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Charlbury Riverside Festival was hit by a late blow last month when Thames Valley Police ordered the promoters to finish early on the Saturday night. The situation was compounded when headliners Twist pulled out. The free live music festival featuring a host of local bands, was due to run from midday through to 11pm on Saturday 17th July, but local police, apparently tipped off about possible trouble at the festival after the England-Germany match, demanded payment of £3,600 from the promoters to control the event. Apparently there were rumours of rival local gangs descending on the festival site to cause trouble, although the event has passed off peacefully in previous years. In the end the festival was forced to finish at 7.30pm on the Saturday night - quarter of an hour before the England match kicked off. Two bands had to be taken off the bill and all the remaining bands had to cut their set times. The Sunday event, which featured a more family-orientated bill, was unaffected. In the end, though, the nearest it came to violence was a series of water fights as fans tried to cool off in the sudden heatwave. The Charlbury Lock-in, which organised the Riverside festival, has run into trouble with the authorities before when some locals tried to blame them for trouble in the town with underage drinking; claims which proved to be untrue. Theories as to the real reason behind the police’s intervention included the fact that many Thames Valley officers were drafted out to Cambridgeshire that day to control an animal rights demo at Huntington Life Sciences, which meant TVP would have had to pay to draft more officers in from other areas. Just as likely was the idea that so many police had taken the night off to watch the England match that they would have to have been paid overtime to work. Or maybe, and we’re just guessing here, somebody got Charlbury mixed up with Charleroi. It’s an easy mistake, okay? Whatever the real reason, the idea that Charlbury was likely to erupt into violence seems pretty ludicrous and festival co-promoter Josh Lambert viewed the police demands as tantamount to blackmail. With such harsh rules inflicted on what is a well-organised event with a good history, it should come as no surprise to the police if in future festival organisers simply bypass official channels and put on illegal events instead. |