Free party
It typically involves a sound system playing electronic dance music from late at night until the time when the organisers decide to go home.
Since the birth of nightclubs in town centres in Europe the use of the word rave had largely fallen out of fashion; however, in recent times it is increasingly being used again.
The noise and disturbance of thousands of people appearing at parties in rural locations, such as Genesis '88, caused outrage in the national media.
[citation needed] In August and September 1990 a series of unlicensed free parties took place on Pepperbox Hill, just outside Salisbury, in South Wiltshire.
They used different pseudonyms, including Inner Temple, The Fools On The Hill and The Leyline Lunatics, but ultimately became known as the People From Pepperbox or PFP.
Initially small scale affairs, the parties grew in size during August as word spread to clubbers in Bournemouth and Southampton.
The People From Pepperbox then went on to organise three subsequent events in 1990, at Barton Stacey airfield in Hampshire, a disused RAF airbase at Sopley in Dorset, and at a squatted former pub in Salisbury, deploying guerilla tactics to stay ahead of the police and ensure the parties remained undetected until they were too large to be stopped by the authorities.
[citation needed] After sensational coverage in the tabloids, culminating in a particularly large rave (near Castlemorton) in May 1992, the government acted on what was depicted as a growing menace.
This led to the expansion of the movement mainly due to the collective named Spiral Tribe, who fled the UK after the Castlemorton rave.
Fleeing the numerous fines they were facing from the English government, they went to France, where they organized the first major festival outside the United Kingdom : Frenchtek, which is still held illegally every year.
[citation needed] Free parties tend to be on the boundaries of law and are discouraged by government authorities, occasionally using aggressive police tactics.
The breakcore, gabba, psy-trance, freetekno, Acid Tekno, Hard Trance and Electro House/Techno, Drum & Bass/Jungle, Hardtek, Tribe, Tribecore, Tekstep genres are all played.
Some parties in England, but also across Europe such as in the Netherlands, now incorporate elements of performance art ("synthetic circus") as well as electronic dance music.
[citation needed] Due to the lack of licensing restrictions, these parties often start after midnight and continue through the night until morning, often longer.
[citation needed] The squat party community embraces autonomous, anarchistic principles by refusing to recognize the right of any third-party authority to decide when and how people should congregate.
[citation needed] Occasionally, squat parties act as ad-hoc information points where political pamphlets are distributed or petitions signed in order to raise awareness about a variety of causes, usually of a left-wing nature.
London's Reclaim the Streets movement, which brought traffic and commerce to a standstill once a year in an attempt to draw public attention to inner city problems, was itself a highly visible and politicized affiliate of the U.K. squat party scene.
Section 65 allows any uniformed constable who believes a person is on their way to a rave within a five-mile radius to stop them and direct them away from the area; non-compliant citizens may be subject to a maximum fine not exceeding level 3 on the standard scale (£1000).
More recently in the United Kingdom, anti-social behaviour orders (ASBOs) have been used against unlicensed rave organisers if the police receive repeated complaints about noise and littering from locals.
The majority of London squat parties occur in mainly industrial states in disused warehouses which make ideal venues and a smaller chance of residential noise complaints.
Squat parties has grown in recent decades after London night clubs start closing down in a fast rate.
Since 2007, new laws and restrictions imposed by the council and government has created a crisis in London night life forcing many club closing its doors.
Drugs sale and use is long standing and accepted, most commonly MDMA (ecstasy), amphetamine, cocaine, LSD, psilocybin mushrooms, cannabis, nitrous oxide, and ketamine.
[citation needed] Drugs are easily available at almost all free parties and people often use stimulants to reduce the fatigue resulting from dancing for many hours, as well as for the recreational effects.
Although London is the central location for squat parties[citation needed], they exist outside the capital and places such as Three Counties Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire & Cambridgeshire also Buckinghamshire have popular scenes dating pre 1995.
Most organisers will try to secure a warehouse, if not they will look for a wooded area to hide themselves and try and soften the music and enjoy the outdoor environment also to avoid being discovered by the authorities.
