 | | | | by Jennie Bristow |
Forget the headlines citing 'safety fears' for the cancellation of this year's annual music festival. 'Gatecrashers prevent 2001 festival' screams its official website. The statement issued by Michael Eavis, owner of the farm where Glastonbury is held, seems to be less concerned with the deaths of nine people at a festival in Denmark in 2000 than he is with his top two 'good reasons' for cancellation:
| 1) 'To show all interested parties that there has to be a more effective control over numbers'; and
| 2) 'To tell all the people that come without tickets that their behaviour is not sustainable and that by doing so they are taking up valuable resources on site from the people who are here legitimately.'
| It would be bad enough if Glastonbury 2001 had been cancelled because of genuine safety fears resulting from the Danish tragedy. The collapse of the UK railway system shows just how paralysing the obsession with safety-at-all-costs can be.
| But in Michael Eavis' statement, the language of good causes and human compassion seems to be waved as a joss stick to sweeten the miserly griping of a not-so-small business, which sounds rather less concerned with the cow than with the cash. Glastonbury's priorities, in cancellation as in life, appear nothing more 'Worthy' than control and good manners.
| | Telling the ticketless that their behaviour is 'not sustainable' only means that Eavis does not want them to come. Yet this, coupled with the admonition that they are 'taking up valuable resources on site', implies that Glastonbury is some kind of third world country, rather than a temporary amusement park that in 2000 made about £700,000 profit. This eco-phraseology gives a radical gloss to attitudes you might expect from a provincial farmer; less so from the Pied Piper of a people-carrier convoy of middle-aged, middle-class self-styled hippies and teenagers on a pre-university break.
| This is Glastonbury all over. Go to the official website and you will find yourself transported back to school, with the advice and rules you thought you left behind with short trousers. 'The Fine Guide', sent out free with most ticket purchases, tells you to 'wash your hands after using the loos and before you eat'; that 'drunkenness is at the very least antisocial', and that 'neither antisocial or illegal behaviour will be tolerated'. It tells you to pick up litter 'out of love for the site' which, apparently, 'keeps the spirit of Jean Eavis alive. She loved the farm and the festival, but was saddened at any mess or waste. Clean for Jean'.
| 'The Fine Guide' also warns you not to dig holes, 'as many a cow has stumbled' (nothing to do with making the fields easier for Eavis to maintain, of course). It begs, 'Please don't wash under running water - it's very wasteful'. We are encouraged to 'Think of the gentle cows returning to graze and of the emerging badgers - imagine it to be your garden and your dining table'. And straight after the instruction to 'Do your bit, considerately, in the right place', we are told: 'Well done! You have now been Finely Guided.'
| All in all, Glastonbury sounds more like a New Labour boot camp for young offenders than a chilled-out pop festival. Yes, the festival is a national institution; yes, as the man from the UK music magazine Q told BBC Breakfast, 'the whole country will miss it'. But for every teenager gutted by this year's cancellation there is a young fogey in an online discussion applauding Eavis' decision to clamp down on the gatecrashers, and the polite-and-safe ethos that would seem to choke festival spirit has made Glastonbury more popular over the years, not less. Maybe those who want some fun in 2001's sun should make the most of the break from Glastonbury, and go and do something less boring instead.
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