Unfair play as cops and council shut down May Fair early

Once in a blue moon the powers that be combine to come up with a stunt that truly beggars belief - and last week saw one of those occasions.
Showmen running Boston’s May Fair, which has been on the go since 1135AD, were ordered to close at 9pm from Thursday until Saturday – an hour and a half earlier than scheduled ... after alleged “problems.”
The instruction followed talks between the Boston Police and Boston Borough Council.
Regular readers may recall the boast made by the council that anti-social behaviour at the fair would not be tolerated
“Police and Boston Borough Council’s community safety team have promised to take action to deal with trouble, especially incidents involving drinking,” said a report in the Boston Standard.
This was par for the course – with regular promises by the council’s anti social behaviour squad that no-one should have to suffer ASB … but that appears to be as far as it goes. So, what exactly was it that made things at the fair so insufferable that it was made to close early?

The answer appears to be “not a lot.”
In a video interview on the Standard’s website - recorded in his comfy office in Boston Police Station, the town’s Chief Inspector Paul Timmins said: “We have had some problems this year with the Boston May Fair - only low level and public disorder and something we’ve had previous years but there’s been an element of people in Boston decided that they’d cause problem this year. It’s been public order, drunk and disorderly type offences. We’ve had a lot of policing in the area, so we’ve combated it well. We’re working well with our partners at the moment, with the Borough Council. We have reduced the opening time of the fair for the rest of this week as a result of it. But in terms of what we expect from a fair this is what we have had over the past couple of years on and off.”
He blamed users of the social networking site Facebook for some of the problems and asked parents to be aware of what their “children” were putting on Facebook.
In another interview, Chief Inspector Timid blamed people drinking at home and then coming to the fair later and causing tensions - something which allegedly happened on Wednesday night when a group of young people aged 16 to 19 “caused problems.”
He said the number of incidents was similar to past years and said many of the offenders would probably have been “causing trouble on the estates” if they were not at the fair.
He concluded: “It’s almost a normal policing week in terms of the May Fair, we have got adequate officers on patrols and it’s not out of the ordinary."
Some key phrases in the justification of shutting the fair down early stand out. They include:

• “ …only low level and public disorder and something we’ve had previous years …”
• “ … in terms of what we expect from a fair this is what we have had over the past couple of years …”
• “ … the number of incidents was similar to past years …”
• “ … It’s almost a normal policing week in terms of the May Fair, we have got adequate officers on patrols and it’s not out of the ordinary …”

In other words, behaviour at the fair has been broadly the same as in previous years – when no need was found to close it early.
Boston May Fair is no different from any other in that it is best seen after dark.
But sunset in the past week has been at about 8-45pm – just a quarter of an hour before the authorities decided that it should close.
So bang goes the ambience.
Aside from the Boston Standard website, no public notice of the decision appears to have been issued.
Boston Borough Council’s website had carried an item about the fair and its hours during the week, but by yesterday that had vanished, and we noted that the site had been updated that same day – a Sunday.
The fair is a considerable visitor attraction, and given that the event was curtailed for its last three nights, we think that it would have been a good idea to try to spread the word.
But the worst thing of all is the apparent capitulation by the council and the police which allowed troublemakers to win the day. It makes nonsense of Boston Borough Council’s community safety team’s promise, and shames the police for an over-reaction to incidents which in previous years they have apparently taken in their stride.
We can only conclude that the main reason for the early shutdown was that it made life easier for Lincolnshire Police and Boston Borough Council.

The victims in this debacle are the public and the fair showmen.

The victors are the drunks and the troublemakers.

The opposite should have been the case.

So why did the police cop out and the council renege on its promises?

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