Glastonbury's radical roots will return, says Michael Eavis | Music | The Observer

Glastonbury's radical roots will return, says Michael Eavis

Founder laments high ticket prices and loss of soul, but activism is back on the bill – and there's a protest against U2

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• Rowenna Davis
• guardian.co.uk, Saturday 18 June 2011 20.51 BST
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Michael Eavis agrees that Glastonbury has lost its political edge over the years. Photograph: Tabatha Fireman/Redferns

Beyoncé might be headlining, but Glastonbury is set to become a "sounding board of political discontent" this week, according to the founder of the Somerset festival, who believes public anger against the government spending cuts is reviving a sense of the event's political roots.

Michael Eavis, who launched the first Glastonbury festival 41 years ago and recently lamented the appearance of the Wombles in this year's line-up, said that in future years – once the effects of the cuts are fully felt – increased public anger could reverse what he sees as a disappointing trend of apathy:

"I think it [the festival] could well become more political. We've always been a sounding board for lots of unrest… If people are really faced with dire circumstances, that will get them angry and motivated, and that's the way we're heading at the moment.

"It [politics] gives Glastonbury soul and gives it back its purpose. As a Methodist, I place these values very highly, and recently I've been lamenting a bit of a decline. Tickets are good value, but not everyone can afford them. I hate to admit it, but the political platform has been reducing. The overriding reason people come now is to have a good time."

Art Uncut, a branch of the anti-tax avoidance campaign UK Uncut, says it intends to target Bono, lead singer of U2, who are the festival's Friday night headliners. The protesters will highlight the band's 2006 decision to move their tax affairs from their native Ireland to the Netherlands. Art Uncut plans a series of actions at Glastonbury, although it says it will stop short of disrupting the set.

Meanwhile, other new-wave campaigning groups – including Climate Camp, 38 Degrees and False Economy – are also expected to attend the festival. Political comedian Mark Thomas will be headlining on the cabaret stage and a "free university" will be set up in a green space to discuss books and political writing.

"Politics isn't annexed out in one corner; it's right there on the main stage, in your face," says Geoff Martin, head of the radical Left Field section of the festival that organises political events. "Since the bankers' crisis, the festival has become more political… teachers, social workers and health professionals are a big chunk of the Glastonbury audience who come here. That's why a lot of work we're doing is tailored to the cuts."

Relatively new campaigning groups such as UK Uncut will be joining traditional political attendees at the festival, including trade unions, as well as anti-nuclear, green and grassroots groups. Seminars in the Left Field will be addressing the impact of the cuts on the vulnerable, and how new campaigning groups are using social media. In a symbol of the festival's political resurgence, the event's old 18th century-style political newspaper, the Glastonbury Firelighter, will be resurrected after having died out in the more hedonistic 1990s.

Glastonbury has always been political with a small "p", and continues its tradition of no corporate sponsorship. Water Aid, Oxfam and Greenpeace are still the only banners you can see broadcast from the main Pyramid stage.

Green politics has always featured particularly strongly at the festival, which is held at Worthy Farm. Tony Benn, Caroline Lucas, War on Want, anti-nuclear and grassroots groups will all be out in force this year in the festival's "Green Field". Liz Elliott, long-standing co-ordinator of green events, said: "I was disappointed by the apathy of the 1990s, but there is certainly a huge turning back. People are more prepared to stand up and state their case. A generation of children has been educated about climate change and the state of the world so they've got the facts. Glastonbury is becoming more political as the world becomes more political."

Mark Thomas disagrees. Although he is set to deliver his two-hour show on the Israel-Palestine conflict on the mainstream cabaret stage – rather than in the more niche Left Field – he thinks Glastonbury is not so much becoming more political, as more elitist: "How can you say Glastonbury is getting more political when you've got U2 as one of your main headline acts? How can that be political? I don't see the frontiers of the revolution being pushed forward with that kind of line-up."

Although Thomas acknowledges that upcoming comedians are becoming increasingly political – celebrating the likes of Josie Long, Chris Coltrane and Tiernan Douieb – he thinks the festival has lost some of its sparkle in the 20 years he's been attending.

"Glastonbury has gone from being a weird, obscure little haunt for oddballs to a major credit card-holding event. Middle class twentysomethings from south London are bringing their collapsible chairs. The fact is I'm doing a show about a wall around the West Bank in a festival with a massive fence around it… it's very expensive."

But one young political activist involved in UK Uncut, who didn't want to be named or give any further details of the planned direct action against Bono, said Glastonbury was the perfect place to practise the new forms of activism: "The banking crisis saw a huge transfer of wealth upwards and now we're seeing the delayed popular response to that. As the government starts cutting, you're seeing the politicisation of a generation of young people – that's being reflected in music festivals."

via guardian.co.uk