Forums › Rave › Party Reports › moot – how it should be done on the ridgeway
OK can’t do the proper in depth reviews with namechecks to crew people, subtle details etc any more because of the PEL laws (its a shame, but I don’t want any of my friends getting shit 3 months down the line because something I wrote helped the cops put another piece into the jigsaw)
the moot was so excellent though, I’ll try to express all the good bits I can without giving away too much info..
but
thats how moots should be – congratulations to everyone involved!
Just got this from the wiltshire website………..”HYPODERMIC NEEDLES” – what a load of rubbish!!
Date Published: Thursday 14 July 2005
Hundreds descend on the Ridgeway for rave
Police watch ravers leave (16681/1)
MORE than 1,000 ravers descended on Europe’s oldest road near Avebury at the weekend but caused little disturbance, although the area was later reported as scattered with hypodermic needles.
Police arrested one man for possession of a suspected class A drug as he made his way to the rave on the Ridgeway at Overton Hill.
Scores of cars were parked along verges of the A4 between West Overton and East Kennett and packed every lay by in the vicinity.
Wiltshire police were warned by Dorset police shortly after midnight on Saturday that a large number of cars were heading to the county, possibly in hopes of attending a rave.
Police kept observations on the county’s roads and there was a false alarm when a large number of vehicles heading out of Marlborough turned out to be people on their way home from the jazz festival.
Police spokesman David Taylor said: “We then became aware of the movement of a number of vehicles on the Ridgeway.”
The first officers on the scene found about 16 vehicles a mile along the Ridgeway from the A4, where six sound and lighting systems carried on vans had been set up.
Mr Taylor said: “Once we found what was going on we blocked the entrance to the track to prevent any further vehicles joining the rave.”
The revellers, however, merely parked their cars along the nearest roads and made their way up to the Ridgeway across fields and paths.
At about 3am, police officers went on to the site where, said Mr Taylor, they were given a hostile reception.
He said: “There was no way we could disperse them. By then it was 3am and all we could do was try to prevent further people from joining it.”
Police blocked the only other vehicle access to the site at Green Street in Avebury.
Mr Taylor said: “People were prepared to walk long distances on footpaths and tracks which was their lawful right and we could not stop them.”
Music was played non-stop through the night until about 5pm on Sunday when the stages were dismantled.
Black bin bags were handed out by the organisers to the revellers who cleared away most of the rubbish from the site.
Avebury district councillor Gretchen Rawlins said she had no complaints about the rave because it was set up so far away from homes.
The nearest homes were more than a mile away in West Kennett and villager Joan Greenaway said there had been no sign of a rave when she went to bed at midnight on Saturday.
Mrs Greenaway said: “The beat of the music woke me at about 4am and to start with I thought it was drummers who occasionally go to the Avebury stones. I looked outside and the layby was filled with cars and later we saw cars parked all the way down the road into East Kennett.”
Mrs Greenaway said they could not hear the music but only the bass beats that kept them awake.
She said: “The police came round and said there had been a lot of hypodermic needles left up there and they had called Kennet to clear the site.”
thanks for relaying that article looney…
strangely enough a friend who had been picking up litter mentioned to me that a cop had come up to him and warned him of the danger of needles, they even said that he did not need to collect the rubbish as they had called a specialist clean up team to deal with these needles.
my friend thanked the cop for his concern but added that he always tried to clear up after raves, and was aware of such dangers, and had needles been present he would have actually put on PPE (gloves etc)
and lots of people were on that site and didn’t see any needles dropped.
Nor has injecting ever been particularly popular at outdoor raves without access to running water and sterile areas – even pinheads have some sort of survival skills!
so how did the “needles” come to be there?
there’s the obvious conspiracy theory that there were no needles and this is some bizzare, pointless and divisive smear campaign on behalf of a the Police, angered at the fact the ravers won this time….
perhaps they hope that an idealistic young raver will complain to the papers and say “my mates put on that rave and didn’t see any needles” – voila, someone to be quizzed and busted under PEL laws
but its sadly equally possible that some angry person did deliberately bust open a sharps bin and tip the contents onto the ground (an offence in itself in that particular area under environmental protection rules)
it could have been a pissed off cop, or even just someone with beef against one or more of the crews – maybe even a traveller who was annoyed that potential “quiet site” was being hotted up by the raves?
i hope things really aren’t getting that dark though – this was such a positive gathering otherwise
IMO anyone who tries to cause this sort of smear campaign and division – be they someone in uniform who is supposed to “protect” us, or someone who claims to support “freedom” but took matters into their own hands when things didn’t quite go their way by doing something like this; whether by just lying or deliberately creating their hazard is as bad as the violent criminals who are trying to destroy our society…
Surely its slander to be writing these things without some sort of evidence. Although who can really complain now that they’ve made it illegal to have organised a party.
I think TBH the cops know this – hence them approaching the litterpickers as well as the locals.
The problem also is that sadly there is a fair amount of class A use in the surrounding towns and cities. Also, a few ravers do move on to the use of injectable drugs so its even possible the cops are telling a bit of truth. A minority of ravers of course, but we are judged by our lowest common denominator.
it is a secluded public road however which may attract people in vehicles who want to inject in peace (usually when there aren’t any raves happening!) Its just as possible cops did find one or two needles somewhere on the track, probably nowhere near the rave and in fact unrelated but jumped to conclusions and blew things out of proportion as cops often do…
if we could all claim this scene was completely free of people going too far with drugs to the point they disposed of used works in a dangerous and anti-social manner then we could completely refute the cops’ arguments; but sadly we cannot – the best we can do is point(!) out that although a few people go off the rails, the bulk of ravers do not and will not use injectable drugs.
There’s also the chance that the rave disrupted someones favourite “shooting gallery” area and because they obviously can’t complain to the cops, scattering a few sharps is a good way to get the noisy ravers in shit. IME some addicts can be extremely arrogant and vindictive 🙁
Furthermore, such an incident could easily have happened on any public area in the UK (there’s a park in the southside of our city called “needle park” for that reason, the council pick up bare used works from there every other day…)
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Forums › Rave › Party Reports › moot – how it should be done on the ridgeway
