Party Vibe

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SchNEWS PEACE DE RESISTANCE ANNUAL 2003

The Spring of 2002 saw the 10th anniversary of the now
legendary Castlemorton Free Festival, the biggest and
most notorious free party ever to take place in the
UK. The anniversary was celebrated on Jubilee weekend
with a massive Teknival on Steart Beach in Somerset.
At least 50 rigs and 10, 000 party people gathered on
the beach for a five day party to commemorate the
creativity and determination of the original sound
systems and to celebrate 10-years of underground rave
culture. At a time when most of the country was being
bored shitless with television specials about the
anniversary of the coronation, the Castlemorton
anniversary was a powerful reminder that real culture
grows from the ground up, and that to stay alive it
has to constantly mutate.

It’s important to remember Castlemorton because that
was where the battle lines were drawn up for many of
the struggles of the last decade. The government
clampdown that followed the festival , which beagn
with the arrest and prosecution of of members of
Spiral Tribe for their involvement in the event and
culminated in the 1994 Criminal Justice Act, made it
clear that the authorities saw the emerging free party
community not as just a nuisance but as a political
threat. In the following article, one of the
defendents in the Castlemorton trial explains the
history, and the connection of the free party movement
to other struggles to reclaim public space for public
use.

Rightly or wrongly, the names Castlemorton Common and
Spiral Tribe have become synonomous with the biggest
illegal free party in Britain to date. But behind the
outrage and the glamour of the front page headlines of
the time, there was another, more important story
unfolding. To understand what actually happened we
must go back and take a look at events leading up to
that weekend in May 1992.

Spiral Tribe were a ragtag collective of musicians,
artists, rappers, DJs and cyber-punk types who bounced
around the country in a convoy of black, jelly-moulded
trucks, putting on free parties. They identified with
the primordial, all connecting symbol of the spiral –
a representation of the asymmetric shape of nature and
the turbulance in it’ fractual flow. With no door
policy (and often no door), the parties set out to
create, and maximise, free social space. Bringing into
being a place of contact for all people – all tribes.
Actively resisting the rightwing regime built upon
violence, private ownership of land and profiteering,
the Spirals aligned their artistic and musical spirit
with a relentless campaign of events that for breif
(yet intense) moments took back the land into the
realms of common shared experience. [1]

In the decade immediately preceding the Spiral’s
whirlwind tour of the British Isles, it was buisness
as usual with UK plc violently oppressing free
gatherings, protests and nomadic life styles:

1981, 5th Sept: Peace Camp at the US base at Greenham
Common starts, and survives several violent eviction
attempts and serious abuse form troops.

1982: The meandering convoy of free festival types is
named “The Peace Convoy” after travelling from the
Stonehenge Free Festival to join the peace camp at
Greeenham Common.

1984: The last Stonehenge free festival before the
English Heritage ban.

1984: Nostle Priory near Leeds. The violence against
the Peace Convoy steps up.

1984-1985: The Miners Strike. Police use unprecedented
violence and make 11,000 arrests.

1985 Feb: Rainbow Fields Village protest camp,
Molesworth US base. Violent eviction involving over
2,000 troops and police.

1985, 1st June: Battle of the Beanfield. 140 vehicles
smashed and the men, women (including pregnant women)
and children are viciously attacked by 1,000 police
officers following “Operation daybreak”.

1986: New Public Order Act gives the police more
control over public gatherings and greater powers to
evict trespassers from land.

1986, June: Stoney Cross, authorities launch massive
attack against travellers, impound all vehicles and
attempt (unsuccessfully) to snatch 47 children from
their parents [2].

1989: Chief Superintendent Ken Tappenden, of miners
strike fame, starts national database on illegal
parties and organisers.

1990, March 31st: The Poll Tax Riot.

1990: The introduction of the Bright Bill, which
increased fines for throwing an unlicensed party from
£2,000 to £20,000 and 6 months in prison.
The Spirals staged their first party in October 1990.
By June 1991 they had a mobile rig and had pulled off
events at some of the most sensitive areas in the
country – namely the displaced Stonehenge Solstice
Free festival at Longstock and another at Stoney
Cross. A flyer from the Tribe at the time read, “We
are here to re-connect the Earth.”

