‘Such a violent confrontation’: Love Decade, the Leeds rave that prompted 836 arrests

Amid a police crackdown on rave culture in 1990, the now infamous warehouse party became a riot, resulting in one of the UK’s biggest mass arrests. Attendees and DJs look backAs the booming sub-bass of LFO rattled around an old Sony warehouse on the outskirts of Leeds in July 1990, the reverberating sound was enough to mute the buzz of police helicopters circling above. However, when their lights began to pierce through the glass windows, the 800-plus ravers at Love Decade knew something wasn’t right. “There was a dark, intense atmosphere,” recalls Jane Winterbottom. “I felt trapped, claustrophobic, and a wave of nausea came over me. I wanted to escape but I couldn’t. All the doors were shut and we were locked in.”As word had spread that the building was surrounded by police, a young DJ who was on the decks at the time, Rob Tissera, decided to take action. “I got on the microphone, and very stupidly and regrettably, said: ‘If you want to keep the party going, we’re gonna have to fight the bastards.’” People did just that. “Everybody turned into bloody hooligans,” he says. “It ended in a three-hour siege and got pretty nasty.” A van was moved against the shutters to block police from coming in, and objects were thrown at them out of the windows, as the authorities even tried using a forklift truck to pry open the steel shutters. “It was a full-on riot,” says Winterbottom. Eventually the police got in and grabbed every single person, all 836 of them, resulting in one of the biggest mass arrests in UK history. Continue reading...

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