Brassic FM: How 90s rave crackdowns foreshadowed attacks on our right to protest

The Castlemorton Common Festival in 1992 was the UK’s largest illegal rave. Castlemorton was widely covered by the media, resulting in around 50 arrests and uproar in Parliament about “anti-social” behaviour. This led to the passing of the 1994 Criminal Justice and Public Order Act, clamping down on unlicensed parties, including gatherings where the music was “characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats”. 

At the time, Liberty (an organisation I went on to run from 2003-16) condemned the measures as “wrong in principle and likely to violate the European Convention on Human Rights”.

Brassic FM, a new play co-created by writer Zia Ahmed and director Stef O’Driscoll and about to open at the Gate Theatre in London, looks back on those events and draws a direct line from the 1994 act to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act of only last year. Just as the 1994 Act sought to prevent large gatherings of people at a rave, the 2022 act prevents and restricts “unacceptable” protests – which, in its ambiguity of definition, could mean any form of protest whatsoever. 

Preventing people from gathering collectively means that it becomes impossible meaningfully to resist systems which reach outside conventional morality or the rule of law. It should scare us all when the authorities attempt to stifle any form of collective gathering – an audience at a rave, a crowd at a demonstration or a vigil for a murdered young woman. 

In the fight for social justice, I’ve always believed that art is one of our most important tools. New fiction, new drama and new stories shed new light on our world today. They bring insight and joy in uncertain times and can often reach more people than is possible through journalism, rhetoric and even the law. 

Invaluable political change can, therefore, be achieved by giving people agency not just to understand but challenge the circumstances in which they live. In the case of live performance, we carry out this work together. As members of an audience we become active participants in new communities built night after night. 

This belief is a key reason I became chair of the Gate last year; a theatre which, since its birth in 1979, has always been committed to political, international theatre. It’s important to me to champion access to arts and culture as an inalienable human right. A political establishment which intends to suppress people will invariably limit this access early on. There are countless examples throughout history and the whole world over. We have also seen it happen much closer to home. 

The story of Castlemorton is just one of Brassic FM’s interweaving storylines. Its kaleidoscopic look at class and culture, presented through the lens of the eponymous pirate radio station, creates a picture of Britain today, highlighting members of society who are the most vulnerable. Another strand of the plot follows Amir, an undocumented migrant worker in London. We become first-hand witnesses to the precariousness of his condition. With the recent passing of the Illegal Migration Act and the barbarity of recent government policy towards asylum seekers (“stop the boats”, or bring the Bibby Stockholm barge), there is an imperative to create spaces where we might consider the plight of people like Amir.

I am so proud that the Gate is presenting a piece of work that engages with these issues head-on, casting them in the light of what came before in order to make sense of what might come next. In another strand of Brassic FM, Amina, a food factory worker, discovers tapes recorded by her mother. These give insight into life upon her first arrival in the UK from Pakistan, faced with everything from inhospitable social housing policies to overt racism. Through Amina, we are encouraged to ask ourselves just what has changed for the poorest people, and how much longer — generation to generation — must we fight for workers’ rights. 

This show thinks openly about class and our societal reluctance to acknowledge privilege, inequality and inequity. Hard labour by the lowest-paid members of our society benefits those who have the most. Working people are constantly pit against one another, even as the hardest hit by cuts to the welfare state. Our government continues to create unliveable conditions for so many, be it through austerity or the continuing hostile environment.

• New laws could make it easier to arrest journalists. Here’s why that matters
• Explained: This is your right to protest and how police can restrict it

Brassic FM is as much a piece of political resistance as one of theatre, and this is why I urge Big Issue readers to come and experience it. And although the play deals with difficult topics, the treatment is full of love, light, and music, Zia and Stef were keen to capture the feeling of a mixtape, a tribute to the music that they and their company members all adore. It’s no secret that joy is an act of resistance. In these difficult days, we need all the collective joy we can find. 

Each one of us has a right to flourish as a human being. Brassic FM at the Gate Theatre offers a space to do just that, in an act of community-building of the most important kind. I look forward to seeing you there. Wave a copy of The Big Issue and I’ll know it’s you.

Brassic FM is at the Gate Theatre from 4-30 September. gatetheatre.co.uk