>From then on the Spirals held an event every weekend
(weekends that often overlapped into weeks) and by
Febuary of 1992 they’d taken a string of cheeky, high
profile venues. This helped to boost the morale of the
festival scene, despite the jack-booted oppression it
had suffered.
To the Spirals, building a creative culture
independent and out of the reach of the parasitic
commercial cartels was of the utmost importance. ” The
real energy in the rave scene comes from the illegal
parties, the pirate radio stations and from white
label 12 inch singles that by-pass the music industry
altogether.” [3]. But the police and their paymasters
were already well aware of this, “….cracking down on
illegal raves while allowing night-clubs to stay open
longer – was intended to undermine the basis of the
scene” [4].

Undaunted, the Spirals beat the shamanic drums,
liquefying the air with gurgling techno and skipping
breakbeats. New life germinated in decaying urban
voids. Inner city kids were teleported into the deep
and mystic green of the British countryside. “The
Spirals understood [the countryside] as a politically
charged environment. A historic arena for a clash
between rebels and oppressors…that free parties were
shamanic rites which could reconnect urban youth to
the Earth with which it had lost contact, thus
averting imminent ecological crisis.” [5]

But the contempt they displayed for authority and
consumer culture was making a mockery of the
bureaucrat’s clampdown on unlicensed events. And, as
is always the way when corrupt politicians run out of
plausable argument, they resorted to violence. The
Territorial Support Group were sent in – an anonymous
paramilitary squad, their faces maskedand ID numbers
removed.

The TSG surrounded the Spirals’ crowded warehouse in
Acton Lane, London, on Easter Monday. They beat
everyone who tried to enter or leave. Panicked
partygoers barricaded themselves into the building ,
but after a bloody two and a half hour siege the
police breached the concrete walls and beat everyone
inside to the ground, including a pregnant woman. One
boy who had tried to escape onto the roof was thrown
off by officers, breaking both his arms and legs.
Outside victims were frog marched past three gloating
fat-hats. Two were British; the third wore a US police
chiefs uniform. he was heard to say “In the states we
would have cleared the building in twenty minutes”
[6]. To this day there has been no explanantion as to
who this man was and why he was there.
The next day the Spiral’s convoy was escorted out of
London by a low flying police helicopter. There were
no charges brought against them – it had been a terror
attack, pure and simple.

Shaken and bruised with most of their equipment
smashed, the attack had left the Spiral’s with a
strengthened resolve. The following weekends they
staged huge gatherings on Chobham Common, Surrey
(another Digger stronghold), Stroud Common and then
the Cotswolds where, for Beltane, they teamed up with
Bedlam to stage a 10,000-strong outdoor event at
Lechlade. Then on again to party in Wales. But as the
Spirals played in a honeycombe of ancient mines,
another trap was being devised for them in the bowels
of Whitehall.

After regaining some of their former strength, they
decided to go and take it easy at someone else’s party
for a change. So the next morning they set off to the
Avon Free Festival. On route there was a phone call.
Avon had been quashed and JCB’s had dug ditches around
the site. Hundreds of vehicles were being moved off by
police, but allwas not lost: the caller was a Bedlam
scout just ahead of the evicted convoy (according to
one of the Avon Free’s organisers, it was, “more like
a 35 mile traffic jam” [7])., and the Bedlam crew had
managed to get on to the Common at Castlemorton.

The Spirals cut across countryand by the afternoon
they were approaching the common. Smiling policemen
waved them onto a track that ran under the strangely
abrubt slopes of the Malvern Hills, to the deep blue
lake in a flooded quarry. On either side were
beautiful expanses of flat springy turf – too perfect.

The Spirals swung their vehicles into a wide circle
and joined the other systems and circuses that were
already rigging up. Great heaps of speakers were
dumped out of the trucks. The infamous instrument of
G-force exhilaration, the Gyrocycle, was set up centre
stage. Black flags and banners with silver designs of
crop-circle circuitry were hoisted high.
Terror-strobes strategically positioned. And still the
convoy of travellers rumbled onto site.

