Inside London’s Secret Raves
Beads of sweat bulge on his brow and his voice, which has reached fever pitch, cracks occasionally. “Get out of here,” yells the man in his thirties. “You lot are spoiling it for everyone else. Take your drugs and clear off.”
The object of his fury is a small clan of shifty-looking 18 and 19-year-olds who have been peddling crack cocaine to revellers at a socalled “squat party” in a Camden office building owned by Viacom Europe, parent company of music channel MTV.
The cold light of a new day would later reveal that the building had been “trashed” by hundreds of party goers.
But for now, there is a tense stand-off between the organisers and the crack pushers. As a first time raver with no experience of illegal parties but an awareness of the close relationship between crack dealing and guns, I can feel the beginnings of panic rising in my throat.
I am standing on a mezzanine level, a relatively safe vantage point. But I know that there is only one exit, and getting to it involves descending a spiral staircase and squeezing past the flashpoint.
By now, the music has been killed and industrial strength lights have flooded the murky building. A crowd of more than 100 dancers watches the action, and another 50 or so are watching with me from above.
The message is very clear: you lot are not welcome and until you leave, the party is over.
In the unused open-plan office complex, filing cabinets and desks have been pushed aside, electricity meters have been bridged and impressive sound systems have been rigged up on all four floors.
A bar has been fashioned out of what was once the reception, and marker pen written straight onto the wall lists the menu: beer £1.50, alcopops £1.50, Coke and water £1. The bar staff, a ravaged, pierced blonde and a handful of baseballcapped youths, share lines of white powder on the counter.
This is permitted. Squat-party etiquette says that amphetamines and cocaine are OK. Marijuana, ecstasy and hallucinogenic drugs are also permitted.
The horse tranquilliser ketamine, or “k”, which is becoming the mind-altering drug of choice for squat party aficionados, is also allowed.
But crack cocaine, the highly addictive smokeable form of cocaine sold in rocks, is most definitely not. Crack cocaine brings with it violence, paranoia and gangsters toting guns. It leaves users slumped against walls jabbering incoherently, highly volatile and willing to do absolutely anything to get the money for another hit.
Squat parties – the modern generation’s answer to the more Utopian world of Eighties rave parties – are on the rise.
Every weekend, all over London and the South-East, thousands of revellers descend on disused offices, empty warehouses and remote industrial estates to enjoy dance music, illegal drugs and the sheer euphoria of being somewhere you should not. From young professionals to inner-city kids, the revellers are united in a growing sense of release.
They have found out where the party is by calling one of several secret numbers or from being part of a growing “database”, friends of friends of friends of the organisers, whose mobile phones are texted with the venue, just hours before the party kicks off.
Others, mostly backpackers from the capital’s hostels, have heard by word of mouth that if they meet at a certain spot in Leicester Square at a certain time on a Saturday night, a figure will arrive and tell them where the party is. The venue is always revealed at the last moment to avoid the chances of police intervention.
However they discover the location, all revellers will be united in a mutual throwing off of inhibitions, a sense of camaraderie and an utter abandonment that you would rarely find in a licensed club.
Nick Stevenson, clubs editor for Mixmag magazine, explains: “Clubbing and clubwear is becoming so institutionalised. You’ve got a set of rules and you have bouncers to enforce them. It’s almost as though you’re being told how to have a party,” he says. “When you go down to squat level you’re going to find that people police their own events.”
Yet many squat parties have a sinister underbelly. On the stairs in Camden, a greasy blonde, no more than 15, asks for ketamine or trips (LSD). Her friend’s eyes dart about, sweatily.
In an office at the top of the building, I retreat hastily when a step inside the door is greeted with hostile eyes and the smell of smoke from an unidentifiable drug.
Outside the building a girl of 12 or 13 postures at the side of an older man who is arguing to be allowed in and a teenager leans against a van violently throwing up. Last month an inquest heard how a man died after overdosing on ecstasy at a squat party in Tower Hamlets.
But if you don’t look too closely, the allure of the squat party culture is undeniable. Something as secret and big as this generates excitement.
Fists meet, knuckle to knuckle, in wordless greetings and in the small offices that fill corridors throughout the upper floors, groups of friends share “spliffs” and people dance solidly for hours to earth-shaking basslines and aggressive lyrics.
