A bit of not so local news, which really isn’t terribly surprising but that’s worth highlighting anyway. News reaches me that due to police objections Strawbery fair is to be cancelled this year. The organizers say:
“Cambridgeshire Police have made it absolutely clear they do not want the event to go ahead and have put an incredible amount of time and resource into preventing it. We feel the police action shows just how far out of step they are with the people of Cambridge, who have shown overwhelming support for the event; and had the same enthusiasm been spent on working with us rather than fighting us, many of the key concerns would have been dealt with.”
Which seems an increasingly common approach from the police towards “small” independent festivals and events that don’t have big corporate sponsorship. Given that this fair has been happening since 1974 at around the same time it’s not as though the police didn’t have ample time if they hadn’t want to stop it happening. So whilst I suspect that this is probably just due to local jobsworths and kill joys on the police force (I imagine them sucking their teeth and going “ooh it’ll cost you, can’t get the parts you see”). I also can’t help but see it as part of the wider picture of the destruction of places and events were people can meet up and socialise outside of state and corporate control, as discussed previously here and at length and in much better detail by LegIron
