Don’t techno for an answer: Repetitive beatings and the resistance of rave culture in Britain from 1988-1994

The Rave movement began in Britain in 1988 and flourished within the barren post-industrial and rural sites of Britain’s social imaginary which was expanding and changing rapidly under new systems of socio-economic policy. The movement grew rapidly until 1994, when political intolerance and subsequent legislative measures led to its demise. The movement provided a method of escape for Britain’s disaffected youth, who had been left behind by the growth of neoliberal economics within Margaret Thatcher’s conservative government. In spite of this, the Rave movement, similar to many forms of counter-hegemonic youth cultures of non-compliance, was perceived as a threat to Britain’s established order, and the hedonistic party movement became politicised, demonised, and eventually eradicated. This dissertation investigates the extent to which Rave may be considered a culture of resistance similar to many of those which were prominent in Britain previously. Through analysis of the socio-political and cultural circumstances which resistance and countercultures in Britain had previously emerged, Rave’s response to the development of Thatcherite economics and the expansion of neoliberalism are interrogated in order to consolidate the notion that despite the ambivalence surrounding the movement within much of the critical writing which analyses it, Rave actively sought to resist this shifting British landscape. In doing this, the youth of Britain opposed the discourse of Thatcherism, and attempted to construct their own communities within a society which was increasingly promoting the ethics of individualism.