Glastonbury Festival. Photo: Nick Cobbing

News Shorts and Other Busyness

Commercial Promoters Profit From Glastonbury Cancellation

Squall 12, Spring 1996, pg. 10.

The cancellation of this year’s Glastonbury Festival is an obvious blow to an already sparse festival circuit.

Michael Eavis, on whose land the festival is held, says his organic dairy farm needs a year off from the stamp of two hundred thousand feet. With the likes of Fordham Park and Forest Fair also cancelled it seems likely that the freedom fighters amongst the alternative festival people may be heading for Stonehenge. Meanwhile the Mean Fiddler Organisation is increasing the size of its Phoenix Festival and Tribal Gathering in expectation of the reflected glory and extra punters undoubtedly coming its way in the Glastonbury vacuum.

Helping such promoters all the way is the fact that the free and low cost festival circuit remains under maximum attack from legislation, police levies and local authority obstacles.

The organisers of the Forest Fair say that the local council have injuncted their land, rendering it legally unusable for anything other than agriculture. Having given birth to and fostering the growth of the UKs open air festival culture, the alternative festival scene is under severe pressure, with big event promoters now cashing in and throttling the creation (See Culture Cash In on Raves and Festivals in SQUALL Issue 10).

Their designs are being facilitated by local authorities, police and politicians, all of whom in some way or another, stand to gain large amounts of money from big commercial festivals. The Somerset Police for instance make a cool £250,000 from policing Glastonbury, just one of the many pay-offs Michael Eavis is forced to make in order to ensure the commercial jackals don’t eat the Festival.

When Eavis was diagnosed with colonic cancer last year, big promoters were swarming like vultures to a limping buffalo, in attempts to take over the running of the festival. Fortunately, Eavis recovered and, in a question and answer session held in a tent in the Green Field last year, said he had every intention of running the festival until the day he dies.

Many festival goers say Glastonbury Festival becomes more commercial each year. However, whilst there is much by way of evidence for their observations, Glastonbury still retains a relatively high element of alternative culture and will be sorely missed as a meeting point this summer.