Party Vibe

its quite courageous of the lad to put his name in the paper and apologise on behalf of all the ravers – but it does seem like “too little, too late”.

This whole incident does just show loads of typical British stubbornness on all sides though…

in most other areas of the UK cops would simply have let the rave happen; but it appears in that area they are continually coming under criticism from the wider public in Norwich because of summer raves in the rural areas causing disruption to the agricultural businesses (a significant part of the economy in that area)..

I’ve just had a look at some aerial photos of the area where this happened.

I can see how the stand-off ended up in the residential area because the cops tried to drive the rave vehicles away from the warehouse unit (that IMO was a daft idea which was bound to result in problems….)

but it looks like a dodgy choice of venue – lets face it partying an industrial estate where there are active retail units is going to piss off the owners as it scares their customers, its slightly less intimidating for builders, engineers and factory workers who are more likely to be “blokes who can look after themselves” who should realise the moosers don’t bite – even so blocking parking spaces doesn’t help..

its very worrying though to see these comments about rubbish and shit being left in peoples gardens. Of course ravers can argue the locals are lying, but I have never seen similar reports about such contamination in 15 years of raving; even when raves have been held near to housing estates – and why would people in Norwich be the first to make up such a story?

At most indoor raves rubbish is contained within about 100m of the perimeter of the rave building, and steps are often taken by organisers to ensure that this remains the case – partly out of courtesy towards others on the industrial estate but also so the building can be re-used (which stops newer higher value ones being trashed!)

Worse still, from looking at the aerial photos ravers would have had to go some distance away from the warehouse to dump the rubbish or go to the loo – I can’t work out how the trash could have ended up the other side of a main road.

I hope this wasn’t some sort of “dirty protest” by a minority of individuals against the cops and locals (or people just using the standoff as an opportunity to dump the rubbish from their cars?) 🙁

whatever the ins and outs of this; its not good for the rave scene in that area. Its highly unusual for a Detective Sargeant to be the officer in charge for the crime reports associated with a rave; its usually seen as a very minor “crime” and just a job for a bobby or a uniformed sargeant (and not the highest priority job either!); the presence of CID here would mean this is being treated as a fairly substantial crime (probably due to the levels of losses and criminal damage claimed by locals and business owners, which run into the tens of thousands) – and that the cops will definitely be looking for organisers to prosecute and rigs to confiscate, just to show they haven’t “lost control”.

from bitter experience, people getting “militant” with the cops only works in the short term.

Ravers often forget that every time this happens the senior cops receive a barrage of complaints from locals that they did not do enough.

This happened in the Thames Valley in 2004 on the Ridgeway, an outnumbered TSG formation (riot squad) were forced back due to the sheer number of rigs.

This short term gain meant that parties in the area got bigger and went on longer. they also received a large amount of negative publicity (previously our local media weren’t even interested in raves)

In October the same year, an attempted warehouse rave was heavily busted by the same cops – loads of rig kit was confiscated and a few people treated roughly by cops.

The kit has still not been returned, and the riot cops involved got bravery medals for “dealing with a dangerous situation!” People tried to counterclaim but the cops and CPS are stalling on the court case – the equipment has been unavailable for a whole season.

The cops who did the October bust were the same divisions who were on the Ridgeway. Clearly this was seen as a payback for being made to look like fools in the summer. The next season they put considerable resources into stopping parties on the Ridgeway, and taking action (such as the Surge ASBOs) against those who still managed to party there.

This year cops have kept up pressure on illegal raves despite a major terrorist attack on London, and an increase in violent crime countrywide. In our area they took cops away from a murder investigation to boost a roadblock on the Ridgeway, and blamed the ravers for diverting their resources (incidentally the victims were themselves young people).

Similar situations have happened in other parts of the UK – I note that Norfolk and Suffolk forces are one of the very few forces who supported a merger, I would not be surprised if one reason for this is so they can deal “more robustly” with raves and other large gatherings.

people should know their rights, but that applies to everybody.

Ravers are still a minority, and our “community” has not yet reached the stage where (apart from things like the Synergy Project) it is making a long-term positive contribution to society, unlike ethnic groups or even “hippies” who run crafts shops, organic farms etc. (If there are any other examples of ravers doing positive stuff please feel free to post them!)

Our fun is seen as selfish, often aggressive hedonism by many others and some of those on the scene have self-destructive lifestyles.

We need to sort this out and minimise disruption/hold events in areas where locals do not notice any problems/get our own permitted spaces before we can start bleating about our rights and dictating terms on how we use others resources – or the clampdowns will simply get worse and worse….