My experience when the Leeds Festival 2002 riots occurred.
Digital journalist Benjamin Jackson briefly discusses his experience camping at Leeds Festival 2002 when the riots broke out on the last night of the festival. The festival moved from it's original site of Temple Newsam to it's current home at Bramham Park in 2003 after the riots took place - causing £250,000 worth of damage and 19 arrests.
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00:00Were you at Leeds in 2002?
00:02Oh yeah, yeah. I remember that festival quite well.
00:06That was my first Leeds festival that I went to actually.
00:10My friends went with me but camped in a completely different location.
00:17And me being Cavalier, I thought, oh, I'll just camp by myself, you know,
00:21get that full-blown festival experience.
00:24Me, strange as you know, but I was a right social butterfly back in that time.
00:30Lord knows what's happened.
00:32But yeah, I remember meeting on the first day a couple of older gentlemen, shall we say,
00:39that were quite leery.
00:41I mean, one of them kept walking around yelling, Quincy, Quincy.
00:45I'm not sure if he was looking for someone or if he was a fan of the television series.
00:51And then I met some fantastic people from Liverpool, from Cambridge.
00:55It was just a really nice feeling until that last night.
01:00Where I was in my tent, just thinking I'll get an early night, you know, studious as ever.
01:07And then as it transpired, there was helicopters flying overhead.
01:13So I'm thinking, whoa, what's going on here?
01:15That's a bit crazy, don't you think?
01:18It turns out that there was a riot happening.
01:20The riot.
01:21The riot that I've just been writing about.
01:24I wasn't anywhere near it, but we were in a close enough proximity to see the
01:33airy glow coming from the portaloos where bellows of thick black smoke
01:38were just emitting across Temple Newsham.
01:41That's crazy.
01:42Yeah, no, it was crazy.
01:43It was definitely crazy.
01:45I remember one person saying, I'll cover your mouth.
01:48You're all breathing in.
01:49Well, we're in the office, so fecal matter.
01:53It was insane.
01:54Absolutely incredible.
01:57I honestly thought the riot was going to happen because Guns N' Roses came out late on stage
02:03and I was in the middle of the crowd thinking, oh, Lord, please, please,
02:06please let Axl Rose come.
02:08Please let him come and play this gig.
02:11But no, it was the last night of the festival when it all kicked off.
02:14So then naturally, next year, Bramham Park start all over again.
02:20I think a lot of people were on their best behavior at that point in time.
02:23But yeah, what a baptism of fire for my first Leeds festival, right?