Festivals Britannia Page #7

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and you just see these people, you know, flowering.

I came across a marquee that held about 800 people.

And there was a troupe of Shakespeare players,

and they were just putting on Shakespeare's plays for free.

There were teepees, banners, funny old trucks all painted up.

You know, like marquees, stages, dogs running everywhere, kids running everywhere in packs.

They were really quite amazing events.

It was a very special time.

During the '70s, the free festival movement

had become a serious attempt at creating an alternative way of life.

By the late '70s, the society it had rejected was in meltdown.

A new generation was emerging at festivals such as Donington and Reading.

Wonder and LSD had been replaced by tension and speed.

The tone had shifted.

MUSIC:
"If the Kids Are United" by Sham 69

# So let's all grab and let's all enjoy...

# If the kids are united... #

At Reading Festival,

in the mid- to late Seventies, there was always conflict.

That's when punk kicked off. It just had this energy - this vibrancy.

You knew something was changing.

And that is that counter-culture - stepping in again when...

change isn't coming quick enough for young people.

It really was the same type of people that made

the punk thing that made the hippy thing.

It's a different time, different drug.

As punk and heavy metal erupted into Britain's festivals in

the early 80s, even at a resurgent Glastonbury, hippy idealism was giving way to a more political

festival culture and suddenly everything looked very different.

We'd put a couple of festivals on - in the early 80s - 81 and 82-

and Andrew and myself went round

to see Michael after the event and said, we're missing a trick here.

What we need really is the banner to rally under.

We were just anti-Tory really. We were on a crusade really to actually take on Maggie

and to fight the oppression,

and it was very effective.

Effectively, Thatcher's government

created from 1982 onwards an exiled population.

There was a culture of resistance that was threaded through

the free festivals,

the miners' strike, the riots in the cities,

they were all part of opposition to Margaret Thatcher.

We came together in that at places like Glastonbury Festival with

a strong Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament support.

So, to oppose nuclear weapons was to oppose Margaret Thatcher.

To do free gigs in fields,

that alone simply was to oppose Margaret Thatcher.

The growth we have seen in this country in the last five years

is the growth of unemployment - the growth of an uncaring society.

At the same time, the true growth...

In the old hippy days, it was all love, peace and flower power and

bells and things and mystics and cosmics - all that sort of thing.

But now it's more politically orientated insomuch as CND

and it's the same sort of concept and ideals sort of filtered through the years.

This has not only been a nation of money-makers and imperialists,

it's been a nation of inventors, of writers, a nation of theatre and

musicians - an alternative nation and it is this alternative nation which I can see in front of me now.

CHEERING:

Festivals were reflecting and questioning Thatcher's new Britain.

Unemployment had reached record levels and anxiety reigned.

People were just leaving the cities in droves - young people with no hope of a job or anything.

Three guys would chuck 100 quid in a buy an old coach from the back of a coach company,

one of their old ones they'd retired - throw a few mattresses in and head off.

And so, what happened was that movement grew and grew and grew.

And, suddenly, instead of just the slightly better off hippies

making their arts fair up in Norfolk - like the Albion fair

and so forth - you drove a whole load of quite hard core working class people

from up north, onto the road.

In 1979, I think there were six vehicles at Stonehenge, you know,

and by 1984, there were thousands of people hitting the road.

More and more people appeared on the festival scenes, drinking.

The whole punk attitude.

F*** everything, kind of thing, was quite prevalent amongst a growing group of younger

disenfranchised people, who had just given up on living in cities.

- We're just trying to live our lives, that's all.

- Yeah, we don't interfere with anyone else.

This world's supposed to be a common treasury for everybody to share -

not people to button up. Do you know what I mean?

No wonder people are starting to get sick.

These people are pushing our people too close.

And like, it's going to start to explode one of these days.

This whole thing is just a total farce.

Cities are going crazy, everybody's going crazy.

It's all because of this - they're trying to impose a police state.

# A lot of people won't get no supper tonight

# A lot of people won't get no justice tonight... #

I used to live in a squat and I always thought it would be great if I could save up enough to

- get hold of something I could own myself and drive about in it and call it my own home.

- Call it home.

There was a definite kind of tribalism going on.

The whole New Age travellers and New Age gypsies and the convoy.

There were lots of different little cults of people.

A lot of them were social casualties really.

A lot of them were drug casualties.

They were living outside the law really. They weren't...

completely independent of the system.

A lot of them were on the dole.

So, the authorities saw this movement as rather a threat.

The original hippy idealists were being joined on the road

by a new generation of post punk urban squatters.

This collective would become known as the Peace Convoy.

And as they arrived at Stonehenge festival in 1984, it seemed peace

and love had now fully surrendered to anger and resentment.

See these teeth! Put them in now, go on!

Kick them in now, man!

There were in excess of 100,000 people at Stonehenge.

As with any town that size, you're bound to have a few mischievous elements, shall we say?

Bikers started just mercilessly beating up any punks they could get their hands on.

It was like being in some sort of medieval nightmare.

It was as though the whole thing had hardened up.

The political thing had hardened as well.

It was a reflection of that.

# Welcome home

# You total stranger.

# Welcome back

# The coast is clear.

# Treat you here just like they treat you there. #

I mean, it was scary stuff. It was just wild. People just arrived and did what they wanted to do.

They set up stages, they sold drugs, they did whatever they wanted to do. It was quite scary.

It did look like Apocalypse Now.

There were helicopters flying around with lights and, you know, it was pretty ugly.

In '84, on the way off the site,

we saw a whole bunch of people trashing the police command unit, if you like.

At that point, I thought, you've just finished it.

The increasingly lawless Peace Convoy stood for everything

the establishment despised and in 1985 the tension would reach boiling point.

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