It is this sub-culture that the man confronting the crack dealers is defending; he isn’t just trying to throw undesirables out of his bash.
He appeals to the crowd to stand up to the intruders with him. “Let this scum know what you think of them,” he shouts. “Let them know you don’t want them at your party. If we all stand together they’ll have to go. They’ll have to go.” The crowd pull in closer, and a lone female voice from the back rasps: “Go on, f*** off.”
The gang eventually admit a reluctant, non-violent defeat and leave. Egos have been bruised and income lost, but for the moment the party is safe. Later I discover that this kind of confrontation is not unusual.
Jon, 27, a local journalist, who has been going to squat parties for years, says: “I wouldn’t be surprisedif there are firearms here. I’ve never seen any, but I have been in some aggressive situations. They are the downside of squat parties but I never feel that it is mad enough for me to stop going.”
Squat parties aren’t all the same. Each is characterised by the type of sound systems that attends – “sound systems” applies to both the equipment and team of DJs – and which followings they attract. Some, whose music is heavy and subversive, bring in a more sinister, criminal crowd.
The sound systems keep in touch with a small clan of party organisers whose job it is to locate suitable venues. They will spend the week scouting the industrial estates and streets of London looking for a possible site. On the day of the party they break in, secure the venue, sort out a power supply, set up the bars and only then put the word out to the sound systems, who dutifully turn up.
Jon uses squat parties to let his hair down. He goes for the music – “some of it’s pretty heavy and dark, you can’t hear it in mainstream clubs” – and for the drugs, which are astonishingly readily available. At the one in Camden, I couldn’t go more than three paces without a shifty face thrusting out of the dry ice to offer me pills.
The drugs at squat parties are much cheaper and purer than those you can buy on the street, says Jon. Big-time dealers are said to supply the bags of cocaine, “k” and ecstasy pills, and consequently the drugs are claimed to be of a higher quality.
“The best way to describe the drug trade at squat parties is like a franchise,” says Jon. “The organisers only allow their own people in. I don’t know whether they take a cut or whether they own the drugs that are being sold. But that’s how the money is made. The people at the top are the really shady ones and they are making a hell of a lot of money. That’s why there are so many people trying to get in through the windows and stuff so they’re not seen.”
Avoiding the £5 cover fee is not the object of this subterfuge – it’s all about trying to grab a share of the drugs money. Outside I watch amazed as a group of youths scale a tree, pull themselves onto a roof and slip through an open window. Inside, there are youths scouting around the building looking for a way to let in their mates without being spotted by the organisers. Simultaneously, the organisers carry around filing cabinets and desks to prop against the downstairs windows in a bid to keep out the uninvited dealers.
Unsurprisingly, all this activity leads to a highly charged atmosphere that means any intervention by police could be potentially explosive.
In Hackney, where a plethora of abandoned warehouses and office blocks leaves the borough open to parties almost every weekend, Chief Superintendent Derek Benson says there is little the police can do.
“If you’re on night duty with 30 officers and there are 500 people at a party you don’t need me to tell you that the odds are really stacked against us,” he said. “You’ve got to weigh up the risk to the people there and to the officersby going in. Once parties are under way, we’ll tend to monitor them and deal with local complaints, but realistically it’s a question of assessing what you can do. There’s very little that can be done in terms of shutting them down.”
But if the police feel helpless, that is nothing compared to how the owners of the building felt when faced with the aftermath of a party on Monday morning.
The Viacom building in Camden is currently offered for rent at £15 a square foot but it’s going to be a long time before these offices are back in action.
“We are furious,” says Viacom spokeswoman Jo Tomlin. “They’ve broken into our property and made a bloody great mess. It was completely trashed. There was a lot of graffiti, a lot of glass panels were smashed, there was no running water so the toilets were foul.
“There was not very much furniture left in there but what was there has been overturned and broken. Curtains have been torn, windows smashed. It was thoroughly looted.”
Recently more than £80,000 worth of sofas were stolen from a warehouse in Hackney where revellers broke in, held a party and then scarpered, taking the contents of the venue with them.
Meanwhile, in a small room on the third floor of the Camden offices, the secret of the squat party’s appeal – one extraordinary night of escapism – is revealed by a surprising source. Below a No Smoking sign, partially obscured by billowing clouds, another sign hinting at the office’s previous use reads, “Abbey National: Because life’s complicated enough.”
The Evening Standard
