Secret networks are keeping the capital\u2019s free parties alive<\/p>\n
On Saturday nights around 11pm, hundreds of young Londoners gather at train stations and in car parks after the first location \u2014 or \u201cloco\u201d \u2014 drops into an encrypted group chat. An hour or two later, they\u2019re dancing inside abandoned office blocks, shuttered restaurants and empty warehouses as generators hum and bass reverberates through buildings long forgotten by the city.<\/p>\n
By 3am, there might be 2,000 people inside \u2014 more than many licensed clubs can legally hold. Sometimes police stand outside while organisers invoke squatters\u2019 rights. Sometimes they never arrive at all. The conventional night out might be dying a slow death, but the free party movement is thriving, whether inside London or in fields, forests or barns outside the city. Forget the polished, Instagram-friendly sound dominating much of today\u2019s club scene. The music you\u2019ll hear at these parties will span donk, psytrance, techno and tekno, a raw, fast-paced electronic music genre born out of the free party movement.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s clearly growing in a way that it hasn\u2019t done for a while,\u201d says Aaron Trinder, the director of Free Party: A Folk History. \u201cI think that\u2019s down to the lack of an alternative for people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Spiralling ticket prices, widespread venue closures and increasingly heavy-handed security have pushed some young Londoners away from licensed nightlife and towards illegal parties, where entry is often little more than a suggested \u00a35-10 donation. In return, many say they recover something missing from conventional clubbing: freedom. And a can of Stella for \u00a32.50.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor young partygoers, going to a club has become increasingly challenging, and that\u2019s why the free party scene has started bubbling again,\u201d says Alessandro Ugo, the director of F[r]EE: Behind the Scenes of the Free Party Culture. \u201cFree parties are self-managed, you are part of the party. How you behave affects the vibe.\u201d<\/p>\n
Photographer Yushy has attended more than 150 unlicensed parties over the past five years and last year published his book, Section 63: Documenting Underground London Raves. He found a scene largely hostile to social media \u2014 and to documentation more generally. That means people are more likely to be immersed in the moment and less concerned about appearances.<\/p>\n
\u201cI could look at somebody who was completely different to me and think, we made it into this together,\u201d he says. \u201cWe waited two or three hours for the location, we ran away from the police, but we\u2019re here together as one unit.\u201d<\/p>\n
On one occasion, he recalls partying in a former Gordon Ramsay restaurant in central London. \u201cThere were about 200 or 300 people there raving and we could just see Leicester Square underneath us,\u201d he says. \u201cPeople were just sitting in booths talking to each other while drum and bass played.\u201d After years of partying in abandoned buildings across the capital, he came away convinced of \u201chow empty London really is\u201d.<\/p>\n
The scene also attracts opportunists seeking to disrupt the convivial fun \u2014 selling balloons and substandard drugs, stealing phones and escalating conflicts.<\/p>\n
A well-known sound system crew organised a party, London\u2019s Calling Vol. 2, which was attended by a few thousand opposite the closed Printworks club in Rotherhithe at the beginning of this year, but they vowed never to do so in the capital again. \u201cMany of our crew and staff were assaulted, had weapons pulled on them, and some were hospitalised while trying to keep everyone safe,\u201d they said in a statement circulated on Telegram. \u201cThe same problem has followed London parties for years now: people turning up with pathetic rivalries, egos, weapons, bringing street politics into spaces that are meant to be about music and freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n
But the party will go on, whether inside the capital or not, even as organisers risk punishment and larger parties are less common as they are more likely to get busted with the advent of the internet.<\/p>\n
In 1994, John Major\u2019s government made free parties illegal but the burgeoning acid house scene largely found a home in licensed venues. Now history has come full circle after interest surged after the pandemic.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere will always be a newer, younger generation with enough courage to say, \u2018OK, I\u2019m gonna start a crew, squat that building and start throwing parties\u2019,\u201d says Ugo. Despite the risks, the movement is no longer as marginal as it once seemed.<\/p>\n
The annual Night Time Industries Association report in February reported on an underground resurgence, with free parties and unlicensed raves numbering about 1,350 parties per year \u2014 roughly four per cent of all UK electronic music events.<\/p>\n