Introduction

Introduction:

Hi everyone welcome to Rural Counterculture, Politics and Protest.

My blog will focus on the development of countercultures within English Rural spaces.

In each post I will explore individuals and events that will provide a progressive and interconnecting narrative. The three key individuals are Michael Eavis, Phil Russel and Jim Hindle.

What do these three people have on common you ask? All were involved and/or associated with the New-Age traveller and festival movements. Throughout these blog posts, I shall use artefacts within the archives of The Museum of English Rural Life. These shall be used as a point of analysis or visual aids.

Throughout this journey we will explore the origins of the new age traveller movement, the emergence of festival culture, and its surrounding political ideologies and protests.

The timeline will begin in the early 1970s with the start of the emerging free festival culture. I will conclude at end in the 1990s with the implementation of the Criminal Justice bill, and discuss its repercussions upon both free parties and political protests.

I was inspired to create this blog through drawing correlations between the recurring theme of freedom and restriction of movement in countryside. I applied this theme to the parallels between the 19^th and 20^th centuries rural issues.

This journey bridged my reading of 19^th century rural literature from the likes of John Clare, toward the histories, sociology and legislations of the 20^th century.

My study of Clare’s poetry helped me identify the impact of the Acts of Enclosure and local laws of the ‘black-coated brigade’ upon the movement and cultures of working rural communities.

The new Acts of Enclosure devastated the rural landscape and limited the movement of rural people through trespassing laws.

Beyond this, the Acts resulted in a radical transformation of the English Countryside with the destruction of wild land to construct boundaries for property owners. The removal of rights to common or free land also led to a diaspora of rural inhabitants.

Despite these parallels, the strangeness 20^th century equivalent of is the origin of the individuals that were affected by legislative restriction of movement.

The phenomenon we see in the proceeding century is one that is inherently urban and a far removed from surrounding rural living and infrastructures. You shall see this contextualised in the proceeding blog.

Returning to the 19^th Century origins of the project, I had great interest in the legislation of the ‘’black-coated brigade’’ who strictly enforced law within rural parishes. These religious figures prevented cultural practises of rural workers (e.g gambling and drunkenness of Sundays).

 In the 20^th century, we shall see a similar repression of cultural practises against New Age Travellers in a very different way!

Before I proceed with later blogs, I would like to address the often-ambiguous term, New Age Traveller. Some have defined the movement in terms of New Religion and spirituality, whilst others define it as a social movement.

Throughout the blog I will use New Age travellers as an umbrella term for the likes of Hippies, Festival Organizers, Protesters, Pagans, Punks, Ravers and Political Activists. I hope to create a picture of the crossover and blurring of these sub-categories to capture the complex diversity of the New Age Traveller.

I hope you enjoy the blog.

References:

Steven Suttcliffe, Children of the New Age: A history of spiritual practises (London: Routledge , 2003)