The party on the 10th went down brilliantly, big crowd although after the chaos of last time a few of the rigs didn’t pitch up, and there was absolutely no police attention.
I personally disagree with the whole Myspace advertising and the attitudes, but these are the actions of a few people, and not the rest of those behind the rigs. Those that created this MRSA idea are sound and have their heads screwed on; it might surprise you to realise that the main people involved have been the ones solely pushing the Manchester party scene for the past two years.
The actions of a few who got over-excited helped contribute to the outcome but it was a combined bunch of bad luck (such as there being a hotly-tipped riot after a local football match on the same day) and the publicity attracting many of the wrong sort of people, as well as a bit too much attitude on behalf of the police.
Given the party location in one of the particularly rough areas of Manchester, and the sheer number of people who knew about it this was inevitable that some dicks would turn up and there were security people for this reason. If the first bunch of police hadn’t hopped the fence, breaking the section 6 on the building then they wouldn’t have been much of an issue, but there you go.
It also didn’t help that instead of dealing with the people already inside the building like human beings, they plunged the whole thing into darkness and charged into groups with dogs and batons. There were no indicated exits and no instructions, just an attack. There’s not much wonder some of those outside were aggravated, although the chants of ‘RIOT!’ were uncalled for.
Flyering is something that’s often disputed; I know plenty of soundsystems around the country that put out flyers at nights and have email distribution lists and they generally have no problems like this, as Manchester hasn’t before.
This was an attempt to bring Manchester out of the small, local style parties that generally do get a fair crowd through word of mouth and the usual channels and into something bigger, and it didn’t go well.
It doesn’t mean it can’t be done; see the Barnes Hospital parties of a few years ago, and the 5 rig party in Trafford Bar just last March, and I’m sure there’ll be other successful parties of that size in the future as there was this weekend.
