The Castlemorton Common Festival was a week-long

free festival Free festivals are a combination of music, arts and cultural activities, for which often no admission is charged, but involvement is preferred. They are identifiable by being multi-day events connected by a camping community without centralised c ...

and

rave A rave (from the verb: '' to rave'') is a dance party at a warehouse, club, or other public or private venue, typically featuring performances by DJs playing electronic dance music. The style is most associated with the early 1990s dance mus ...

held in the

Malvern Hills The Malvern Hills are in the English counties of Worcestershire, Herefordshire and a small area of northern Gloucestershire, dominating the surrounding countryside and the towns and villages of the district of Malvern. The highest summit affo ...

near

Malvern Malvern or Malverne may refer to: Places Australia * Malvern, South Australia, a suburb of Adelaide * Malvern, Victoria, a suburb of Melbourne * City of Malvern, a former local government area near Melbourne * Electoral district of Malvern, an e ...

Worcestershire Worcestershire ( , ; written abbreviation: Worcs) is a county in the West Midlands of England. The area that is now Worcestershire was absorbed into the unified Kingdom of England in 927, at which time it was constituted as a county (see His ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

between 22 and 29 May 1992. The media interest and controversy surrounding the festival, and concerns as to the way it was policed, inspired the legislation that would eventually become the

Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 The Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 (c.33) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It introduced a number of changes to the law, most notably in the restriction and reduction of existing rights, clamping down on unlicensed ...

Background

In May 1992

Avon and Somerset Police Avon and Somerset Police is the territorial police force responsible for law enforcement in the county of Somerset and in four districts that used to be in the defunct county of Avon: Bristol, Bath and North East Somerset, North Somerset and So ...

tried to end the annual Avon Free Festival, which had been held in the

Bristol Bristol () is a city, ceremonial county and unitary authority in England. Situated on the River Avon, it is bordered by the ceremonial counties of Gloucestershire to the north and Somerset to the south. Bristol is the most populous city in ...

area around the May

Bank Holiday A bank holiday is a national public holiday in the United Kingdom, Republic of Ireland and the Crown Dependencies. The term refers to all public holidays in the United Kingdom, be they set out in statute, declared by royal proclamation or held ...

for several years.McKay, G. (1996) ''Senseless Acts of Beauty: Cultures of Resistance'', Page 120, Verso As a result, hundreds of

new age travellers New Age travellers, not completely synonymous with but otherwise shortened to New Travellers (often referred to as "crusties"), are people in the United Kingdom generally espousing New Age beliefs along with the hippie culture of the 1960s (over ...

en route to the area for the expected festival were shunted into neighbouring counties by Avon and Somerset's Operation Nomad police manoeuvres, with

West Mercia Police West Mercia Police (), formerly the West Mercia Constabulary, is the territorial police force responsible for policing the counties of Herefordshire, Shropshire (including Telford and Wrekin) and Worcestershire in England. The force area cover ...

deciding to confine them to common land at

Castlemorton Castlemorton is a village and civil parish close to Malvern in the Malvern Hills District in the county of Worcestershire, England. It consists of a village centre, a large common and many farms and houses within the area. In 2013 the Worceste ...

Events

The first travellers arrived on the common on 22 May, but the high-profile coverage in the national media only served to swell the crowd further as ravers from far afield made their way to join the festival, thus making it an impossible task for the authorities to close the event down. An estimated 20,000–40,000 people gathered on Castlemorton Common for the party which lasted a full week, the biggest of its kind since the

Stonehenge Free Festival The Stonehenge Free Festival was a British free festival from 1974 to 1984 held at the prehistoric monument Stonehenge in England during the month of June, and culminating with the summer solstice on or near 21 June. It emerged as the major fre ...

in the mid-1980s.During, S. (2005) ''Cultural Studies: A Critical Introduction'', Page 131, Routledge Castlemorton hosted many of the large

sound systems In physics, sound is a vibration that propagates as an acoustic wave, through a transmission medium such as a gas, liquid or solid. In human physiology and psychology, sound is the ''reception'' of such waves and their ''perception'' by the ...

