Fierce Dancing

A vividly personal journey tracing the legacy of 1960s counterculture into the free parties, road protests, and traveler movements of 1990s Britain.

It began with a small band of Hippies, clinging to the remnants of their summer festivals. Next came Punk, with its culture of anger and rejection. After that, Rave, and everyone just wanted to dance and take drugs again. But when the Criminal Justice Act came along in 1994, Auntie Britain was seen as a kindly guardian no longer. Hippie idealism, punk anarchism, rave organization, and New Age mysticism, forged in the fiery heart of dance culture, became melded into a new force. DIY culture was born. Or at least that’s what the purveyors of post-rave politics liked to claim…

In this cult classic of embedded journalism, C. J. Stone, acclaimed columnist for the Guardian and the Big Issue, travels the length and breadth of 1990s Britain while attempting to trace the legacies of 1960s counterculture. Despite the devastations of Thatcherism, union busting, and fascistic policing, Fierce Dancing records the small but potent victories won by the free party scene, the road protest movements, and the traveler communities which had kept the dream of an Albionic sanctuary suffused with freedom, mystery, and reverie alive in the face of crushing political adversity.