Final warning for festival gatecrashers

The Glastonbury tradition could be under threat

The man behind the Glastonbury festival has warned gatecrashers they could bring about the scrapping of the event.

Michael Eavis, the Pilton-based farmer who has run the world-famous pop event since the late 1960s, has been warned by police and councillors in Mendip there must be no-one in the arena without a ticket.

In past years the festival has been besieged by pop fans breaking down, and even burrowing underneath, the security fences at the Somerset site.

Now a huge interlocking fence with an adverse camber at the top is being erected around the site which Mr Eavis is confident will prevent gatecrashers.

We're all confident that we're going to crack it this time

Michael Eavis

"The chairman of the council's licensing committee said even if a dozen people get over the fence, we've had it basically.

"To stop something that is so fundamentally important to the culture of this country is outrageous so we have to get it right.

"There are basically three reasons not to try to get over the fence.

"One is you won't be able to anyway, two is it'll mean the end of the festival and three is that all the good work we do for charity would be at an end.

"We're all confident that we're going to crack it this time."

He said it would need a bulldozer to break through the so-called ring of steel, the five-mile long, 12-feet-high metal fence which is being erected around the site.

It is understood Somerset Police had concerns over the festival, both as a result of the gatecrashings and in the wake of the Roskilde Festival disaster in Denmark in 2000, when nine people were killed in a crush.