of the time such as Bedlam, Circus Warp,

Spiral Tribe Spiral Tribe is an arts collective and free party sound system formed in 1990. It organised free parties, festivals and raves in the UK and later Europe in the 1990s. Spiral Tribe was involved in the Castlemorton Common Festival and members ha ...

and

DiY Sound System DiY Sound System, also known as the DiY Collective, was a British house music sound system that formed in 1989. The group "divided their activities between free parties and legal club nights, acting as a bridge between counter-culture and the ma ...

, and bands such as

Back To The Planet Back to the Planet are an anarcho-punk band from London, England. Their music blends elements of ska, dub, punk, and electronic dance music. They formed in 1989, split in 1995 to pursue personal music projects. They had a reunion gig in 200 ...

, Xenophobia (fronted by Spiral Tribe's MC Skallywag), AOS3 and

Poisoned Electrick Head Poisoned Electrick Head (PEH) is an English psychedelic indie rock/punk band formed in 1986 in St Helens, Merseyside, England.Carney, B. (2010) ''Take Your Protein Pills...'', Page 29, Lulu The band is best known for the 1994 independent ch ...

.Carney, B. (2010) ''Take Your Protein Pills...'', Page 141, Lulu Simon Reynolds wrote retrospectively that, "during the next five days of its existence, Castlemorton will inspire questions in Parliament, make the front page of every newspaper in England and incite nationwide panic about the whereabouts of the next destination on the crusty itinerary."Reynolds, S. (1998) ''Energy Flash'', Pages 135-140, Picador Days after the festival around twenty travellers were camped outside Worcester police station as their vehicles had been seized by West Mercia Police, preventing them from travelling on. Speaking in a

House of Commons The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. ...

debate, the local MP at the time,

Michael Spicer William Michael Hardy Spicer, Baron Spicer, (22 January 1943 – 29 May 2019) was a British politician and life peer who was a Conservative member of the House of Lords from 2010 until 2019. He served as Member of Parliament for West Worcest ...

, opined, "new age travellers, ravers and drugs racketeers arrived at a strength of two motorised army divisions, complete with several massed bands and, above all, a highly sophisticated command and signals system. However, they failed to bring latrines. The numbers, speed and efficiency with which they arrived—amounting at one time to as many as 30,000 people—combined to terrorise the local community to the extent that some residents had to undergo psychiatric treatment in the days that followed. Such an incident must never happen again, in my constituency or elsewhere. We need tighter laws, especially to give banning powers to the police; a Cabinet Committee to bring responsible Departments together; quicker and more co-ordinated police action; and a more effective application of existing policies by national and local authorities."

Aftermath

Thirteen members of

were arrested after the event, and charged with public order offences. After a lengthy and costly trial, they were acquitted. Concerns about the festival and the way in which it was policed inspired the legislation which developed into the

.Fielding, N. (2005) ''The Police and Social Conflict'', Page 113, Routledge Cavendish This wide-ranging Act effectively made illegal such outdoor parties playing music that, as defined in section 63(1)(b), incorporates "sounds wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats". Whilst some have argued that Castlemorton, with its attendant publicity, led directly to the Criminal Justice Act and was the "final nail in the coffin of the unlicensed event", others have seen the Act as a draconian piece of legislation which was "explicitly aimed at suppressing the activities of certain strands of alternative culture".Gilbert J. (1999) ''Discographies: Dance Music, Culture, and the Politics of Sound'', Page 150, Routledge

References

External links

Castlemorton Festival on Free Party PeopleFestival account on BeyondTV
{{coords, 52.05, -2.32, display=title DIY culture Parties Counterculture festivals Electronic music festivals in the United Kingdom Rave culture in the United Kingdom Music festivals in Worcestershire Free parties Rave Teknivals Music festivals established in 1992 1992 music festivals

Background

Events

Aftermath

See also

References

External links