Forums › Rave › Free Parties & Teknivals › UK : Where’s a community when you need one?
NB: Although this may look like its commenting about just crews in the East it applies to everybody countrywide… (the same problems affect us all)
In the other post I relayed the news report of an Eastern farmer paying £24,000 for a police vehicle out of his own pocket.
Ravers may not like the idea of this (and there are wider political implications) – but he is acting within the law, using money he worked hard to get and in fact subsidising a service normally paid for by public taxation.
We may think “there’s no way we can match that sort of resources” – but just think how much kit some crews have managed to amass! Audio kit, vehicles, generators, computers etc – the bulk of it legitimately obtained as well (at least these days).
We actually have a lot of resources – and are intelligent people who manage to find work or those who aren’t employed have time to learn or share their skills with others; we can afford computers, telecoms equipment and other high-tech gadgets (look at all the threads people post about their new toys).
Many of us own at least one motor car or van; and have the spare time and money to get fuel and travel considerable distances merely for pleasure (and I hear few people talking about their contribution to climate change!) We can’t bleat that we are the “poor oppressed” – TBH sometimes you can understand why locals (who perhaps know no better) think that ravers are selfish hedonists who use the countryside / industrial estate as a playground and disrupt others are trying to earn a living from that space having paid its market value…
However, whenever a crew gets in trouble I notice few people make a long term effort to support it.
people (probably unconnected to core crew) are happy to “fight” the cops (always a losing battle as they have the law and the rest of society behind them) – but it seems that when things do go pear-shaped, people end up in Court and have stuff confiscated or get fined, they seem to be left to shoulder the costs themselves.
Loads of my mates in the Thames Valley have had stuff confiscated a few years ago; the same applies in the East after the Ramsholt rave went tits up; There a few “fine words and messages of sympathy” you don’t see that much support for the people who get busted. Their former friends just seem to abandon them follow the next crew – and the next; whilst individuals are left to deal with the problems such as financial losses and not being able to get jobs because of criminal records – in some cases this breaks up relationships, friendships and families as not everyone is supportive of what is seen as “law-breaking”….
where are the benefits or whip rounds for these people? perhaps they happen; but if so why don’t people discuss it more on here and the other rave/progressive activist forums?
I’ve noticed at some raves (all across the UK) people seem happy enough to be militant at the frontline and put others at risk – the results have been tragic with ravers and cops seriously injured, innocents being caught up in violence or having personal property such as vehicles confiscated just for “being in the wrong place at the wrong time”; as well as a “legitimisation” of violence to achieve ends which filters through to a culture of fighting at raves!
However not everyone goes raving with the ultimate intention of having to deal with angry cops and landowners on the comedown – And I expect even a bulk of the cops (particularly the bulkier ones) would rather be sharing sunday lunch with their families or colleagues than bust heads on a Sunday afternoon! (most of these cops are missing their meal breaks to deal with raves at this time – perhaps a rumbling tummy fuels raging anger)
However when it comes to people sharing their resources other than machismo it looks a bit thin on the ground.
Are we prepared to stand up as a real collective and progressive group (and that means sticking up for our rights but being prepared to respect the rights of others) – or have people actually just decided that “fighting is more fun?”
the idea of public taxation is the redisribution of wealth in the most needed instances. that affluent members of the public can effectively buy favour with what shoudl be an “equally for everyone” service makes a mockery of the texation system in the first place. surely you can see that
still not comprable to the resources of this farmer. at least i dont know anyone with that kind of money spare. all bits of kit are generally bought after long periods of saving, and they are owned between several people, which is a stressful arrangement in this society. teh money isnt usually as centralised in a rave crew as it is on a farm.
if you put on a freeparty outside the law, i think its totally unrealistic to expect any sympathy if your kt gets nicked. its like policemen complaining about getting greif off people. if you cant stand the heat….
where are the benefits or whip rounds for these people? perhaps they happen; but if so why don’t people discuss it more on here and the other rave/progressive activist forums?
are you seriously considering that if a rig gets busted all the people who have danced at its speakers should buy the owner a new rig?!? im sorry thats just ludicrous
However when it comes to people sharing their resources other than machismo it looks a bit thin on the ground.
Are we prepared to stand up as a real collective and progressive group (and that means sticking up for our rights but being prepared to respect the rights of others) – or have people actually just decided that “fighting is more fun?”
sometimes i think you are a natural born journalist- and dont take that as a complement. what was the point of this thread, just to critisise the hardworking crews and their followers. its like you are trying to enhance any negative aspects of the scene just to have an interesting peice to write.
i have only ever seen fights in london and nearby parties. even the sketchiest bristol parties had a wicked vibe, and i have never seen any trouble at a south-eats party outside london. furthurmore, i have seen crews fall by the wayside due to busts, and i have to say its usually the shock of gettuing nicked and possibly facing jail that stops these rigs, not finances. to suggest that rave audienxces are well off enough to support relacing equipment is fallacy, as a lot of the ravers are there purely because they cant afford a tenner in a club.
a lot of people are getting out of the kitchen at the moment (or at least getting their food safety licenses if you get what I mean!)
but surely what you are saying is in effect “the law is OK when they confiscate kit?” that surprises me, particularly as your crew once had kit taken.
