Free Parties and Raves
 

Saturday night I attended my second “free party”. The first went off pretty much without a hitch, after arriving at a “rendezvous” point we were walked in a group of 50 – 100 people down the road to an empty warehouse.

The doors to this warehouse were opened and all people early enough to get to the “rendezvous” point were aloud entry. A number of transit vans followed in the revellers and 3 rigs were set up.

I have never attended this kind of event before and was murky as far as the law goes. The first police turned up to this particular event at 2am and by 3am there were upwards of 6 TAU police vans at the venue. The officers eventually entered the venue at around 5 when they “checked” the venue.

I have no idea what they were checking and how, but this particular venue clearly passed the tests and the party was aloud to continue until 9am when enough people had dispersed and the police were able to put enough pressure on the people remaining to end the party.

This Saturday the police response was very different:

http://www.manchestereveningnews.co....egal_rave.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/m...er/6284443.stm

Does anybody know what the difference between the raves could have been? I have been offered a number of different suggestions but none have been convincing.

#1 People - Only a small number of people had gained entry to the event, many more were on the streets around the venue, could there be an amount of police required to “evict” people from a property? Say, 1 officer per 5 people?

#2 Safety – Maybe the venue was deemed dangerous and this was why the police used such physical measures to make sure the event didn’t happen.

#3 Squatters - I have heard people throw around “squatter’s rights”, apparently there were people who “lived” in the venue, could they have squatter’s rights? How would this effect the rights of the people attending the party (apparently all people were removed from the property, including those previously living there).

#4 It was Huge!! – This particular event was going to be huge. 800+ people were on the streets around the event and many more would have arrived following club kicking out, there were plans for a BBQ and even a fairground ride, could this effect the reaction of the police, perhaps teaching the organisers a lesson?

I’m sorry if people have a problem with this kind of talk and I am in no way trying to show off that I was at a rave that never happened I am just interested in what the law says and even opinions of these kind of events.

Has anybody previously been to an event like this? Did it go ahead? Was it dangerous? Was the venue trashed?

I hear no end of stories from the 30+ year old friends claiming that these “free parties” were the centre of clubbing back in the early days and that, had it not been for a law created to stop it the “super clubs” in big cities with £5 drinks could/would have never happened.

I would love more information on this kind of thing, from either a legal, social or historical point of view.

Please enlighten me; I cannot decide if this was a massive overreaction by the police or if the guidelines in place leave no options for this type of action in these types of circumstance.

Re: Free Parties and Raves
 

Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994

that should point you in the rough direction, legally speaking,

Re: Free Parties and Raves
 

Maybe there were trying to target specific drugs traffickers in the area?

They were probably not concerned with the actual rave, more the effect it has on the surrounding area.

Raves and drugs go hand in hand so I wouldn't have been surprised if a number of plain clothes officers were amongst you all trying to ID dealers. I'd be willing to bet the police were just about to make sure it didn't "overspill" outside of the warehouse getting out of hand and to drugs target.

I've been to one rave when I was using various "substances" and it was basically like a supermarket for drugs. It got broken up about 1-2 am if I recall correctly and several dealers I'd used were arrested and put away.

With that many people in attendance the police usually get some sort of tip off about these things so I expect they make themselves seen as a deterant to try a "prevention is better than cure" philosophy with respect to trouble makers and the like.

They are good fun and I do know a couple of people who attend them on a more regular basis than my one time and say they have a blast.

Re: Free Parties and Raves
 

hah, its all about myspace dude!!

anyway, pm if you're actually interested in more info...

Yeah, I've heard a load of people complaining about that.

anyway, thanks, I'll check it out.

Re: Free Parties and Raves
 

Organised controlled fun is the best kind of fun!

Re: Free Parties and Raves
 

I got a message about this one on myspace too :)
well, it was a bulletin posted by nick...

he's the person to ask about this kind of thing as i'm pretty sure he goes to them all the time...

He's onetwothree on here I think... but also on #forums quite often...

incidentally it's really not my kind of scene so I was much happier going to the beer festival on saturday instead.

Re: Free Parties and Raves
 

I think police action has to do with a) location, if the party is somewhere out of the way or near resident/active areas b) the owner of the location - I'm not sure though if police need some sort of order from the owner to throw people out - and c) crowd reaction. If people really started throwing stones then I'm pretty sure the police was not excited about that.

Re: Free Parties and Raves
 

I was going to go to that rave, but i had a prior engagement, but i heard from my mates that the crowd threw a couple of smoke grenades?
Also it was broke up before it actually started, so maybe broke up to stop all the drug dealing?
The sheer number of people there would make it hard to single out the dealers and catch then unless they dedicated alot of manpower to it. So maybe it was to prevent the drugs being dealt rather than trying to catch them.

Re: Free Parties and Raves
 

i was going to go to this but had to do an essay :(

Re: Free Parties and Raves
 

hmm, the potential posters who would possibly come to a manchester GD meet seem to be growing!

how about a free GD manchester party rave thing?
with less people and more geek talk of course.

Re: Free Parties and Raves
 

i will guess that the police didnt get intel in time for the 1st free party .. so could not stop it ( police numbers v's partygoers being not enough by the time they got there).
Thats how it worked when i wasnt too old to go to stuff like that.

They were fun back in my day, havent been to one for many years so cannot comment how they go down today.

Re: Free Parties and Raves
 

Re: Free Parties and Raves
 

I agree with this. The police were actually at the venue before the "party lines" updated with directions.

No idea how that could happen, however friends of mine who were waiting at the "gasworks" new about the location through rumours well before the party lines did.

I guess this was the issue with this party, too many police and too few people in the venue. It is a real shame because the event itself sounds like it would have been superb. 6 rooms including a cinema and BBQ! There were even plans for a Mario Kart tournament!!

Previous to my first experience I was convinced this type of thing would be packed with "rude boy scallies" and "D+B heads", it really wasn't, there was a great atmosphere and the people would be best described as "punks" – perhaps not ideal for everybody but I’m not a punk and was treated really well.

Anyway, I'd really recommend getting involved in something like this, its generally pretty much a monthly event that you will enjoy, and its pretty much free – so long as the police don’t turn up with clubs and dogs.

Mark - I didn't see any smoke, never mind smoke grenades.

Ste - but where could we hold such an event? Any of the Manc's want telling about the next free party, give me a shout.

Re: Free Parties and Raves
 

Parties go ahead due to critical mass, it's generally more policing effort to break up a party than let it go ahead and monitor it.

Re: Free Parties and Raves
 

"Book them and they will come"

Re: Free Parties and Raves
 

I think it's been noted that the whole law side of it is aimed at prejudicing an undisarable alternative social crowd. Laws such as that one are retarded.

On the flip side i'm very jealous that the UK even has large events like this as I'd love to attend one. Sadly while as far as i know we have no such laws in Aus, I've never seen any organised events such as this (at least not locally), and the club scene is abysmal.