Free Party - History

History

After the emergence of the Acid House parties in the late 1980s up to 4,000 people were known to attend a rave. These events happened almost every weekend. The noise and disturbance of thousands of people appearing at parties in rural locations, such as Genesis '88, caused outrage in the national media. The British government made the fine for holding an illegal party £20,000 and six months in prison.

Police crackdowns on these often-illegal parties drove the scene into the countryside. The word "rave" somehow caught on to describe these semi-spontaneous weekend parties occurring at various locations outside the M25 Orbital motorway that now attracted up to 25 000. It was this that gave the band 'Orbital' their name. Sounds systems from this time include Spiral Tribe and DiY.

In the 1990s raves began to expand into a global phenomenon. Around 1989-1992 people who had travelled to attend the first raves began setting up promotion companies in each region to organize their own parties. This happened on a grassroots basis, often informally. By the mid-1990s, major corporations were sponsoring events and adopting the scene's music and fashion for their "edgier" advertising, making the scene become more commercialized.

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. In 1994, the United Kingdom's Criminal Justice Bill passed as the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 which contained several sections designed to suppress the growing free party and anti-road protest movements (sometimes embodied by ravers and travellers).

By the early 2000s, the term "rave" had fallen out of favour among some people in the electronic dance music community, particularly in Europe. Many Europeans identify themselves as "clubbers" rather than ravers. The term 'free party' has been used for sometime and can be seen on the Spiral Tribe video 'Forward the Revolution' in 1992. It tried to disconnect raves from big commercial events of the early nineties to a more anarchist version of a party.

Some communities preferred the term "festival", while others simply referred to "parties". With less constrictive laws allowing raves to continue long after the United Kingdom tried to ban them, more anarchic raves continue to occur in Central Europe and France, where the law says there can be only 4 teknivals per year (2 in the south, 2 in the north). In France the larger teknivals can attract up to 30 000 people in a three-day period. The terms free party and squat party have become the predominant terms used to describe an illegal party.

The term "rave" is still often used to describe an unlicensed party in some parts of the United Kingdom, particularly the South East - perhaps because larger licensed "rave" events have become less common due to anti-drugs enforcement causing venue owners to be wary of hosting them. Free parties tend to be on the boundaries of law and are strongly discouraged by government authorities, occasionally using aggressive police tactics.