Party Vibe

I doubt it. Castlemorton (I was there as well!) was a bit of a phyrric victory IMO – Middle England was so angered by essentially losing control over part of the country that the CJA was passed two years afterwards (this was the start of laws being “fast tracked” from public lobbying to Parliament and Whitehall to the statute books within two years, previously it could take three or four years!)

It also spurred both public and private bodies to invest in “target-hardening” measures such as CCTV and ever increasing guarding of potential venues.

Also whilst I didn’t get ripped off and it was awe-inspiring I found it also quite intimidating and impersonal and with the amount of people there were dodgy things going on like fights and muggings.

TBH far prefer smaller (not necessarily tiny!) events that are friendlier and create less disruption to locals- people tend to get away with them more..

the media were actually about 2-3 years behind…

the rebirth of the rave scene actually happened from around 2001-2004 (particularly when the cops were distracted by paranoia over “terrorism” and the effects of binge-drinking in towns), there was shit loads of massive multiriggers around then, 10 rig parties that went on for 2-3 days, both indoor and outdoors

by 2004/5 there had been a massive backlash from locals because of this (mostly due to rubbish, vandalism and anti-social behaviour outside the raves) and cops were encouraged to work with Government lawyers to prosecute organisers on licensing laws as well as the CJA.

By that time there had already been a few high profile busts and the 2005/6 parties (although still quite large) were actually smaller than the ones that had happened before. There were actually less rigs and less people as some had had kit confiscated, others had just burned out through too much drugs from 2001-2005.

I suspect that the cops only talked to the Press in 2006 because they felt that they had enough resources to quell any increases in attempted raves in 2006 – although a couple of big ones happened., in hindsight these appear to be Phyrric victories.

Even the Davidstow one (although it didn’t get busted as heavily as the Eastern “riot-rave”) resulted in confiscations and a heavy lockdown on SW and SE England for the rest of the season.