The Caxton Street Hall was a natural target for plainclothes police and undercover operatives. The hall (then known as the Baroona Hall) had since its inception in the 1890s been a community centre with a largely working class association including being used by the suffrage movement, the anti World War I movement, as a meeting place for strike organisation, an Australian Labor Party meeting place and a co-operative community welfare centre. By the 1970s it was serving as a venue of the burgeoning civil liberties movement and in 1976 the Baroona Legal Service (the Caxton Street legal Service after 1980) was established, much to the chagrin of the police, to provide free legal advice for people who could not afford it otherwise. It was there that the young people and elderly sought advice. At night the hall became a venue for local punks and local independent radio station 4ZZZ to put on concerts. Local Brisbane punks however because of the stifling and oppressive political climate were more politicized than punks in other States.