Abstract
The Covid-19 pandemic once again brought into sharpened focus the contested relationships of marginalised groups in the criminal law sphere, and the liminal (re-)regulation of space. Over the course of the last four decades, the law has borne witness to an episodic yet regular intertwining of the fortunes of arguably two elements of Britain's counterculture: ravers and travellers, specifically ‘new age’ travellers. The two groupings of peoples have had a long, complex and often uncomfortable and fractious relationship both with English law, and also its enforcement agencies. This is perhaps particularly evident in the criminal law provisions and sometimes questionable enforcement of the Public Order Act 1986 and the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, through to the social and environmental provisions of the Caravan Sites Act 1968, Entertainments (Increased Penalties) Act 1990, and subsequent provisions. Both the groupings of ravers and travellers have been faced with a series of legislative and administrative measures that, directly or indirectly, curtail or otherwise restrict their choices as to activities, lifestyles and behaviours. The article analyses how the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic has led to some long-established legal and regulatory themes being once again played out in relation to these two counter-cultural groups.
Highlights
The Covid-19 global pandemic has presented in novel, yet paradoxically familiar terms the law’s relationship with non-normative marginalised groups operating in liminal spaces, in this instance the sometimes coalescing peoples that form travellers and/or ravers.[1]
The Covid-19 pandemic once again brought into sharpened focus the contested relationships of marginalised groups in the criminal law sphere, and the liminalregulation of space
Rave – as a cultural and social phenomenon – has been characterised by ‘hypnotic electronic music and the liberal use of drugs such as ecstasy’.3. It is not merely the playing of a particular genre of music, but it is about the space – legal, social, and physical – that rave continues to occupy in society, with Covid-19 providing a renewed motivation for the operation of raves, their visibility, and responses from the criminal law
Summary
The Covid-19 global pandemic has presented in novel, yet paradoxically familiar terms the law’s relationship with non-normative marginalised groups operating in liminal spaces, in this instance the sometimes coalescing peoples that form travellers and/or ravers.[1] Over the last forty years, ravers and new age travellers have had a complex and often uncomfortable relationship with English law, often being seen as the folk devils[2] of various public order and trespass panics in public and moral discourse pertaining variously to their lifestyles and modes of habitation, but in relation to the interface between these groups’ activities and
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