“We couldn’t hear any music when we were walking past the houses,” said Amelia*, a 23-year-old who’d driven from London but was forced to hike more than three hours across rugged terrain from a nearby village late on Easter Saturday after police closed all roads leading to the free party. “Only as we started walking through the forest did we start to hear a faint little bit of bass.”
The organizers had sent Eggtek’s attendees the party’s general “loco,” or location, around 7PM. Then, at 10PM, they disclosed the exact coordinates to a countryside site in Dorset, a 15-minute dirt-track drive from the main road. By the early hours on Sunday, across a carnival-esque sprawl of more than four soundsystems, at least 1,000 ravers were dancing to hard trance, hip-hop and free tekno. “Everyone was so chill,” said Sophie, 25. “We just wanted to enjoy ourselves.”
The sun rose and by all accounts a spectacular time was universally had at Eggtek, an annual free party, or “teknival,” which switches locations each year. But the merriment would prove fleeting.
The police were determined to shut down the unlicensed event, which was taking place on Military of Defence land near a firing range. A helicopter was dispatched to monitor events before uniformed officers were deployed at midday. Relations between the constabulary and the ravers seemed cordial enough during the afternoon, to the extent that a group helped officers push free a police van that was stuck in a ditch.
But then, from 5.30PM on Easter Sunday, more than 100 riot police arrived on the scene. Some of the officers came with dogs who were clearly unsettled by the intensity of the music. “The dogs were getting so agitated that they were attacking their handlers and even other police dogs,” said Jasmine, 21.
“They just marched up into the field in full riot gear from the get go, batons drawn, and started cutting the rigs’ wiring straight away,” said Steven, 24. A veteran of the free party scene, he notes that police intervention is to be expected, and likened having a party busted to getting caught misbehaving at school. But this was “really militant.” Jasmine added: “When the police turned up they immediately started shoving us.”
One by one, the riot police shut down each stage, barging their way through the crowds to the soundsystems shouting, “Get away from the rigs” and seizing the decks. Quite soon, music remained playing at only one soundsystem, and lines of officers surrounded the rig in formation from the back and sides, ensnaring the dancers in a pincer movement, video showed.
“They started aggressively pushing us,” said Amelia, who was attending her first free party. “They all had their riot shields up, and they were whacking people. There was no need for it whatsoever.”
Dorset Police claim that their officers “came under attack from missiles and faced a violent and hostile reception.” But the ravers maintain that plastic bottles were thrown only after the police had aggressively encircled them, pushing back the crowds with shields and sparking skirmishes in which officers used pepper spray. “My eyes were blurry for three days due to the amount of pepper spray used,” said Anna, a 19-year-old from Bristol who has epilepsy. “Then when I was covering my eyes I got bashed on the head.”
The ravers faced off with officers who had established a cordon in front of the last soundsystem standing. “They never approached us other than right at the end when they came in and started damaging our equipment, unplugging stuff, and pushing our mates over,” one of the organizers of the rig said.
Words were exchanged between officers and ravers, and the partiers “tightmoshed” into the officers’ shields. “We said ‘OK, we’re going to mosh against the shields if you’re going to push us into a corner,’” said Steven. This provoked a response of overwhelming force. “I got hit over the neck with a baton,” said Steven. The officer told him: “You’re too close.”
Another man was repeatedly bludgeoned in the head, suffering at least one hit while he was being held down by three officers, a viral video showed. Blood poured freely from his head as officers pressed a shield into his neck and clutched his hands behind his back as he lay prone on the earth. “It was almost like a George Floyd situation,” said Sophie. “The police were literally beating him. It was terrifying to watch.” The man is said to have suffered a fractured nose and wrist, in addition to the serious cuts to his head. His family did not wish to comment.
One younger woman of slight stature was pictured with a bleeding head wound. Another video shows a police officer throwing a ferocious right hook. One photo shows a dog jumping and biting a man on the arm.
The heavy-handed approach, multiple attendees said, inspired a group of ravers to hold their ground and protect the generator which was powering the last soundsystem, using their bodies as human shields. A hardcore track with a manic bpm played as officers wielding riot shields inched closer to the generator, which by now was encircled by a group of ravers sitting down around it. The events were unfolding in the shadow of a huge poster saying “Protect the Generator,” which had been erected at the beginning of the party, and another with an illustration parodying riot police which included the phrase acronymized as “ACAB.”
Against this backdrop, officers grabbed one woman who was dancing in front of them and took her behind their line, video showed. They barged others who were guarding the generator with their shields. Steadily, they physically imposed themselves upon the machine, full of hot petrol, and extracted it.
The party finally wound down around 7PM as the music was turned off for the last time, with police making ten arrests for offenses including assaulting an emergency worker. Officers also seized another of the rigs under section 64 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, which was passed by John Major’s Tory government in an attempt to curb the free party movement, and gives police sweeping powers to shut down gatherings of over 20 people on open land listening to music consisting of “a succession of repetitive beats.”
But organizers and attendees said they would not be dissuaded from continuing the party elsewhere the following weekend. “We’ve literally been dragged out of places of residence by police before,” the organizer said. “We’ll never be put off this.”
Sophie looks at the events as part of a centuries-long class struggle between the landed and the landless—with the party staged just a stone’s throw from the Lulworth Estate where Camp Bestival is held. “We don’t have the freedom to do anything,” she said. “If you can’t dance in a field with your mates, what can you do? No one wants to go into an overpriced club.”
One local resident told MailOnline: “We have festivals here, we can hear Bestival, that’s very close to us, but that’s all properly organized and people pay to get in and that’s fine. I think it’s the fact that whichever way you look at it, they’re breaking the law by being there.”
After night had fallen on Easter Sunday, the police operation’s commander, inspector Lee Turner, defended the “professionalism” of his team and hailed the “successful conclusion” of the party. The next day, the force said it would internally review “complaints in relation to alleged use of force by officers.” As for the photograph posted on the force’s Instagram with officers standing amidst a heap of empty cans, multiple attendees claimed police had kicked the binbags and scattered the rubbish themselves.
“During that whole fiasco at the end they split open all the binbags that myself and others had spent all day picking up,” said the organizer. “As soon as they’d dropped their riot shields, we cleaned up the litter and took it home in cars because they’d taken the van that was meant to take the rubbish.”
He insists that the East Lulworth field was left effectively in the condition it was found, where those who made the pilgrimage got to enjoy a temporary utopia for less than 24 hours until “Babylon” reared its head.
There seems little doubt that Eggtek will be back next year, at another location to be disclosed just hours before it starts. After all, the free party scene has survived and thrived for decades, despite the authorities’ attempts to force raves back into licensed venues, where profits can be made and taxed. Police only seized one of the generators at Eggtek, anyway. “I still want to do this when I’m 40,” said Steven. “It’s about freedom.”
*Names have been changed to protect privacy.
Follow Mattha on Instagram @matthabusby.
Images by @dzntek and @fujitve.
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