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‘We went from naive, hippyish protesters to hardcore anarchists’: the criminal justice bill protests, 30 years on

It’s three decades since the government’s attempt to ban raves radicalised an oddball coalition of dance fans, squatters and ‘new age’ travellers. What became of the protesters who tried to kill the bill?

The CJB was an efficient means for John Major, the then prime minister, and Michael Howard, the then home secretary, to appear tough on law and order, soothe the brows of rural Tories and restrict protest, safe in the knowledge that the groups affected had few friends among the press, politicians and public. Overlapping with the growing movement against road-building, 1994’s anti-CJB campaign filled central London with ravers, turned city streets into art installations, occupied Michael Howard’s garden and made a battlefield of Park Lane. CoolTan Arts in Brixton, south London, took its name from its original home, an old suntan lotion factory, but by 1994 it was based in a defunct unemployment benefit office whose clients had once included a young John Major.

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