Final Word: Eave on John Donne

by Paul Moore

Much of the conversation I hear at work these days revolves around where the resistance to the right wing extremism manifesting itself across the globe will come from.

There is much wringing of hands and scaremongering and a dominant attitude that there is no room for any resistance given the financial clout that the most odious of those in power appear to have.

While not in any way complacent I try not to accept these dystopian wailings if only because we have, in our own country, an important example of the fact that resistance generally comes from the least expected places and is also always from the bottom up. Historical examples include the Vietnam War protestors, the southern rock music (The Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd in particular) that challenged black segregation in the USA, and the punk movement’s defiant facing down of Thatcherism which led to the Poll Tax riots.

I was reminded of these by a recent article which reported on the production of a play in Luton celebrating a rave that stopped a riot. In 1995 there were two nights of rioting on Luton’s Marsh Farm estate, when about 500 people attacked police with petrol bombs, bottles and bricks.

When a third night of rioting was expected to take place, a local group called Exodus Collective organised a rave for the same time.

The rave drew the energy away from rioting and into a celebration of place and the following week the local newspaper hailed the rave that stopped the riots. The play in production will tell the story of that week in Luton.

So what has this to do with resistance or indeed Northern Ireland? Firstly, it underlines the fact that resistance tends to come from young people who are wonderfully innocent enough to believe that anything, including change, is possible. Secondly, there is strong evidence to suggest that the change we have witnessed since 1998 owes a great deal to the same rave mentality that transformed the Luton situation.

During the 1990s the rave scene was in full swing in this small place. Even a cursory search on the internet will offer dozens of pages reminiscing on the nights spent raving in Portrush, Belfast and, seemingly, Donegal. Sadly I was too old, and too boring, to have been immersed in that scene although I suspect it had a strong resemblance to the period I did spend standing in fields listening to bands extolling the part which peace and love might play in future societies.

Interestingly many of those who were central to that movement went on to create the early examples of internet community. Sadly their vision of a world-wide ethical movement was overcome by the less than ethical tech giants although key figures of that time such as Stewart Brand still have important things to say about where we are heading.

While the places cited above were important it seems the most crucial place for the rave culture in NI was The Arena in Armagh. The fact that Armagh is geographically central should not surprise and buses carried thousands of ravers to the Arena each week. One of NI’s most important cultural commentators, Des Bell, has written extensively about how the rave movement, with its refusal to accept old sectarian divisions, paved the way for the Good Friday Agreement.

So rather than despair about the state of the world we should look instead for the youth movement which, against all logic and rationality, might just build a ground up movement which will let us see the end of those who would want us to be merely fodder for their own debauched parties.