Glastonbury 2005 is go!

United Kingdom | by Ross Purdie | 20 January 2005

Having a handful of ageing, middle class, and out-of-touch councillors playing God over whether 150,000 excitable revellers should be allowed to dance around their fields for several days is always going to be a nervy situation.

For the past two years the entertainment license for the Glastonbury Festival was rejected on its first hearing, only for successful appeals to follow. Bad feeling in some parts of the surrounding area stems from the out-of-control event in 2000 when around 300,000 people turned up; many of them to jump the wall, and many of them with solely criminal intentions.

But fortunately, after a 'cleaning up' process over the last few years, and thanks to a very thorough and transparent application by Mean Fiddler, the license was agreed for 2005 - albeit after a four hour meeting which at points threatened to descend into stalemate.

The final decision, however, generally seemed to reflect local opinion; while some people have complained of festival goers invading their gardens and threatening them with knives, many others, including the owners of the guest house I stayed in, say the festival is an important part of the area, one they're proud of, and always happy to attend.

Click on the links below to see how VF reported the license hearing, find out the reaction to the decision from Mean Fiddler and Michael Eavis, and learn the truth about all those headlines claiming Glasto 2006 had been 'cancelled'. (It was actually never planned.)

Glastonbury 2005 License approved
Post-meeting reaction
The truth behind Glastonbury 2006