who knows which rig this was? circumstances of the siezure? :bitter:

It was Mission – seizure was from Northants which is a mostly rural force, in an area which has been targeted for raves since the early 1990s.

Recently a badly chosen venue (not by mission, by people from outside the area) led to major crop damage and loss to a farmer, other raves in the area have caused road blockages (mostly due to bad parking of private cars belonging to ravers) and in one case the closure of a motorway as there was “serious danger” according to traffic cops.

but permanent confiscation isn’t going to stop all crews; and could potentially lead to more nasty incidents when cops and landowners turn up – IME there are people who would fight to defend their financial investment in their equipment; and also a danger that crews may form alliances with more organised criminal groups who can handle the larger financial risk factor.

TBH these conflicts are a dangerous precedent for society as a whole.

Whilst most rave crews are not gangsters, a financial loss of this magnitude could be a knock-back that tips someone over into more serious criminality.. the same goes for farmers whose land gets trashed and who have shotguns, fuel etc.

Once someone feels they have nothing more to lose, they could be capable of anything..

ive heard of farmers defending their land with shotguns and ive heard of raves making a wall of people to protect a rig, never any violence from ravers tho,either OB coming in with batons or farmers shooting things.

over the years (since 1990/1991) there’s been a few bottles/cans thrown at cops and landowners, evicted buildings and farmers property set on fire as reprisals.

Just after the CJA was brought in in 1994, a crew person in London said to me “if the rig was confiscated, I am prepared to go to the area where we were grassed up and burgle houses and shops until we have gained enough cash to replace it!” The chap who said this to me was a media-savvy lad, who did so when I had a video camera and tape recorder in my hand. Although I didn’t record this statement (for everyones safety!) I could easily have done so and he knew that.

This was in the time when the Tories were last in power and were more harsh on confiscating rigs permanently (and cops would do snide shit like put screwdrivers through speakers, cut leads into sections etc) – the stakes were higher…

It did seem that the people who were involved with free parties back then also had far less qualms over funding their activities by other crimes (usually car theft and burglaries) – nowadays its only the odd chav who turns up in a stolen car and in many cases the peer pressure dissuades them from these activities rather than encourages it..

in France the cops became harsher on free parties as well, so the ravers responded – there was an incident last year where after a party was tear-gassed, they just stormed the nearest town/village and busted out every window!

it just proves the point – step up the conflict and both sides will fight their corner..

You may not know about this because things got a bit better from 1997-2001 – for whatever reason Blair’s government didn’t consider raves to be a priority problem; until the middle Englanders whinged via their MPs (look on hansard or theyworkforyou.com and you will see). but the “grudging acceptance” of raves obviously meant less confrontations….

But although British ravers are normally non-violent, the vandalism and trashing is inexcusable, it has got worse since 2000 and creates anger on the other side. It reallly is bad; and does affect the area (I saw a recent claim that one business abandoned a project to move into a building after it was raved – this is people’s jobs that are being lost here…)

However in the 1990s people used to at least try and find serviceable toilets (and not trash them) and/or bury their shit – and nor did they photograph the damage and shit and post the pictures in public places for all to see (why do ppl upload the trashing/crap photos to galleries? it makes it look like we condone these actions….)

We have already captured the territory; there is no need to destroy the infrastructure … and we can’t expect decent hard working people to clean up our human waste after us…

and worse still that fight carried on to a point where a police officer was permanently disabled. The cops in that area are going to hate raves for evermore; even the moderate ones, as will the locals (who will pick up the cost for paying that coppers compensation or pension). No one has won, and there is more hate on all sides. If that was your dad, brother or workmate, would you not want to do everything possible to destroy the lives of those responsible?

TBH a lot of this desire to fight the cops comes from people who live or have lived their lives by real crime anyway (twoc, shoplifting, burglary, sometimes even muggings and othe racts of violence) and have already got disputes with the police for thse matters. (of course I do not consider minor drug issues or making a noise as crime!)( Some make out they are “defending the rig” when in fact they just want a fight for the fun of it, and to “denote their turf”.

Lets face it, despite the fact they can be brutal sometimes, UK policing is still the one of the most liberal forms of policing in the civilised world. Our cops still rarely carry firearms, or deploy water cannon, we have no paramilitary “gendarmes” as many other nations do, and it is unheard of in our lifetime for the regular Army to be called out to quell a public disturbance.

There are lots of countries in the world, including European ones, where this is not the case. But if every time the old bill got called out they were overpowered and people were free to invade others land and do as they please, very soon the rest of society would be asking for them to have more powers and more weapons.

Brixton and Bristol aren’t utopian anarchist paradises because people took to the street, quite the contrary, it appears to have caused an authoritarian backlash.

How else do the Tories get elected to Brixton and manage to stop the cannabis march?

Look also at what’s happening to the travelling community – because elements amongst them have been confrontational in the past, now when a Government is finally trying to do something positive for them it is encountering severe opposition.

A party happens because crews have invaded someone elses resources by force of numbers, and (usually) against their will.

Even then, the cops quite often let people carry on until Sunday morning or even afternoon – it seems like an acceptable compromise to stand down at that point, and return the space to as clean a condition as possible.

We cannot expect the rest of society to accept even grudginly tolerate what we do; unless we are also prepared to make some concessions..

and this often consists of specials….(which is one reason why its a particularly bad idea to wind them up and post links back to SJ!)

OTOH there is much more backup available with the airwave radios, unlike analogue ones they automatically report back to control where all the units are… (also stops cops lying about their locations whilst they stuff their faces!) and some have GPS built in… so control rooms can easily work out how much spare resources they have left.

to be fair, the cops do seem to know this as well otherwise they would be even harsher about stopping parties!

IME ravers who don’t do other crime, have a normal job and in particular are not involved in violence tend to be left alone, unless they are caught red-handed with drugs or provoke cops in riot gear and refuse to move on when requested.

OTOH you can’t blame cops for becoming more and more cynical and judgemental when they end up clearing out a building or field on Sunday afternoon and witnessing some of the damage and contamination – or if people go on to their message boards and start trouble.

And if I were a business owner and had seen a between lets unit I planned to use for my project trashed by a rave, I think the cops would also end up warning me off taking “direct action” of my own!

….they get insurance money if a rave takes place in thier building.

i agree that in some cases it will make little diffeence, ie, if the owner had something planned for the Monday. but in most cases i don’t think building owners mind too much about getting a fat chunk of money for a building they weren’t even using.

maybe i’m being naive.

they will get insurance payout, but if the OB know who the organisers are the insureres may pay out only if they make a civil case against the organisers.

yep I agree with this;. pulled a nice ‘party’ a couple of years bac large 000s number of peeps. . wicked nite no problems, no OB. . just happy faces. . then a crew started to get well knarly. .and although all was chilled these folk became very confrontational . . I quote ” wheres the OB then? ain’t aparty unless we had a ruKK . .this is shit. .” they then started to LOOK for fights in and around the peeeps in atendance. . although initialy they rekconed themselves to be ‘protectors’ of our liberties. .HuH??????? if it is not bad enough that we are trying to live our culture . .we surley should not have to deal with that type of poo as well as OB. . boo to those with egos!!!