I have no problem with people having raves on land that they have consent to use.

What i do have a problem with is:

• Rave organisers a couple of trucks to drag 3 telegraph poles, 2 gates and a power harrow (Destroying all of them in the process) off a track to get in to land they don't have consent to use.
• 2000 drugged up wkers breaking into grain sheds in the process writing off £20,000 of farm equipment (no tractors thank god)
• Using 50 acres of field as a car park/race track
• Leaving about 3000 baloons spread across the area along with 50 massive empty N2O tanks
• Stealing several thousand litres of red diesel and 1000 litres of petrol.
• Burning 25 heston bales of straw as a bonfire.

And to top it off the police just stood at the end of the field and said they couldn't do anything but watch as there were no houses where they broke in so they let them go for 36 hours and then took their sound system, great They did turn the cars around on the road though as we can't have a traffic jam in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night can we
When 'someone' got the excavator and started digging a trench to stop the cars leaving they were told if they carried on they would be arrested, now that is fked up.

If i could have lined the organisers up and shot them i would have, shortly after VBRJing them with the N2O canisters they dumped on my land, it's going to take us weeks to clean it up and to top it off the insurance premiums will go up as punishment for us not being able to stop it happen.

fking absolute dog shagging leprosy infected st eating cum buckets

Sounds bad, but the police do have far more powers than they used to. Confiscation of the sound system will be a massive blow to whoever organised the rave.

could you not have decided that the field they were in really urgently some muck spreading in it?

sounds like a pain in the arse.

using a field is not-so-bad but damaging and stealing things is hard to take.

I wonder what grounds they would've had for arresting that 'someone' ?

Have the police not heard of the criminal justice act? The rave scene in the 90s was snubbed out overnight when the CJA was policed. They steam in, rip out the sound system. End of problem.

I must say although not a "raver" I have been involved in the dance music scene for years and I'm surprised to hear of problems like this. Sounds like it could well have been hijacked by some none scene people TBH. In a proper rave everyone would be to smashed to damage or steal anything.

Well to be fair I haven't been to anything decent in about 7 years (highpoint was 1995), and every one was different, depending on the kind of people attending. But mostly good.

There was an Urban75 'Hedge Party' (a party held in a hedge clearing in some part of Feltham) in 2002 with sound systems and a couple of hundred people and when it finished in the morning everybody cleared up any debris to the degree that there wasn't a fag but or ring pull in sight. The only people who knew we were there were the odd early morning dog-walkers.

Some raves were nasty and just full of Ketamine heads lying in their own piss, others were fluffy with people really up for a good time (OCB were great organisers for these type of things with some excellent parties in office blocks in Wood Green and Walthamstow Marshes).

These days though, I do imagine scenarios like the OP describes, and it makes me angry really. A sign of the times I suppose.

A few shots into the air with someone's shotgun may have helped.

Awww st mate So sorry to hear this

Utter scum bags!

OP sorry to hear of the damage - there is absolutely no excuse for it.

In 1991 I was the proud owner of an EV/Crown 50KW PA. It had taken a lot of loans and gigs to pay for and was (then) a remarkable achievement for someone aged 21. We did a lot of outdoor work with bands and the PA was split up into smaller sizes for larger indoor bookings like weddings or for supporting a band. The PA was impressive in its output and relatively small size.

In those days, raves were better organised, free from police laws like the Criminal Justice Act which denied the use of public meetings without formal licensing and agreement from the police. I was at the riots in Hyde Park when this bill was past and it changed the previous happy rave scene for ever, making people edgy and aggressive when they raved rather than happy. More to point the raves were organised WITH the consent of land owners. The farmers were paid for the use of their fields and were active in providing areas to park and making sure that access to other areas was restricted. St. Johns used to attend and when there was a police presence they used to let the ravers enjoy their time, only stepping in when necessary.

Totally agree with that.

In todays' society, the younger generation have got nothing to look forward to. They have no jobs, little chance of finding any decent employment, unlikely to be able to afford a car, let alone £3k for car insurance, uni fees are extortionate and they have no decent pensions to look forward to, to name a few.

None of this makes it acceptable to trash peoples business or possessions, I just think back to how it was in the day, from the days of Acid house and smiley faces, when drugs like like ecstasy generally turned large crowds into warmer happier people.

Silent1 - I hope you get things sorted I really do.

Unfortunately, there are rarely enough Police on duty to deal with a rave. Having hundreds, if not thousands of people turn up in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night is not easy to stop. I know of raves whereby 1000 people have turned up, 3-400 cars, and there are 4 cops on duty for that area, including a Sgt. What are they going to do? If they go in and it gets nasty, they could get seriously hurt. Whilst there is risk of damage to property etc, risk to Police is far too high to chance trying to close it down.

To deal with that size of an issue would mean 100s of riot cops on scene in order to remove the issue without risking injury. Occasionally Police will do this, but the costs are horrendous. Calling in 100 cops (if they could raise that many in smaller forces) would be looking at a minimum of £30k in wages for one day, if not double that. Plus if they do, where would they put 1000 crusties? Sometimes its the lesser of two evils to watch from a distance and monitor, rather than go into the scene.