken (not that the pills are any good any more!)

Contrary to reports in the tabloid rags it was heavy handed police that kicked off all the violence and eyewitnesses report seeing police beating and injuring dangerous threats such as young girls and people chilling on the floor. Out came the CS gas and many revellers’ Saturday night out ended with bruises after a battering, and a few severe bites from police dogs which had been let off their leads into the chaos.
A number of police and ravers were hospitalised and 34 arrests were made, but this was just the most brutal in a series of busts over the weekend. In Gloucester, cops used batons and CS gas to attack and shut down another small party in a business park. Farmland in Cornwall was sealed off as cops heard wild rumours that a vicious and deadly party was to be held there.

All this repression harks back to the (not so rose-tinted) cat-and-mouse days of the early 90s, when tens of thousands of ravers engaged in a weekly battle of wits with the authorities. The Criminal Justice Act was meant to be the final nail in the coffin of the rave culture but as last weekend’s events prove, outdoor partying ain’t going nowhere - despite the pub and clubs getting ever later licences. Free parties with loud music and ever-willing dancers are going on up and down the country every weekend. The mainstream media imagines, because the Old Bill have stepped up the baton practice and got more busts in lately (overtime drive anyone?), that this indicates some kind of ‘resurgence of rave’ – ‘rave’ meaning that tabloid catch-all middle England-threatening brainwashing-cult-stealing-our-kids invention all of its own.

In fact, shortly after the smiley-faced* Acid House craze, (way back in the last century) ‘rave’ mutated and eventually splintered in to many sub-genres, all with their own dress codes, drug choices and attitudes. The truly large scale parties of the early 90s might not have been repeated. However, large numbers of people who like a bit of uncomplicated partying to their preferred choice of repetitive beats have helped build up a regular rota of successful events all over the country, all year round. What has changed is the numbers of people these ‘raves’ now attract – smaller groups of mates with their own sound systems, sometimes teaming up with others here and there to provide their own entertainment outside of the corporate sector. As usual, it’s just taken a while for the media big boys to catch on.

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