Free party

A free party is a party "free" from the restrictions of the legal club scene, similar to the free festival movement. It typically involves a sound system playing electronic dance music from late at night until the time when the organisers decide to go home. A free party can be composed of just one system or of many and if the party becomes a festival, it becomes a teknival. The parties can be thought of as autonomous zones where all the people present create and enforce the rules. This typically means that drugs are readily available and noise levels are usually illegally high. The word free in this context is used both to describe the entry fee and the lack of restrictions and law enforcement. Motivations for organisers range from political protest to just wanting to have fun. An example of free parties as political protest was their prominence during the M11 link road protest. At most parties no money is asked for entrance since the aim is not to make profit. However at some (most often indoor) events it is requested at the door to make a donation to cover costs. Typically organisers make little profit or make a loss setting them up. The term free party is used more widely in Europe than in the US. In Canada and some parts of Europe they are also referred to as Freetekno parties. A free party might have once been described as a rave, and the origins of the two are similar. Since the birth of nightclubs in town centres in Europe the use of the word rave had largely fallen out of fashion, however in recent times it is increasingly being used again.

Free Party (disambiguation)

Free Party may refer to:

See also

Free Party (UK)

The Free Party was a minor political party in the United Kingdom. They were founded to promote the free party scene during the 2001 general election. They stood candidates for the three Parliamentary seats within the city of Brighton and Hove, under names associated with the Church of the SubGenius. They proposed to select their policies from a wheel of fortune.

Bob Dobbs

In the 1997 general election, a candidate stood for election in Brighton, Pavilion, using the description Church of the SubGenius, and the name of the "church" leader, Bob Dobbs. This was the election when the Labour Party was swept into power, winning the election in Brighton and making Tony Blair prime minister. The Labour Government introduced legislation requiring registration of political parties, and at the 2001 election, the Free Party was registered as with the Electoral Commission, and the registered party symbol chosen was the image of J. R. "Bob" Dobbs.

At the 2001 election, the party stood candidates in all the local constituencies, with Bob Dobbs achieving 1 per cent of the total votes for the Pavilion seat, beating the UK Independence Party into seventh place. This was not enough, however, to secure the return of the candidates' £500 deposits.

Estonian Free Party

The Estonian Free Party (Estonian: Eesti Vabaerakond) is an Estonian conservative political party founded in 2014. The chairman of the party is Andres Herkel. The party gained 8 seats after passing the 5-percent threshold in the 2015 Estonian parliamentary elections.

History

The nonprofit Estonian Free Party Founding Group was founded in January 2014. Originally it was to be founded by two organizations, Free Patriotic Citizen and Better Estonia, but the latter decided to withdraw.

Estonian Free Party was officially established on 20 September 2014, and Andres Herkel was elected as chairman. The party attracted numerous public figures, including former head of the Defense Forces Admiral Tarmo Kõuts, actor Ain Lutsepp, and Jüri Adams, a former government minister who was one of the main writers of the Constitution of Estonia.

During the 2015 Estonian parliamentary elections, the Estonian Free Party received 49,883 votes, constituting 8.7 percent of the total, which garnered it 8 seats in the 101-member parliament. The Estonian Free Party's candidate for prime minister, Artur Talvik, who received the most votes of all the Estonian Free Party candidates, was not a member of the party himself.