Those were the raves...

Lockdown has seen an illegal rave revival amid the beaches and bracken of Kent, the likes of which have not been seen since the heady acid-house, neon-glow gatherings in the late 80s. Chris Britcher takes a look back.

Cars - hundreds of them - would start gathering as the sun went down. For young party-goers, the process was simple; the date having been flagged up on flyers distributed to record shops and revellers outside nightclubs.

They would circle the M25, tuned into a pirate radio station, awaiting details of where they needed to go.

On one warm summer’s night in August 1989, the place to meet was near Brands Hatch, in a field in nearby Happy Valley, Meopham.

What revellers didn’t realise was that they were about to attend a defining event for the county during what was dubbed the Second Summer of Love. This was the era of the illegal rave and thousands couldn’t get enough.

Emerging from clubs and house parties, police crackdowns had driven the events into rural areas. And Kent was ideally placed.

Huge sound systems and professional lighting rigs - all fuelled by an enormous boom in the use of ‘love drug’ ecstasy - raves terrified villagers and left the police caught, initially at least, on the back foot.

Chief Superintendent Ken Tappenden, then divisional commander for north west Kent, could have little idea of how this sub-culture was about to change his life for years to come.

Now retired, the former officer, who lives in Medway, remembers: “The first raves concerned us very much.

“The biggest one we had straight away was at Meopham - a whole field was taken over. We were quite unaware of it. Some 5,000 people turned up.

“By the time we got there, fairground attractions were being set up. There was nothing we could do. They’d hired steamrollers and flattened the field first - again all unbeknown to us.

“That rave went on for nearly 48-hours.

“Two days later we were still finding young people, in ditches around the area, still under the influence of drugs.”

It wasn’t the first time Tappenden had encountered this new breed of unlicensed events.

In September 1988, around 250 people had taken over a derelict house in Sevenoaks and started to party. Hard.

As police arrived to break it up, skirmishes erupted and both police and partygoers were left injured.

Calling on back-up from the Met Police, it took 60 officers some two hours to restore order.

Tappenden and his team formed a unit to keep an eye out for future disturbances. By the summer of 1989 it was spearheading the national crackdown on raves.

The Pay Party Unit, dubbed the Acid House Squad by revellers, (“the government didn’t want us to call it acid or rave” he recalls) was up and running and it meant business.

“We started the unit in Dartford, as they had taken over a disused hospital there and raved for 24-hours and then smashed it up.

“I became the national co-ordinator,” he says, “I was up and down the country advising chief constables on how to tackle these parties.”

At its peak, he remembers 126 raves each weekend anywhere from the Midlands down to Kent. In the county alone there were between 20-25 every Saturday.

The weekend following the Meopham event, another was organised for Wrotham.

This time, Tappenden thought he’d got the edge on the organisers.

“I got an injunction and so I personally went to serve it on the landowner.

“But when we got there, we found he’d been given £3,000 in his back pocket by the organisers and told to spend it on a holiday in France for the weekend, so we were stuck.

“There were up to 9,000 people at that one.

“But the Wrotham one was the first one we raided as they were coming out. We took out six black sackfuls of amphetamines and drug paraphernalia.”

Another event, planned for Chatham’s dockyard was nipped

in the bud – but only after throwing up road blocks.

The police found thempermanent selves in a game of cat and mouse. “The worse one on the M25 was in Surrey when we put a road block up,” remembers Tappenden.

“The youngsters just parked their cars on the side of the road - it must have stretched for more than half-a-mile - got out of their cars and just threw their keys into the hedge - and then we were snookered.

“That stopped the motorway, and that made everyone anxious and angry. That’s when it got serious. “The local authorities and MPs got involved.” The events themselves were quickly taking on a more sinister edge.

Initially, the raves were organised by music promoters keen to make a fast few quid without troubling the taxman. But as the ticket money rolled in and the drug-taking increased, it was only a matter of time before the crooks started wanting in.

Organisers found themselves being threatened - or worse - into handing over cash for ‘security’. One organiser found himself with a cocked gun resting on his temple until he, left with little choice, agreed.

“By then the villainy was getting involved and they were coming in with barrows full of drugs,” says Tappenden.

“They would provide security. They were from the football hooligan gangs. They would sell the drugs outside the fences, and then confiscate it when the kids went inside so they could sell it again.”

The police unit also harnessed the Home Office Large Major Enquiry System (Holmes) database - first used by police hunting the Yorkshire Ripper.

“In no time,” explains Tappenden, “we had 1,700 vehicles with numbers, nearly 4,000 names. People with really nasty backgrounds.”

It was somewhat ironic that an underground movement using a drug which tended to spark feelings of euphoria, love and empathy should attract such violent individuals. But, as ever with the drugs trade, it proved rich pickings for the unscrupulous gangs.

Explains the former officer: “The youngsters who went were no trouble - they just wanted to party. “At that stage it was a brand new phenomenon and

they wanted tobepartofit.” With pirate radio stations often used to broadcast the locations, Tappenden hatched on the idea of sending out ‘false broadcasts’ getting some of his younger team “who could talk the talk” to take to the airwaves imitating the likes of the station Sunrise.

“So we started splitting the parties up,” he recalls.

“It became quite effective until there was a party being planned for Sevenoaks and our guys made out the party had been moved to Colchester. “When they couldn’t find the party, they ransacked three petrol stations, looted them..”

Eventually, the political and media pressure became so intense a raft of new legal measures and powers were introduced to shut them down - allowing police to seize sound systems and limit numbers.

The then-Home Secretary, Michael Howard, MP for Folkestone and Hythe, ushered in the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 and the wave of illegal outdoor events was over.

When Ken Tappenden retired from the force in 1992, he was even offered a job by one of the original rave organisers as they looked to go legal. He politely declined.

The youngsters who went were no trouble - they just wanted to party. At that stage it was a brand new phenomenon and they wanted to be part of it.

Ken Tappenden