George Monbiot funderer over spørgsmålet i The Guardian, og nævner, hvordan ‘terrorlovene’ og den almindelige paranoia ærligt og redeligt har kostet en hel del frihed:
Gone are the days when you could announce a happening, call up a few mates with drums and guitars, and put the word out that something groovy and free was about to kick off. In these buttoned-down times, it would be treated like an al-Qaida training camp. Today, you must apply for a licence and spend months of your life filling in forms and liaising with the various responsible authorities. There are good reasons for this: it ensures that no one is crushed to death and that local people aren’t harried by intolerable noise and disruption. There are also bad reasons: the controlling, snooping, curtain-twitching state tendencies which insist that all spontaneity be planned six months in advance, that no one can ever take her top off or smoke homegrown weed or get a little bit outrageous – even within a festival site – for fear of offending some tight-arsed busybody in desperate need of a life.
The organisers applied for their licence in February, and spent the intervening months trying to meet the conditions. These included 450 security guards, a steel perimeter fence and watchtowers, and free wristbands for 12 undercover police officers, who could move through the crowds ensuring that no one was enjoying themselves too much. The site would have more of the ambience of a prison camp than a hippy festival, but at least it would conform to regulations…
Link: Is the Big Green Gathering another victim of the crackdown on dissent?