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Updated July 2021
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This site is dedicated in the memory of who inspired me to delve deep into the magic of the free festival and who passed away Sept 3rd 2010. R.I.P. Roger ..... |
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Nostell Priory .West Yorkshire . August 24-27th 1984 |
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Panoramic view of the free part of the festival © Noddy Guevara visit Noddy's Flickr site to see many more photos of Festivals of the 80s |
Nostell Priory was actually a commercial festival which had, like Glastonbury, acquired a large ' Free Festival' component in the form of a travellers field adjacent to the main festival. Unlike Glastonbury however , the local authorities decided to behave in an extremely hostile way to "deal with " the free festival element . As Paul describes below, this was a dry run for the Beanfield action of 1985, travellers vehicles were done over , possessions thrown out onto the ground, ransacked and left open and their owners had no option but to leave them as they were as they had all been carted off to the clink !
"As
regards Nostell Priory - fortunately I left the site the day before Yorkshire
Police moved in, as I had a van borrowed from Scotch Tommy (anybody
remember him) and had agreed to meet him at The Elephant Fayre in Cornwall
at a certain date/time. I remember that The Convoy were in a
separate field from the 'organised site', sponsored by Theakston's brewery,
but it was no problem walking across the 'boundary' to go to the sponsors
tent and buy 'Old Peculiar' on draught. As it happened, most of the
best action was to be found on 'our' side, and the locals who visited seemed
to agree. The Police kept a high profile at the gates of the site
throughout and surveillance was maintained. Unfortunately, there was
also a significant amphetamine and coke influence on site, to a large degree
I suspect/remember coming from local dealers and this obviously didn't help
matters as regards the attitude of the authorities.
The main drag at Nostell Priory 1984 © Noddy Guevara |
The day after I left, the
police steamed in en masse, in a way described that was exactly like the
Beanfield the following summer. Everyone was arrested and most people
were charged with Possession, if not directly, then with 'internal possession'
on the basis that they had obviously swallowed substances! Have
you ever heard the like of this before (or since)? The choices were:
plead guilty, do a couple of days and get a fine at the magistrates
or, protest your innoncence on the basis that no court could convict you
of possession on such a notion. The snag with that was you were liable
to do about 6 weeks on remand in Armley Jail before the charges were finally
dropped. This is exactly what happened to a couple of lads I knew.
Five or six to a cell as well if I remember rightly what they told me."
Paul
An evil, cult related " drug tent " at Nostell Priory 1984 © used under creative commons licence courtesy Deargdoom |
( eds note : remand could go on for months , I knew a couple who spent six months in remand in the late 70s before their case was dropped due to lack of evidence, there was no compensation for the time and income these people lost, they just happened to live in a house where the other occupants were involved in dealing , they were innocent as the police well knew at the time)
"The first hint of trouble came at a festival at Nostell Priory, West Yorkshire in 1984. Riot police, fresh from disturbances at the Orgreave coking plant, ransacked travellers' homes and mass arrested 360 people. At the same time English Heritage began compiling a list of names for a civil injunction that would form the legal basis for a Stonehenge festival ban the following year."
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