THE SETTING
It is the early hours of the morning in late March; in the limbo between late winter and early spring. The air is still cold, and the trees are still bare, their branches reach out into the empty sky like thin crooked arms. Hackney Road, the usually bustling arterial thoroughfare connecting Shoreditch to the heart of the east end of London is quiet at this hour. It seems to exist not just as a road but as an area in and of itself, the main vein from the city to the east. Although it has experienced mounting gentrification with Shoreditch nearby and markets such as Broadway and Columbia Road, it still retains vestiges of its origins; stripteases, fast food outlets, building sites, retail stores and a bingo hall.
Towering above everything else on the road, a giant block rising against the skyline, is the Mecca Bingo. Its doors shut the previous summer and it has lain empty for close on a year. Tonight, there is activity in the building again. I was told to text ‘a man’ at 10pm who would give me the location of a clandestine event. The location was delivered to my phone in the form of co-ordinates, these led me to the Mecca Bingo. These sorts of events had their heyday in the UK during the 90s before they were illegalised, and nightclubs took their place. In the last few years however they have experienced something of a revival and in the cold morning air on Hackney Road the faint sound of bass can be heard reverberating from the iconic building. All seems quiet from the outside; everything is dark and several trips around the building reveal no entry point. If it wasn’t for the faint sound of bass, I would have thought I had taken a wrong turn somehow or the police had arrived here first.
Eventually I spot a few youths skulking around outside the building; like me they are traipsing the perimeter. We are clearly headed to the same place. I decide to follow them. They halt before two, large metal gates at the back and pull them as far apart as the massive chain holding them together will allow. While one holds the gates apart the others slip between the narrow crack. I have found the way in.
In a large, empty parking space there are make-shift tables, and someone is taking in £2 per person to cover the costs of the event - if that. Given that my bag is already filled with quite a few cans of beer, this is the cheapest night out I have had in a long time. These nights are clearly not about profit, so what are they about? I am hurriedly ushered through a door, appearing as if from nowhere in the side of the building. The door closes behind me and a thrill rushes through me. On the inside it is the second summer of love, no the third, but instead of a field we are now in a squatted empty building. The sound booms around the cavernous hall, they are at least five different sound systems arranged around one massive space. At one end is another make shift table, this time a bar. On the menu is beer (cans, £1), nitrous oxide balloons (£2), and an assortment of drugs (£10-£60). A man is sitting on the floor in the middle of all of this with a scale and his supplies, weighing and packaging the last product on the menu for the party goers. There seems to be free reign here, anything goes. No centralised form of authority, no profit, and the gain; to provide a space where people can be free and have a good time.
All I can do is wonder, how did this come about?
THE HISTORY
In 1987 four friends, DJs Paul Oakenfold, Johnny Walker, Danny Rampling and Nicky Holloway, boarded a plane to Ibiza where they discovered house music and ecstasy, declared themselves forever changed and brought their new found knowledge back home. This was the start of what would become known as the second summer of love, it was the birth of rave culture in the UK:
‘the birth of the rave movement, the introduction of ecstasy to the general population, the tie-dye T-shirts and the eventual scene-dismantling implications of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act of 1994 – was nothing short of miraculous. It was 1988. It was the Second Summer of Love. It was Great Britain loosening its tie, and its reverberations are being felt to this very day’ (quote).
Rave culture in the UK is a mix of class, cultures and people. In a Dazed short film about 90s rave culture a raver recalls: ‘as a young, gay black teen – that was home’ (“UK 90s Rave Culture”). It was an anti-establishment movement built on freedom. It was a place of acceptance and diversity, a space for people who did not fit into the norm and a backlash against the Thatcher years. That is until a mere 6 years after its inception and two years after Thatcher left office the conservative government brought in the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act of 1994. Section 63 of the act famously stated that police could shut down events ‘characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats’ (Mullin), clearly targeting the burgeoning rave culture. Thatcher’s legacy lived on and it was the beginning of the end of the free party scene of the 90s.
