WRECKERS!

I think this is the party that Loki is refering to (a clipping from The Western Gazette circa '89/'90?):



Click to enlarge. There's some very funny on-the-spot witness accounts. Shame we never quite managed the '...of Civilisation' bit, but we certainly gave it our best.

Local Hero and Sub-Celebrity Alan 'Flinty' Flint was off his tits and dressed as Col. Tom Parker (or was it Col. Sanders?). Despite these considerable disadvantages, he had successfully negotiated with the police to allow the party to continue, when a pane of glass (and possibly a fire-extinguisher?) missed one of the coppers by inches. "That's it!" snarled the officer in charge: "We're going in!" And they did.

I remember being up on the top floor in Flinty's living-room, which was unlit except for a particularly vicious strobe, having an epileptic fit to Baby Ford or Suburban Knights or something similar when the shadowy, ill-lit forms of four police-officers crashed through the door. At first I thought I was having double-vision as Spike had been picketing a circus earlier in the evening dressed as a copper with a gorilla mask (a pig had been considered too inflammatory), so I just assumed I was having vision problems until I was grabbed (still dancing) and 'assisted' down the stairs. As the last handful of us were removed we got a cheer and a hearty heroes' welcome from the large crowd that had assembled in the street at well past one in the morning.

Outside, it was total chaos. There was glass and household utensils all over the road. The police looked completely baffled by events. This was Yeo-PD's first encounter with Acid House Madness. People had pushed a sofa out through a second-story window, put it on the marquee of West Country Tiles and were sitting on it.

Ah, so that's who nearly killed Flinty. He still has nightmares about that. But he got off lightly...

Brendan Holden of The Chesterfields was found the next morning in one of the flats, naked and rolled up in a transparent shower-curtain. His clothes and glasses had been stolen. Clenched in his fist were the remains of his dentures. Someone had snapped them in half.

He was never quite the same after that.