Party Vibe

unfortunately this doesn’t surprise me.

I’ve been looking at a bunch of maps (for fairly innocent reasons as I was looking for places to go cycling and easy routes into work) – but I’ve noticed the whole area appears to have been designed as a panopticon so its easy for authorities to keep an eye on the docksides and warehouses (because of theft/smuggling/angry unemployed men causing violence)

It appears this practice has been carried through over hundreds of years (the big nightclubs are right under CCTV and within 5 mins of the cop shop and fire station)…

thanks for this. I’m slightly concerned about the level of conflict that is occuring over these between locals/cops and ravers (I moved here in part to escape the ever-increasing crime, negativity and violence of London and the South-East) but I have an open mind about the East Anglian party scene as far as music is concerned and TBH its no worse than the rural areas of the Thames Valley…

TBH (and this goes for anywhere in the UK!) if the venue is chosen well and people do not annoy the locals it doesn’t matter which force there is and how many cops there are.

The anti-rave policing methods are centralised these days as the order to clamp down came directly from the Home Office after MPs in rural areas were lobbied by locals annoyed by raves. you can often find them tucked away in the freedom of information bits on police forces websites.

However, the Eastern forces have had the technical capability to work together for many months anyway.

Google for a company called Sepura (based in Cambridge) – I’d rather not link directly to their site from here – have a look at the kit on their site.

the network it operates on (Airwave) has been linked between all forces a few months ago. it can work between forces and interface with the normal telephone network, you can’t scan it and it doesn’t pick up foreign telly in summer (which used to confuse the cops no end).

The Met has something like 4,000 cops in London at any one time and a similar amount on standby. TVP is also a very large force.

Both could put the TSG units in every weekend if they wanted to to stop raves (and I’ve personally seen both forces get quite heavy) but they don’t always do this as it costs loads of money and creates further conflict within society as youths lose any respect they may have had for the police – and even wider society.

One problem though perhaps particular to the East Anglian area is the terrain – sound travels further on flat ground, this appears to be what got the Ramsholt party lot in so much trouble (those of you who don’t know the area but can understand contours on OS maps may see what I mean here!)

If people can select better venues (i.e not nature reserves/tourist haunts/high value private land) and are prepared to accept “less is more” and keep sound levels down outside the target area they can still get away with it – last year I went to parties in the Thames Valley at the height of zero tolerance where not a single cop was seen and locals have even been amused and supportive!

TBH I would not suggest doing anything round here unless you have a bit of land you could use with permission, and either did a private party or used the TENS system. I think people tried it before, pushed it too far and created a backlash.

To add to this, Not only is the Ipswich area fairly well locked down but there seems to be a definite dislike of people “staying up too late” – if I am cycling late at night the streets are comparatively empty after 23:00, even at weekends.

What does happen to all the young people here? I can’t believe all of them want to go to Liquid/Zest, get in fights and end up spending the weekend in the cells or hospital; what happens to everyone else? do they just stay at home and play computer games?

Also I would genuinely not want to cause any major disruption or hassle to other peoples lives in Suffolk, I don’t mean a few hours of noise in a remote area but by the rave scene leading to an unregulated drugs culture where people don’t know when to stop and sometimes get on to more addictive class A drugs.

I’ve just moved here from Reading where the crack/smack/guns/violence culture which was sadly an offshoot of the original rave scene from the 1990s has totally fucked up some areas and resulted in gang violence and people getting killed. Sadly loads of my friends got sucked into addiction etc, some came through, others are dead or in HMP or hospital now…

I’ve noticed there’s a few pathetic addicts begging in Ipswich town centre and a couple of dodgy characters but its nothing like Reading or London where they are everywhere..

the worst part of this is most of these addicts/beggars are all my age and some are younger 🙁 , many of them got into the rave scene “back in the day” but didn’t know when or how to self-regulate their own drug use.

so if I ever got involved in helping out with raves I would want to be doing the “right things for the right reasons” and that means looking after people and knowing when to stop as well as when to party hard. IMO I owe that to wider society for some of the less laudable things I did with my life in the early 90s….

Keep in touch though; I would like to see this place livened up a bit..

are the cops now letting hall parties happen? I saw some news report they were trying to stop them; which is completely daft IMO as I was doing some research and found out people were putting them on long before any of us were born!

Brains Kan (IIRC thats the correct spelling) got busted, had a load of kit confiscated appear to be either keeping a low profile or recovering from this setback. I believe their extended crew is quite big and based around all the East Anglian counties though..

thanks for this 🙂