Still, the scene persevered and has remained a staple of British culture. As a party goer remarks to journalist Wil Crisp while queueing for a free rave: ‘“Did you watch the royal wedding?” [...] “Now it’s time for a different kind of British tradition.”’ Present day free parties, or squat parties as they are often called, require a series of steps to come to fruition, and these are inevitably always the same: the organisers drive around and scout a location and once this location is found they go inside and check that it can support a sound system and that the building is safe. Once this has been established the organisers will ‘break’ in (in a way that appears that they are not breaking in) get in their sound system and then reach out to other sound systems. The party hotline will usually go live around 10pm on the Friday night. All you have to do is call a number – obtained from a friend of a friend - and you will be sent the geolocation of the party.
This setup of a sound system, a crew and a crowd of people looking to have a good time initially came to the UK via Jamaica back in 1948 on the Empire Windrush. DJs in Jamaica were known as ‘soundmen’, they played sound systems at big parties called dancehalls, all competing with one another to draw the biggest crowd. When the Windrush Generation relocated to the UK sound systems were the only place to hear reggae. They were a symbol of the fight against racism (Bradshaw). With the coming of the second summer of love sound system parties turned into ‘raves’ and continued to be a token of fighting the status quo.
THE RESURGENCE
Squat raves, especially in London, have seen a drastic rise in recent years. This seems to be in direct correlation with the drastic fall of London’s nightlife venues. London is a city with innumerable attractions, it is an endless cultural to-do list, but a look at London’s nightlife over the past few years shows something else. Nightclubs in London have decreased by 50% over the past five years, says a BBC News article fittingly titled ‘Last call: What’s happened to London’s nightlife?’ Prominent members of Europe’s nightlife community are interviewed and give their prognosis on London. Amsterdam’s night mayor Miric Milan claims that the nightlife industry in London is being killed by the city officials and Fabien Riggall, founder of Secret Cinema states:
‘"There should be places - this is London - but there is a massive lack of places which are open late [...] It's so sad what's going on with London at the moment. There's such a lack of support in these cultural spaces” (Cafe).
A more recent local debate taking place is over licensing laws, which have always been strict in London:
"Last night Hackney Council voted for all new venues to close at midnight at weekends, despite their own poll of residents voting 84% against the measures. Why wasn't Amy Lamé outside giving a press conference condemning the council? What is a Night Czar for?” (Busby).
It is a testament to the city’s nightlife decline that in 2016 London mayor Sadiq Khan took action and appointed its first ‘night czar’, Amy Lamé, to give the night time economy a needed boost. There was speculation, however, when she failed to comment or negotiate on a new set of laws, aimed at the borough of Hackney – home to the Mecca Bingo. Championing a vision of London as a 24-hour city, Khan and Lamé did not manage to halt the curfew. Shortly after the night tube opened the Hackney council voted to restrict all new venues to an 11pm weeknight curfew and 12am weekend one, effectively barring new businesses and commerce from the area (Busby). It is against this backdrop, in abandoned warehouses and empty buildings across London, that the free rave scene from the second summer of love made a comeback.
‘IN THE UK FREE PARTIES – OFTEN REGARDED AS A RELIC OF THE 1990s – ARE THRIVING’ (Needham).
Illegal raves doubled between 2016 and 2017 from 70 to 133 (Lee). Something was changing on the party landscape. In May 2016 Vice published a documentary called “Britain’s Illegal Rave Renaissance: Locked Off” on the phenomenon of the resurgence of illegal raves and squat parties in the UK. But what exactly is a squat party? A lot of the Britain’s illegal parties take place in empty buildings which the organisers are effectively ‘squatting’ in, hence ‘squat party’. It is, I think, an interesting aspect of UK free parties that they are thrown by an underground culture equipped with the knowledge of how to manipulate the UK law to their advantage. In the documentary, rave organiser ‘Havik’ points to a sign and says ‘this is what we stick up onto the buildings as soon as we get in.’ It is their safety net and once it’s up they can’t be told to ‘f*ck off.’ This piece of paper is somewhat infamous in the underground party scene, it has become known as the ‘Squatters Rights’ sign, and as soon as sound systems enter the vicinity the sign goes over the door. By the time these raves are in full swing it is often more hassle than not for the police to remove all the party goers and sound systems and many times the police will leave, just issuing a warning. The Squatters Rights sign states: ‘THIS IS A NON-RESIDENTIAL BUILDING. Section 144, LASPO2 does NOT apply’, which refers to a clause in UK law about squatters rights. A look on www.gov.uk reveals that
‘Simply being on another person’s non-residential property without their permission is not usually a crime. The police can take action if squatters commit other crimes when entering or staying in a property’ (“Squatting and the law”).