Soon the music was on (from all directions) and the
crew could relax in a summer haze of bassline
vibrations. But for some there was an uncomfortable
feeling about the place. It’s difficult to say whether
it was just a delayed reaction to the hammering they’d
taken at Acton Lane, or a sense of impending doom
triggered by the eerie sight of smiling policemen. But
there was no turning back, the convoy was still
pouring onto site – in fact it continued throughout
the weekend, swelling the numbers to 50,000 plus.

The festival was cool – untold systems all putting on
a great show, ravers, travellers, tourists, TV crews,
a shed load of liberated battery hens, skinny dippers,
daredevil divers, and even a few police (but they were
too busy enjoying the sunshine and playing rounders to
bother anyone). Military jets buzzd the site (why do
they do that?) and a police helicopter filmed, in
minute detail, every scrap of rubbish being picked up
by the people below – evidence that was later used in
the court case to prove how clean the site was kept.
At the time a spiral type commented to the press:
“since we’ve been heresthere’s been more taken out of
the ozone layer by jets and helicopters than any
damage we’ve done” [8].

By the end of the weekend everyone was exhausted, the
rig was blown, the back drops in tatters, the
vehicles’ batteries flat. Time to go chill. No such
luck. As the Spirals drove off site they were ambushed
by police and arrested for conspiracy [9].

Everyone was locked up, along with some innocent
bystanders who got caught in the swoop. Vehicles,
equipment, money, personal effects – all were
confiscated as evidence. After being formally charged
and sent before a magistrate they were released
awaiting trial. They walked out of the police station
with nothing – so they camped on the station steps for
almost two weeks.

In that time a man drove up to them in a large white
Rover and handed them a piece of paper. On it was a
pencil sketch of riot police kicking a pregnent woman
who was lying on the ground, underneath was written
“oh my god what have we done?”[10].

Later, on the steps of the court of the committal
proceedings, Superintendent Clift (the chap who’s
jurisdiction the Common was under) came up to the
accussed and said, “I just want you to know that I
don’t agree with what is happening to you here, this
is a political stitch up”[11]. Evidence he later gave
(from his hospital bed) was of great help to the
defence. But the case would take two years to get to
crown court.

In that time the Spirals wangled a small record deal
to buy a recording studio, which they installed as a
community resource in a converted showman’s trailer.
They got a rig and vehicles together and disappeared
into Europe to start the Teknival movement and
numerous independent record labels. When the case
finally got to Crown Court it became one of the
longest running and most expensive cases in legal
history, lasting four months and costing the country
£4 million. Before the end of the trial, the judge
told the defendents that if they were found guilty, he
would be giving them each two years in jail. But the
jury (bless ’em) found everyone not “guilty!”

Despite the vindication of the Spirals, the huge
police investigation and court case finding nothing
criminal about the Castlemorton gathering, UKplc, hell
bent on protecting it’s interests, went on to install
the monstrous Criminal Justice Bill. An act that has
not delivered the intending deathblow to the
dissenting masses, but has instead catalysed a
generation into action and inspired a blossoming of
creative resistance.

Footnotes;
[1] At that time 87% of land in the UK was in private
ownership. Marion Shroard, This land is our land, ’87,
Paladin, p.120
[2] From conversations between the aauthor and Spider
from Circus Normal.
[3] A Spiral in Melody Maker, 06/06/02
[4] Matthew Collin on Cheif Superintendent Ken
Tappenden’s role in setting up the police database on
illegal parties, in Altered State, ’98, serpents Tail,
p120
[5] Ibid.p.203-4 [6] Witnessed by the author.
[7] John quoted in George Mckay’s Senseless Acts of
beauty, ’96, Verso, p.120.
[8] The Guardian 28/05/92
[9] Later modified by the CPS to causing a publice
nuisance, “We prefer to call it causing a public new
sense.” said a Spiral quoted in Lowe and Shaw’s
Travellers. ’93, Fourth Estate, p.169
[10] Witnessed by author.
[11] Witnessed by author.

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