On the first weekend of June 2022, hundreds of people arrived at Davidstow Moor in the south- west of England for a three- day party. Held on an abandoned military base that is now public land and miles from the nearest house, the partygoers had followed a widely shared text message that finished by telling them: ‘Please be respectful to the locals and the authorities. Lets not give them a reason to become hostile towards us. The mission is to leave the site as we find it. We are all responsible! Please bring bin bags and take home what you can in your vehicles.’ Despite the partygoers being of no apparent threat to public safety or property, the police were mobilized to prevent access to the party, and although they did not attempt to shut it down, they did limit the number of people who were able to get there. As the Queen's Diamond Jubilee was celebrated elsewhere across the country on the same extended weekend of street parties bedecked in Union Jack flags, cream teas and village cricket matches, videos of the rave were shared on social media and the national news. To understand why a few hundred people having a party that did not impact anyone other than the police who were needlessly sent there made national news, we need to understand a little of the history of free parties in Britain, and the first clue is in the text message quoted earlier, which starts: ‘Free festival culture is back celebrating 30 years of Castlemorton!’

Castlemorton refers to a gathering of 50,000 people in Gloucestershire in May 1992. The Castlemorton Common rave occurred when the police prevented people from getting to the Avon Free Festival near Bath, resulting in thousands of people, the buses and vans that they lived in, along with countless sound systems parking on Castlemorton Common in the Malvern Hills. With nowhere to go, the party on the common started on 22 May and carried on for seven days. Leaked police intelligence reports have since indicated that the Travellers may have been intentionally corralled into a renowned beauty spot to engineer public animosity towards the ‘New Age Travellers’ of the free party scene. Soon enough, hostile editorials were running in the national press to call for legislation to criminalize free parties, or raves.