What happens when a rave gets shut down… [1989]

While the late 80s and early 90s saw countless free parties held around the outskirts of London’s M25, some were sadly nipped in the bud early, as this interview clip from the excellent Kino Library demonstrates…

The interviewee is the landlady of the Lord Howard pub at Effingham Junction, who was looking forward to a good night’s trading when hundreds of young people turned up at her doorstep, only for the police to tell her to shut the premises down.

“When the kids started to turn up, the police were stopping all the cars. What for I don’t know. Then they all started coming to the bar for a drink, and all they were asking for were Cokes and orange juice and lemonades [of course! – Ed], and we were asked to close the pub down. The police said that it would get out of hand, and if it got out of hand, they wouldn’t be able to help us.”

Were the young people causing trouble, which would have necessitated such a dramatic intervention?

“No trouble at all,” the landlady replies.

It’s a reminder of the zero-tolerance attitude towards rave culture that permeated through the UK police force, one that was compounded by the introduction of the infamous Criminal Justice Bill in 1994.

Sadly the Lord Howard is no more, having been demolished to make way for housing. We’d like to think that some of the M25 ravers are living in those houses right now, planning the next all-nighter…

[Kudos to thekinolibrary for the upload. Picture by Dave Swindells, www.daveswindells.com]