Possible “inflammatory content” from controversy-courting act Bob Vylan had the potential to “threaten attendee safety” at this year’s Boardmasters festival, a local political activist argued earlier this summer, resulting in a letter-writing campaign to Cornwall Council.
Despite the performance passing off without a hitch, the local authority will hold a hearing next week – more than a month after the festival took place – to consider whether Boardmasters booking Bob Vylan raised any licensing issues.
Local residents, including activists with political party Reform UK, raised concerns in July that the controversial punk duo’s performance in August might cause disorder and threaten audience safety.
Which it didn’t, but the council’s licensing subcommittee seemingly still has to consider whether or not it might have done in some theoretical parallel universe, which seems like a particularly brilliant use of public funds when council funding is under increasing pressure.
According to the Local Democracy Reporting Service, hundreds of people wrote to the local authority ahead of this year’s Boardmasters event in Newquay in the wake of Bob Vylan’s controversial set at the Glastonbury Festival. During the BBC broadcast Glasto performance, the duo referenced the ongoing conflict in Gaza, leading the crowd in chants of “free, free Palestine” and “death, death to the IDF”.
It was Andrea Lovett, a County Organiser for Reform in Cornwall, who formally requested that the council review Bob Vylan’s booking at the festival. In her filing with the local authority, she wrote, “The inclusion of the musical act Bob Vylan in the Boardmasters Festival 2025 line-up undermines the licensing objectives of the Licensing Act 2003”.
She continued, “Bob Vylan’s performance at Glastonbury Festival included inflammatory statements, specifically a chant of ‘death, death to the IDF’, which is under criminal investigation by Avon And Somerset Police for potential breaches of public order and hate crime legislation. The presence of an act under criminal investigation for such conduct at Boardmasters, poses significant risks”.
Given councils have no say over who a festival should or should not book, Lovett turned to good old health and safety to try and block Bob Vylan from playing. Claiming that the duo’s performance raised various safety concerns, Lovett said that “the act’s inflammatory rhetoric could provoke unrest or division among attendees, risking disorder” and “the potential for controversial performances to escalate tensions in a large crowd threatens attendee safety”.
With festival-goers allowed to bring children “as young as nine” to the festival, she also threw in a customary “won’t someone think of the children!” moan, insisting that “exposing young audiences to potentially divisive or inflammatory content is inappropriate”.
Lovett’s formal request to Cornwall Council was made less than one month before this year’s Boardmasters was due to take place, meaning there wasn’t time for the local authority’s licensing sub-committee to consider her concerns before the festival’s 2025 edition.
At the time, Reform UK Cornwall published a social media post explaining that, “Cornwall Council informed us that a premises licence review requires a minimum 28 day consultation period under the Licensing Act 2003, which, due to the festival’s timing, left insufficient time to complete the process”.
They added, “We explored emergency measures, but no provisions existed within the licensing framework, and pursuing an emergency injunction was financially unviable due to costs of up to £50,000”.
All of which means the subcommittee will now be reviewing Lovett’s concerns after the fact, safe in the knowledge that Bob Vylan’s performance at the festival went ahead without any dramas, and with no “unrest” or “disorder” or crowd safety issues.
All of which pretty much demonstrates that Lovett’s concerns were unfounded, making the whole review entirely pointless.
But it will be interesting to see if Lovett – or any of the other people who complained about the Bob Vylan booking – will try to argue that the council should give consideration to the safety implications of Boardmasters’ bookings when considering future licences, even though there were apparently no safety implications this time.
Not all the emails received by the council about Bob Vylan’s Boardmasters appearance were against the duo. Some argued that the council should not intervene in the festival’s line-up.
One wrote, “Free speech is the fundamental right which separates free people from the oppressed and a venue that is prepared to stand up for this should be celebrated”.
“I don’t think the band’s comments were tasteful”, they added, alluding to the Glastonbury set, “but they were nuanced and I don’t think they fall foul of hate laws. Regardless of my views, the band are innocent until proven guilty. Accordingly, venues which chose to support them should not face sanction from the authorities for doing so”.
