Raving mad
Up to 1,000 people descended on the Welsh Harp for a rave on Saturday, just days before British Waterways declared the site as one of the top ten places in the UK to spot wildlife.
The second illegal rave of the summer began on Saturday just before midnight, and continued through the night, with up to 200 people still dancing at midday on Sunday.
The ’24-hour open-air psychedelic gathering’ was organised by Digital Hive and advertised on a well-known web site http://www.accessallareas.org which sells tickets for venues across London.
A generator and sophisticated sound systems were used, but no toilet and rubbish facilities were provided, and garbage was left all over the site.
The web site provided a map to the site, on the Brent and Barnet border. An information phone line said: “The party is on. You want to go to Hendon train station and the party is at the end of Cool Oak Lane. You will hear the music.”
Revellers were told to travel to Hendon by train or take a bus to West Hendon Broadway, and follow red dots placed along the mile-long route, via Cool Oak Lane. At 3am on Sunday, groups of revellers were still flocking to the site from night buses and parking along Cool Oak Lane.
A resident, who does not wish to be named but visited the scene on Sunday, said that people were freely using cannabis.
“It was absolutely disgraceful, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing,” she said.
“They were all drugged up to their eyeballs and it is very upsetting.
“It is absolutely outrageous. All the rubbish strewn about, it was awful.”
British Waterways, a public corporation which manages 2,000 miles of canals and rivers, this week produced a brochure listing the Welsh Harp, also known as Brent Reservoir, as one of the UK’s top places to see water wildlife. “Brent Reservoir provides an oasis of calm in the midst of the metropolis,” it said.
The rave mainly took place on land owned by Brent Council, and Brent police visited the rave at 10am on Sunday but decided to take no action and referred the issue to Brent Council’s environmental team.
It is understood that Brent residents had been calling a Brent Council helpline all night, but Brent declined to comment on this.
Barnet Council received its first complaint at 8am on Sunday and its noise nuisance team investigated near Barnet homes in the area.
The team decided noise levels were barely audible for Barnet residents and no further action was taken.
On June 10, another all-night rave was held on the Barnet side of the Welsh Harp, but confusion over who was responsible resulted in no official being dispatched.
Clive Cohen, chairman of Barnet’s London Wildlife branch, said his group was concerned that the Harp could lose its status as a Site of Special Scientific Interest if the raves continued. “They raves affect breeding birds because of the light pollution, the illumination disturbs them and frightens them,” he said.
Andrew Dismore, MP for Hendon, attacked the council this week, demanding that it take action against the organisers. “The council needs to stop messing about and act, it’s ridiculous,” he said. “It needs to just take an injunction out against the organisers and take them to court. It is a valuable SSSI site and has just been recognised by British Waterways, but at the moment it is more a case of low lifes at the Harp than watery wildlife.”
A Barnet Council spokesman said it was meeting with Brent next week to discuss the matter. It said the rave organisers were breaching licensing laws. “We have written to a venue which advertises on a website that also has pictures of the illegal raves at Welsh Harp,” he said. “The letter was sent two weeks ago and stated that events at the Welsh Harp are illegal and police have been informed to close them down.”
A spokesperson for Access All Areas said: “The responsibility of acquiring permission to hold an event is for the promoter of said event to clarify with any such local authority.”
12:46pm Thursday 3rd August 2006
By Neeta Dutta