Recovery of costs of cleanup etc – perhaps “restorative justice” such as getting people to litter pick (and only if too much was left behind) or fines to compensate people who have had actual and provable losses is IMO OK (but not just collecting money for treasury or to appease nimbys – but I consider the permanent confiscation of sound equipment to be completely disproportionate. its not as if its guns or knives FFS….
On the same count, whilst every cop is bound to get a few “oink” noises made at them and a bit of lip from people, and I don’t agree with a lot of things they do, I still don’t think people should go about chucking stuff at them or attacking them
Iin some cases self defence may be acceptable – but few people win battles with trained fighters unless they are also trained to use violence – and many who want to actually fight the cops (outsmarting them is a different matter) also have no problem about using violence to achieve their ends elsewhere in society.
not even a whole rig …. even a token bit of appreciation and support which can be found in other ways. Rigs do help each other out (at least provided inter-crew politics doesn’t get in the way) – you’d be surprised how much equipment is about in some areas.
TBH I do think a collective of ravers could easily have as much resources as a farmer – Exodus did pull it off, if only for a few years before they self-destructed.
There are other ways to help – if someone is nicked and they can’t get a job because of their form – or due to travelling etc don’t want a 9-5 constant job it could be a friend who runs a record shop or artists studio helping them out (or even suggesting a local employer who isn’t as stuck up as most, IME many small businesses are run by people who were rebels when they were younger and some may be prepared to give people a second chance..)
A mate of mine runs a business and he provides jobs for a lot of ravers who don’t have steady employment records/have been young offenders…
Clearly, its not easy to do this but the easy option doesn’t exist any more as any job-hunter will have noticed recently! All the “short term” jobs have gone to other countries where people work harder and value them more…We need to a bit more self-sufficient as no one else is going to back up our lifestyles.. and if ravers have a real weekday input into the local community its way harder to criticise them.
I’ve been a member of several “hardworking crews” over the years (although I tend not normally to brag about these things) but the negative aspects of the scene are a real thing – I thought you didn’t belive in “covering up stuff?” Sometimes people looking for “light at the end of the tunnel” get dazzled by optimism.
They darkside started in the early 90s just months after raves started and eventually created an unregulated drugs culture run by pyschotic hard-nuts.
Most of it was contained in the commercial clubs and raves (which is one reason why people did free parties in the first place) but its spilt out to free parties more recentlly as the cops/CCTV/councils clamp down on clubs and enforce those “nutters get banned from everywhere” pubwatch policies.
Of course its partly due to prohibition but remember that UKG, Grime and other sub-genres spun off from the original early 90s rave scene – they are the “feral kids” the original rave scene produced!
if we want the nanny state not to regulate us, surely we must self-regulate? it is this which is failing dismallly and too many people are in denial about it. Out of my original raver friends way too many of them have got into serious problems with drugs, some have got into serious crime, others have attacked people they loved as the drugs eat away at their brains.
Look at it this way, if self regulation and PLUR was working, why do we need the stay-safe website?
Its more common than you think. At NYE two of my friends had a fight in the middle of a party over a 5 year old grudge.
I saw loads of scuffles at Ridgeway parties over the last few years (since about 2001 onwards), and it has definitely got worse everywhere.
People are getting angrier – petty arguments escalate into actual blows – perhaps its the the inevitable fall out of the worlds increasing conflict (9/11, 7/7 and the war etc), and as well as peoples’ individual insecurity and paranoia, fuelled by drugs. you never used to read talk about fighting on rave or music based message boards and I’m not singling out SJ, loads of other music related boards have people talking about the trouble at events.
Girls are getting sexually harrassed more often, crews are having equipment stolen – that definitely never used to happen in the mid 90s or even the early 90s. There were some right toerags at raves but even they realised behind the DJ stand was off limits for thieving.
Even in late 2003 I was having trouble getting some of my friends to go raving because of the hassles they weren’t squares but full on hippies as well!
there are plenty of underground clubs now which are charging the same entry price as “free” parties (where its gone up to a fiver). I wouldn’t spend a tenner to get into a club and I never have done so, particulary as about a fiver of it goes straight to the cops.
its also a matter of replacing people as well as just collecting cash – for the reasons you mention above sometimes people have to make hard choices between keeping jobs/family/relationships or staying on the scene – those who don’t have money often have time.
by “real community” I also mean the wider stuff like social forums, helping out young familes, info centres as well, not just a hedonistic weekend. This is something I don’t see as much of these days. if it does happen people don’t shout about it enough….
Oh, and years ago I wanted to be a journalist but gave up on that ambition as theres no career security and I didn’t really want to spend the whole day writing crime reports. That said bad news must not be buried -isn’t that what the Government does? I don’t do this for glory but to try and encourage people to face up to real problems and make something better of what is going on at the moment.
