Party Vibe

To be fair the issue with violence was a wider problem with parties in SE England which predated 1unity even starting up under that name, and in (very) recent times has spread to EA as recent posts have shown…

AFAIK they aren’t just one crew but several put together. The bigger problem is I think the core lot involved are fairly young and have difficulty keeping a big crowd safe – its not even about having big angry dudes everywhere (they can cause more hassle!) but putting out a consensus that violence between partygoers is unacceptable and having zero tolerance to any racism, misogyny, bullying of any kind, rather than turning parties into a extension of a high school campus..

Perhaps for those of us what are in our 30s or older and grew up during the 80s/90s and early 00s when first the original hippy/alternative types fought for our free expression, and economic times were briefly good due to cheap energy we take this peaceful interaction for granted

as I’ve noticed a lot of younger folk (even ravers) are much angrier (amongst each other) than when I was that age…

we even set up a forum specially for one of the crews what became 1unity but they lunched it out as after a promising start they didn’t want to discuss heavy subjects/”bad news” even when it would have made the parties safer :you_crazy

Whilst I’m glad damo666 didn’t notice any bad stuff as he is a friend from this area, I am inclined to believe some sort of unpleasant incident did happen – anything from low level sexual assault to rape and that as daft hinted people have tried “facebook justice” as they have no other option – they don’t want to go directly to the real authorities partly out of image but also out of fear of being nicked for involvement in a illegal rave.

There is unfortunately no bright side here. the cops do read facebook, take note of all incidents discussed there and also on this forum and although they can’t arrest anyone clearly do use them to bolster the case against letting illegal raves continue. Even the “best case” will involve identifying and arresting the rave organisers and quizzing them to see if they know anything. The worst case would be vigilantés targeting a innocent person at the next rave and further violence occuring as reprisals.

This weekends press release from a South Midlands constabulary specifically cited the risk of violence between participants along all the other bad things what could happen at raves. This is the first time I have seen this in a anti-rave press release – and I have been monitoring them for a few years now.

10 years ago if the cops claimed that raves were violent they’d have got laughed at on every forum and made to look like pure muppets. Nowadays the discussion on our forums and facebook make the case for them that there is a risk of violence at unlicensed events. We should not bury bad news however but face up to it and hold events where violence is never tolerated, even if it means smaller parties going on for less hours..