Heading back to 1986. Margaret Thatcher announces the opening of the M25. Back then, the orbital motorway was meant to improve the transport and connections to London’s outskirts and of course, to emphasize the transport of goods and fluctuation of money.

London’s outskirts formed a paradise playground for the evolving acid house generation and young ravers somewhere between Essex, Herfordshire and Berkshire. In the meanwhile the UKs rave scene had already transformed. A free party culture evolved, rooted in the cities’ squatters scenes, post-punk attitudes, anarchist collectives and the free festival movements that had their roots in the summer solstice celebrations in the 1960s in Stonehenge.

Tracing back the origins we have to name Glastonbury.
After the so-called battle of Beansfield, the place where Glastonbury takes place until today, had served as a refuge, shelter and an important stop-off on the hippie travelers’ annual round.

‘In 1989, the first house and techno sound systems, including east London’s Hypnosis, trucked their rigs to the site.'(Altered State: 209)

The first Spiral Tribe party evolved in a locked and formerly popular Afro-Caribbean Shebeen in Notting Hill. The history of the place and the correlation of the space and many of the origins of especially bassheavy music within Jamaican dub and sound system culture the seemingly exclusive re-opening of the place created an inclusive synergy and shared experience. The room and the people, all on one level.

With Sound Systems like Tonka, DiY and Club Dog who’d already participated at Glastonbury a shared ethos and exchange of knowledge and ideas was preset.
Castlemorton was soon to become the biggest free party by then, attracting up to 40 000 people.

Too much for the authorities and the mainstream media, several people ended up in front of court. What the Castlemorton trials dragged with them was the implementation of the Criminal Justice Bill in 1993 and finally turning it into the Criminal Justice Act (CJA), enabled in 1994. Invented to prevent gatherings with
people playing music characterized by repetitive beats on the land in general, the CJA was mainly enforced upon squatters, travelers and free parties. It supported the
expansion of mainstream commercial clubs.

The legal pressures caused many problems and tensions between the idea of creating open and accessible free spaces for everyone and the need to keep authorities out.
Still there were gaps in the legislation, so that free parties continued (as today) in warehouses and squats, or the local sound system crews would exile and expand their movement across continental Europe and beyond.

By 1994, no one except the governments would call a free party a rave and the name ‘Teknival’ was introduced. The same year, Czech tekno tribe Circus Alien set their first parties and started to travel South-West, which influenced the exchange between France, Spain, Germany and Czech Republic.

References:
– Datacide, Magazine for Noise and Politics, Nr. 10, 13, 14 & 15
– https://www.redbull.com/gb-en/m25-illegal-raves
– Collin, Matthew. Altered State 2009.