Wiltshire Police says it has no concerns about Bob Vylan headlining this year’s Shindig Festival, even though the local council has been forced to review the event’s licence after “public safety” concerns were formally raised about the punk duo's performance.
Anyone can request a review of an event’s licence under the UK 2003 Licensing Act and it emerged late last month that such a request had been filed regarding Shindig Festival, because of concerns about Bob Vylan’s involvement. According to the Local Democracy Reporting Service, those formal concerns were actually raised by the South Cotswold Conservative Association.
However, the county’s police force does not share the concerns of local Tories. Inspector Louis McCoy tells LDRS that officers have reviewed an “event management plan and associated documents” provided by Shingig’s organisers and concluded that the festival is “professionally run”, adding that “there were no incidents of concern” during last year’s edition.
As for the decision to book a controversial act like Bob Vylan to headline, McCoy adds, “there is no information or intelligence that I am aware of” regarding public disorder concerns “as a result of this act’s appearance”. Intelligence will “continue to be reviewed” leading up to the event, the inspector confirms, but police do not intend to object to the festival going ahead.
Bob Vylan have been commended and condemned for their forthright on-stage support of Palestine and criticism of Israel. The duo came to much wider attention, of course, during their televised Glastonbury set where frontman Pascal Robinson led the crowd in chants of “death, death to the IDF”, referencing the Israel Defense Forces.
That prompted calls for other Bob Vylan performances to be cancelled from an assortment of individuals and political groups, although multiple police investigations into Robinson’s on stage remarks have concluded that there is no criminal case worth pursuing against the artist.
Last month’s filing forcing a last minute review of Shindig Festival’s licence said Bob Vylan’s performance posed concerns around “crime and disorder” as well as “public safety”. The filing added, “the inclusion of a headlining performer, Bob Vylan, who has been widely criticised for inflammatory and divisive rhetoric, including allegations of antisemitic statements, raises serious concerns”.
The call for a licence review has also been backed by one of the county’s Conservative Councillors, Elizabeth Threlfall. She is quoted by LDRS as saying, “Bob Vylan is widely known for performances that are highly confrontational and provocative, often addressing contentious issues in an aggressive manner”.
“While I support the principle of free speech”, she adds “the reputation of the band means there is a legitimate concern that such performances may draw in protest activity and heighten tensions among the audiences, particularly within a large, mixed and alcohol-consuming crowd typical of this festival environment”.
Council Threlfall also pulled out the ‘think about the children’ card when speaking to LDRS, noting that Shindig is promoted as a family-friendly festival.
“I fail to understand why the organisers judged that Bob Vylan was an appropriate headline act with its reputation for aggressive, hostile, violent and racist themes”, she says, adding, “there is a genuine risk that children will be exposed to material likely to cause distress or harm”.
The legal grounds for amending or blocking Shindig’s licence simply because of Bob Vylan’s headline set feel weak and the local police force comments seem to back that view. However, with Wiltshire Council’s licensing subcommittee set to undertake its review just days before this year’s Shindig Festival gets underway, the whole process must be proving very stressful for the event’s organisers.
They previously said, “safety has always come first at Shindig and under no circumstance would we allow that to change”, adding “we are working closely with our production team, the artist and the authorities to ensure we have a robust plan in place to address these concerns”.