including also: The Hell House squatt and another squatted bank in peckham, (this list is by no means exhaustive) which were all busted over quite a short period of time, maybe a couple of months at the most.
Parkaj Mental the opening band had just started playing when apparently a couple of P.O turned up outside, they were told they could not come in and apparently some slightly (or was that very?) pissed individuals started roughing them up a bit, a that point they called for help and next thing you know there were cars vans and officers from all over London turning up truncheon drawn out and charging in.
Due to the table that was being used for collecting donations on the door being in the way we didn't manage to actually close the doors and after about a minute or so of trying to keep them out by holding the door closed the truncheon battering on our hands was too much and the (small comparatively to the actual amount in the place) people trying to keep them out caved in in and the police came charging in hitting people left right and centre.
I remember being stuck just in front of the entrance by my rucksack which was wedged somehow in a corner and a copper coming at me truncheon drawn and ready, I was waving my hands in front of me and must have looked suitably scared as luckily for me he veered course and went after someone else.
I remember that while this was going on, the people trying to hold the door closed were some of the organisers and a bunch of regular people while the tough looking supposedly hard north London crusties from the school of bullying were frantically looking for a way out the place of which there wasn't one.
All of this obviously put an end to the proceedings, quite a few people got nicked and there was also a subsequent bit of punk hunting by the police in the surrounding areas for the rest of the night, at least one person I know of being set upon while walking home later and being beating up then arrested.
For my part I reunited with the 2 friends over from France that were there with me and we stuck around for a bit helping to recover the P.A. equipment (for the man whose name I can't remember now, but which did most of the P.A. work for a lot of the squat gigs around that time. He used to turn up with his P.A. in his black cab if that rings a bell to you and you can shed any light on this) and band equipment and whatever the police would let us get back out of there.
This also spelt the end for the squatted cinema next door where a gig was to be held the following Saturday (of which more later in another post).
alright great start, you got my interest. i want more :D
ReplyDeletebumped into your blog last week or so.. and because this will be a blog I'll be tracking I decided to launch a weekly URL o/t week for as long as I can keep it up :D anyway, your blog is our first URL of the week. no big deal, but our blogs connect in many ways so I felt the need to link you.
http://zoneofthefree.blogspot.com feel free to drop by!
oh and I perm linked you in our FRIENDS & SOURCES list (links) so I won't loose the link :D
Thanks for the link, this is probably the first and last time I'll be first at something :D
ReplyDeletehad a look at your blog and it looks like we might just have crossed path at some point albeit probably unknowingly.
I started this spurred by the history is made at night blog and a post on the urban75 forum asking for infos about the night school in stockwell, the thought of this was a year or 2 ago but bumping into some old friends from that era recently and finding myself with a hangover and a scanner at hand actually pushed me into doing it instead of just dreaming it.
I have a bunch of other stuff ready to go but I want to try and put text as well as the images to reminisce before I forget it all and to see if it spurs others in sharing their memories too (seems to have worked a bit so far).
Once my rather pathetically small collection is up I'm going to hassle my friends and see what they might have at the bottom of their drawers and cupboards.