Party Vibe

it happens everywhere in the country – whenever a police car is left unattended… and not just at raves. When radio scanners used to work my mates would hear of such incidents fairly often.

most of the time it is a small minority of people with existing beef against the Police, often simply because they have done real crime like thieving from houses or shops or robbing cars and the cops have caught them and punished them for it.

The scum who do this often have nothing to do with parties or rigs but just seem to tag along to parties because their “friends” look up to them because they are “hard”, or I suspect maybe some can give people lifts in the cars they have nicked.

the reason IMO there is so much anger against East Anglian ravers is simply because some other areas of the country have already fucked up their local scenes due to overuse of venues and other stupidity – they can’t do raves any more and the smarter crews from that way have already given up.

so they are just jealous that parties still happen in this area..

yes, indeed, and even after it was doing the opposite in the early 90s – the breweries fought back, fought hard and regained control over the nightlife..

I’d agree with that for the mid to late 80s (both at “street level” and the “alternative scene”) but things in my area (SE England/London/East Anglia) and my peer groups definitely did change for the better from about 1990 to 1992.

Me and my mates found that the rave scene and music did give us at least a few hours/days of positive thinking each week; yes we did some dodgy or criminal things and there was a bit of a blagging culture (shoplifting, petty theft etc) but there was also principles – we never robbed dwelling houses or used violence and a fight amongst our group was extremely rare (about one every year if that)

We didn’t like rules or authority and certainly weren’t fond of the Police, but when partying there was some “unwritten set of rules”. Not quite the sickly-sweet American-inspired “PLUR” type things but a sort of modernised version of “gentlemanly conduct/chivalry”….

This euphoria didn’t last that long (by 1993 things were returning to “normal”) but it was there and remains a turning point in my life.

I have only known of a handful of rigs to be robbed with violence (mostly in inner cities although I think it once happened in Devon) since the scene started – this is a very isolated risk indeed and most of the people who did such things were the sort of gangsters who now tend to prey on the commercial UK garage scene (or are thankfully either dead or in prison).

In inner cities such as London or Bristol robberies and thefts are still a problem, although many are due to k-heads being easy targets for opportunists.

I don’t think there actually is enough money or bling to attract serious gangsters to small raves held in remote areas, otherwise one would have already have been properly shot up or firebombed by now. TBH the large bulk of the people who attend unlicensed raves aren’t anything like that at all.

What has definitely increased in the last 6-7 years is the sort of problem a “pissed up townie lad” would cause at a rave – pointless scuffles over girls, domestic arguments in public, people using raves to settle old scores.

I wonder if its also because town venues are getting more robust at banning and ejecting idiots, who somehow end up finding free parties.

I still think it can be combatted by people being a bit more careful about their circles of friends; people don’t randomly drive about the countryside looking for raves, someone has to have told them the area where the party is.

I know it sounds harsh/élitist but I have had to do this before with people I know who get too drunk and see the “freedom” of a party as a freedom to act like an idiot.. (and some have actually understood why I did it and respected me for doing so)

I witnessed this bad driving as well. In fact it drove at speed past and rather dangerously past a lot of parked cars including the vehicle I was in

I remember having to very quickly close the open door and shout

“*** (name deleted), POLICE UNIT COMING THROUGH NOW!” so my mate didn’t get squashed by the door…(I do tend to slip into official govt/military terminology in crisis situations, thats what 4 years of working for Whitehall (in a previous job) does to you..)

it doesn’t excuse one bit the idiot who trashed the cop car (and probably wasn’t even from my county) but I think both sides were getting a bit overzealous earlier in the night

A rumour was also going round of armed units with baton rounds potentially being deployed although I would have thought this was very unlikely as they are very rarely used outside Northern Ireland or firearms/siege situations

by the morning we got the impression that everyone had “come to their senses” a bit and was shocked by what went on last night – even the cops!

BTW I am a Council Tax payer in this county and consider the level of Police action to be inappropriate use of our resources – all those traffic cars would have been far better used keeping an eye on the A14 in the ropey weather on Sunday than unsuccessfully chasing people across a disused airfield just because a few middle englanders whinge about a rave they couldn’t even hear in the end!