On Saturday night – Hallowe’en – the riot police were called to a massive illegal rave in Lambeth.  Some rather ugly scenes developed and a petrol bomb was thrown.

Simon Hughes’ former Head of Office, George Turner, lives opposite the site where the rave was held and gives a firsthand account of the incident in his blog, under the headline Nightmare on Whitgift Street.

How did this happen?

Questions will need to be asked how this could be allowed to happen in the first place. Last night was not the first time the building has been used for these kinds of parties. It was previously squatted for several months. First by a group of peaceful Italians who wanted to turn it into a social centre. They were turfed out by a second group of squatters who started to hold weekend long parties. It was Lord of the Flies in a gritty urban setting.

After that the Fire Authority occupied the building permanently to prevent the building being taken over again. However, despite this people managed to get into the building and set up a sound system to start a party.

It is particularly surprising that this disaster could not have been prevented, given that whoever organised this apparently gave advanced warning of their intentions by advertising to thousands of people on facebook.

As George points out, this is the dark side of the property boom in London.

However, with London’s white hot property market, and ever rising land prices land owners have every incentive to sit on land, sometimes for many years, waiting for planning authorities to cave into their demands to build socially useless buildings and cash in.

The blight this causes to local communities was demonstrated so powerfully last night.