Glastonbury Festival cancelled over crowd fears
Glastonbury Festival organiser Michael Eavis has cancelled this year's event because of concerns about crowd numbers.
His rural music festival, which was first staged in 1970, had been under fire from his local authority after thousands of fans sneaked into the 2000 weekend-long extravaganza.
He says he hopes his decision will send out a message that organisers are taking the issue seriously.
Mr Eavis, a Somerset farmer who holds the event on his land at Worthy Farm Pilton, had talked about investing in a £1m super-fence to keep out unwanted festival-goers.
Tens of thousands of people are thought to have scaled fences, tunnelled in or simply knocked fences down to gain entry without tickets last year. Mr Eavis faces prosecution over alleged breaches of the festival licence last year.
In a statement he said: "After much deliberation and consultation I have now decided not to run the festival this year. "
However he added that the show is not over forever: "I am very sorry and sad to have to make this announcement but you can be sure of one thing - we will be back next year in 2002".
It is not the first time that the festival has been put on ice. In 1988 a decision was made to allow the land to lay fallow, in 1991 it was scrapped because of disturbances on-site the previous year caused by groups of travellers and in 1996 organisers decided to take a break.
There has also been local opposition and occasional problems with licensing the event.
Mr Eavis said: "This year off will hopefully give a powerful message to everyone that we are worried about the large number of gatecrashers and we will use the coming months to develop ways and means of controlling entry to the site effectively.
"People will have to understand that the growing culture of fence-hopping has to be stopped and the long-term prospects for the festival will depend upon us succeeding. "
