The right to rave

What are you more scared of “ravers” or terrorists? Well according to the Norfolk Resilience Forum a government funded body that plans for emergencies, the threat to Norfolk society posed by “ravers” is the same as terrorists.  This demonstrates the overreaction that the authorities have to what essentially is people wanting to have a party. The absurd use of force and repression against revellers is still commonplace in Britain and like in most cases has the potential to cause trouble. As the Norfolk risk register states “the potential for disorder can be considerable when those attending are confronted by police. It is the state which decides what is social or anti-social behaviour and anyone acting outside the normal parameters of society risks being treated like a criminal. Even though the police seem to paint people quite liberally with the “domestic extremist” brush most of the general public can see the difference between someone who uses terror as a form of coercion and someone who listens to repetitive music in a wood.

The “raver” or “free party enthusiast” has been experiencing state-sponsored lifestyle oppression since the days of feudalism. Now videos are circulating the internet urging people of the land to take up arms against their authoritarian rulers in fiefdoms around the country. In Norfolk and Suffolk rave relations are particularly volatile and many of the people of the land see the police as cultural oppressors enforcing the will of the greedy county council. This situation reached a climax on 19th of April 2007 when a group of “ravers” in Great Yarmouth responded to the confiscation of their sound system by besieging the local police station. The rebellion was eventually quelled but only after police reinforcements were sent from the neighbouring counties of Essex and Cambridgeshire.

Many argue that there is no smoke without fire and this violence was just retaliation to heavy handed disproportionate policing of raves and illegal parties. The projection of such violence on people trying to enjoy themselves is a contradiction and in many cases only leads to further violence. The disproportionate response continues and recently it was also revealed that the British Police are already using military style drones, as already used in Afghanistan, to prevent such problems as antisocial motorists, protesters and fly tipping. Presumably the surveillance capabilities will stretch to monitoring if people are putting the bins out on the wrong day or gathering in groups of more than ten people. Currently the police are also monitoring the internet to crack down on any illicit raves or gatherings and in June 2009 a 30 year old man’s birthday barbecue in a friends field was raided by police in body armour, a helicopter was also deployed. Police confessed that they had become alarmed when the man had sent invitations out to 17 guests on the social networking site, Facebook. A quarter of a century after the Battle of the Beanfield, the British government is still firm on its opposition to the public’s right to gather freely without giving prior notice. Is the “raver” of today really the “domestic extremist” that the police treat him as, or is he remarkably less dangerous individual who just wants to enjoy himself in an isolated field or industrial estate?

It is their links to recreational drugs that make the “raver” so vulnerable to being suppressed without much attention from the media or sympathy from the general public. Due to the perceived moral failure of recreational drug taking the “raver” automatically becomes a criminal and at the mercy of the criminal justice system. Even though the only differences between a “raver” and a rambler is probably that one experiments with illicit drugs and the other wears Gore-Tex. The belief general public's right to access certain public or privately owned land for recreation and exercise is mutual to both parties.

Another thing that the government obviously feels the need to stifle is consumer dissent. The police are currently deploying all their muscle and electronic gadgetry to force the “ravers” to give up hope and return to the “drink till you drop” world of legal nightclubs. These establishments employ many consumer unfriendly measures - such as no seating - to encourage people to drink as much as possible in order to maximize profits. In many cases the main people who make complaints about illegal rave are nightclub owners worried about the loss of profits to their own businesses. Or in other words use the police to change the public’s consumption from an illicit drug popular at “free-parties” to a legal drug popular in most city-centres in Britain. One “raver” was recently quoted in a national newspaper as saying “If you go into Exeter on a Saturday night you'll see fights. I've never seen any trouble at a free party." Ironically police are restrained to respond to rave terrorism due to another regrettable feature of the modern world “Health and Safety”. New regulations meant police were not allowed to break up raves in the dead of night as it was too dark, and the drug-addled revelers would be dispersed blind into the night and presumably make even more of a nuisance of themselves.
 
The state suppression of the “raver” represents in greater context a stepping up of social control and sparks age-old debates about land ownership. Many “ravers” do not see the problem of having a party on public or uncultivated land and then cleaning up after themselves. The people who go to these free parties seem to be more interested in the music - the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act of 1994 defines it as amplified music ('wholly or predominantly characterized by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats') – than plotting “smash the state politics”. However things could be worse a couple of instances in the US and the Czech Republic that make it look like Norfolk Constabulary are taking a softly softly approach.