Party & Protest Archive

This is (or will be soon) a near-complete list of 'Party & Protest' events 1995-2014. For many of those years it was one of the main go-to sources in Britain for information about demonstrations, protests, meetings and gatherings, plus, festivals and free parties and even stuff like the exact time of sunrise on the summer solstice!... hence the name.

The 'event listings' side of SchNEWS was there more-or-less from the beginning, taking an obvious and necessary idea from FIN zines (Free Information Network - grassroots media network which arose in the mid-1980s) of publishing lists of both events and contacts for the benefit of 'underground' networks (we're talking pre-internet here). Being the height of the anti-Criminal Justice Act movement (and a product of it), SchNEWS called its listings 'Party & Protest'. As the website became more central to SchNEWS (its first website was around 1995), both the events and contacts listings were then predominantly online, and the 'Party & Protest' section went on to be one of the key parts of the SchNEWS site. From the mid-late-2000s Social Media arrived, which, despite the security and surveillance concerns which were obvious at the outset, arguably had the effect of seriously marginalising independent outside efforts like 'Party & Protest'.

This is proabably the most indepth archive of its kind on the internet - to be used by historians, or those wanting to relive their youth!

Notes About The Sources Of The Lists Here

Despite updating this thorough event listings on a weekly basis for many years, SchNEWS didn't save or back-up old listings once they'd lapsed - they were simply deleted (until 2008, once they were in a database). So the listings here have been reconstructed, and none should be considered entirely complete. Here's a breakdown of the sources:

* 1995-1999 - during these years almost no versions of the SchNEWS 'Diary' were saved by the Wayback Machine (an archive of the entire internet), so all the entries are taken from the issues, including both the 'Party & Protest' lists as well as events covered in stories which appeared in the issues.

* 2000-2007 - by then the Wayback Machine was taking regular snapshots of the SchNEWS site, so it has been possible to piece together lists using these (albeit with gaps). Added to these, during these years, were the listings which SchNEWS would print often in double-issues prepared for summer events like Glastonbury or Big Green Gathering. Months which are assumed to be missing entries are denoted with <<< comments >>>.

* 2008-2014 - will be available once the information can be extracted from the database, but at least when it does happen, you know it'll be the complete list with none missing.

New email address: schnews@riseup.net

@nti copyright - information for action - copy and distribute!