The level of protection the Squatters Rights sign actually offers is unclear, these parties seem to operate under a grey area of the law. At the very least, a ‘noise abatement’ order could be issued, and the party forcibly shut down. In the Vice documentary a member of the Scum Tek crew from London appears with heavily covered faces and distorted voices confirming ‘no sound system would ever risk their equipment’ (“Rave Renaissance”). The sign does not guarantee a party’s safety, the parties will shut down with police pressure and the premises will be evacuated.
It is important to emphasis the ethos behind these parties. In a Time Out interview Scum Tek states that no one is turned away, it is ‘free in spirit and free to attend’ (qtd. in Keens). Everyone is welcome. The organisers of these parties are conscious about creating an atmosphere that is not about money, judgement or exclusivity. They want London to have a thriving underground, creative scene. Which leads to another contributor to the resurgence of illegal raves: modern club culture. In an age of social media where people stand on the dancefloor filming the experience rather than living it, the original intent of rave culture has died. Clubs promote their music nights and they promote the acts on the line up to draw people inside. Illegal raves exist offline. There are no promotions, no advertising, no one is on the ‘line-up’, people find out organically and turn up just to have a good time. It is not about ego but about people coming together to create something. In the age of the internet, this is a way of partying that is entirely unique:
‘Promoters at Printworks or Fabric want the maximum number of people seeing details of their party on Facebook and Instagram [...] For us it’s the opposite – it’s offline and it’s about friends of friends. It’s the most organic reach you’ll ever get’ (Crisp).
‘POLITICALLY IT’S AS BAD NOW, IF NOT WORSE, AS IT WAS IN THE LATE 80s’ (Needham).
I have covered the party landscape: the club closures, the strict licencing laws, the early curfews and the sterile club culture. However, there is another landscape that has contributed to and shaped illegal raves; that is the political landscape. Raves were established in 88-89 against the political backdrop of Thatcher and her policies. It was a reaction to the conservative government, a form of protest. Raves were a place where dividing factors such as colour and class fell away and the rave ethos of PLUR (peace, love, unity and respect) took over. The political backdrop of today harks back to the Thatcher years.
First the largest financial and economic recession in many years left large portions of the youth uncertain about their future, this was followed by a conservative government back in power and then austerity measures, rising university tuition and a referendum hugely unpopular with the youth which resulted in Brexit. Illegal parties reflect this atmosphere and the squat rave has a political edge. In Vice’s “...Locked Off” Scum Tek recall being at the poll tax riots and today their Facebook page has links to petitions both against the austerity measures and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) (Butter). And it is not just Scum Tek, at a recent party in Hackney money was raised for the Brufut Education Project . This project has been supported by many of the free party crews since 2010 (Crisp). The parties are making a statement against the politics of today. Many see clashes with the law as synonymous with clashes with ‘the system.’ As an attendee of a shut-down rave put it: ‘One [raver] described the blare of techno above police sirens as "the sound of the government getting fucked with a kick drum"’ (Return of Underground Rave Culture).
THE REALITY
As I stand in the Mecca Bingo watching the sound systems, like the soundmen in Jamaica, wrestle it out for the biggest crowd something strikes me. This is the lack of personal gain involved – gain at least in the capitalist sense that we as a society have come to understand. I contemplate the time, effort, money and risk it must have taken to organise and successfully pull off an event like this. The people involved in the scene do this because they love it, because it is their life and because they want to create a liberating space for people. It is not about personal gain and it is not about making money.
The absence of the need for profit provides a stark relief to what I am accustomed to. The interest they all seem to have in common is creating a sense of community. Is this a blueprint for a society without capitalistic gain? A squatted Mecca Bingo in Hackney Road? It certainly feels like entering an alternate universe. It is on the fringes of legality, largely gritty and the facilities leave much to be desired in the ways of cleanliness and functionality, but as I wonder – how did this all come about? a second thought comes to my mind – is the British tradition of the squat rave about more than just a group of people looking for a party? Could they be a heterotopia of anti-capitalism, a twilight-zone version of a social experiment to see what happens when you take selfish gain and money as profit out of society, even if just between four walls and just for one night?