It pisses me off when free party people look down on so called ‘chavs’ as they have no clue of where the scene originated from or who the old skool actually were!!!! There would be no rave culture in the country if it were not for normal working class guys and girls.

that is so true…

the rave culture came from the “casual” scene in the 1980s (in my city it was those who wore mostly sports clothes and weren’t goths)

they were the sort of lads and lasses who took the risks bringing in a pill or ten (they were proper risks, you could get serious fines and/or HMP for just a couple of beans whilst nowadays you’d get a caution), who collected and shared mixtapes and flyers and held houseparties whilst others were sat in their rooms listening to the Smiths and the Cure and contemplating suicide

OK these kids did do some bad things but it wasn’t as violent as today, fighting usually only happened if people got ripped off on deals (at £15 a pill and a risk of 7 years minimum stretch that’s perhaps understandable!), yes there was a fair bit of theft to get money for partying and a few scams but high drug prices may have exacerbated this

and a fair number of people took way too much drugs and went off the rails (some dead, some in HMP, some gone mad)

but getting involved in the rave scene (particularly when it also meant doing something constructive like art or music) made some of us better people..