They had diggers, they were all in their riot gear, shields. (Like other Spirals I talked to, she didn't want me to use her full name.) "All of a sudden you peered out of a crack in the wall, and the place was surrounded by every kind of police vehicle you can imagine. "They were letting people in and not letting people out, then letting people out and not letting people in," she continues, talking from her current base in a Paris apartment. Being forced down on to muddy floors, being battered. Simone, one of the original Spiral Tribe members, who had fallen into the free party scene years before after working in a PA hire shop in north London, recalls: "Everyone who was there remembers exactly what happened. The next day a police helicopter escorted the Spiral Tribe convoy, 10 vehicles long, out of the London area.
One man who tried to escape over the roof claimed to have been pushed he fell two storeys breaking both arms and legs. Scores of ravers later alleged they were beaten in the dark of the warehouse witnesses claim one pregnant woman was knocked to the ground. The Spirals and partygoers barricaded the doors, but after a 10-hour stand-off, the police revved up a JCB and broke through the outer wall. According to witnesses at Acton Lane, some TSG were masked and had their ID numbers covered. Those who tried to enter or leave had to face the TSG (the same group responsible for heavy-handed policing of crowds in the recent G20 demonstrations). In the early hours, police officers from the Metropolitan Police's Territorial Support Group, a specialist division with duties including crowd control, surrounded the building. To a packed house, they partied through the night. O n 19 April 1992 - Easter Sunday - Spiral Tribe, a self-described "rag-tag sound system group who came together driven by the will to keep the party going", who had been running free raves with a mobile rig across the UK since 1990, set up in a warehouse in Acton Lane, west London.
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