I’ll be brutally honest and say that the free party scene, as it stands, is not sustainable. it may carry on for another 5 years maybe but its being squeezed from one side by a culture of fighting and violence from within, and from the other by the backlash from those in power.
There aren’t that many underground ravers either (if you discount the commercial club scenes), I reckon it could be as little as 50,000 people (including “occasional” party people or those who approve of the lifestyle but don’t party any more due to family commitments) in a country of 60 million.
If, as you say, our resources are less than the powerful, we need to either work together and smarter; or we will simply be defeated.
Didn’t the darkside begin with the CJB ? Also, you may not agree and I’m probably not the first person to say this, but the drugs nowadays aren’t half as good as they were in the early ninties. I’d like to think that this isn’t a major factor on the atitudes of people going to parties….but it is. IIRC in my early days of raving people would get kicked out of the club for trying to take their clothes off and dancing on the bar, never for fighting.
not really; it started when people were overdoing the drugs a bit as they seemed so good (and we didn’t have sites like this to provide a support network),
cops were heavy from 1989 onwards and raves had even more “gangster” element back then!
Paradoxically the CJA actually helped the scene – although cops initially were heavy with the cops ran out of money and it brought together hedonistic ravers, social activists whilst co-incidentally at the same time technology was making computers cheap and opening up the Internet. this very site is one of the results!
actually I do agree but there are other factors. I think the substances were better quality then; but also the attitude which went with them was different – a rave was a special occasion – now it seems that both parties and drugs are being taken for granted a bit in some areas and maybe overdone.
whats disappeared as (or diminished though) from many people is a mindset that as well as raving you could change your life to do something better or more creative and help other people (which was definitely part of the mid 90s vibe immediately post CJA).
TBH I think its still there, but people are frightened to talk about it “for fear of being labelled a hippy”; but it needs to be emphasised a bit more. what groups like Exodus and some others tried to do was initially excellent and needs to be done again but minus the egos and hierarchies which corrupted the early ideals.
We are coming to a crunch point (across all of Europe) where we need to make a stand to show this lifestyle is not a destructive one and should be tolerated as part of a world which accepts free speech.
I don’t know what to say to that as I’m not really involved in the scene. Also I can’t really comment on what a general feeling towards free parties might be….I’ve only just become aware that they even still happen recently
If you want to find out more “rave history” and have a bit of spare time, have a look on our search facility, or the “related threads” that turn up at the bottom of pages. This board has been running for years and its parent site is a year older than google; we literally grew up with the free party scene from 1995 onwards.
there are articles and reviews from both ravers and mainstream media, years worth of them…..
this is a good place to start ; the first free parties which were publicised using the net. Theres way more detail as the authorities didn’t bust people as hard then for stuff like licensing violations!
incidentally, for all the hassle the Eastern crews get elsewhere they are actually a lot more clued up and socially concious
there’s more ravers on there and clearly still the same links with progressive activism I used to see a few years ago (although to be fair the London lot are quite good and there’s BASS as well)
the following quote comes from the EASF forum (the OP edited following the PEL hassles) – now this is the sort of community stuff to be encouraged….
the people putting them on are *******. they put it on for free, but take donations – the profits from the last one were all given to a local village’s ‘skatepark fund’ and as far as i’m aware the intent is to give all future monies raised to local community groups.
there are a bunch of crews around who are just out for a weekend party, get some kudos, enjoy the music, end os story
there are also crews around here that are very involved in social / environmental activism
most of the peoeple involved have full-time jobs that incorporate their values, but could be in jeopardy if employers (not their direct ‘bosses’, but the people who actually fund their jobs) knew what they are doing (ie. using free parties as a platform to promote alternative lifestyles, raise awreness of environmental issues)
so thery just get on with it… by that I mean their parties will extend a message to people who are already open-minded enough to go to a free party… perhaps recruit some help to their social / environmental causes through their parties, but don’t want to discuss this over the internet.. for two reasons… 1) many party sites are very shallow and 2) they are busy being actie and spending lots of time on the internet trying to persuade people to see their point of view is probably less effective than doing what they’re doing
…just been cheking out some reports form events over the last few years from the old site. Frankly I’m gutted that these things were happening all over the place and I didn’t go to any of them.:cry: I don’t know what I’ve been doing with myself for the last 6 years ? I really have got to do something about this….
i think the main prolem for raves at the moment is communication. we cant be too blatant advertising or we get busted, cant be too low-key or no one turns up.
….hmm, kind of an imposible situation. I’m going to do a bit of PMing to the other people who I’ve gathered are in the general vacinity from here, make sure that they know I’m not OB (or max) and get some info this way. I guess I’ve been a bit slow in realising how the net might effect free events.
:toxic::toxic::toxic::toxic::toxic::toxic::toxic::toxic::toxic::toxic::toxic::toxic::toxic::toxic::toxic::toxic::toxic::toxic::toxic::toxic:
cheers,
no case
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Forums › Rave › Free Parties & Teknivals › UK : Where’s a community when you need one?
