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The Tolpuddle Martyrs' Festival is online this weekend and it's got an outstanding line-up of old and new radical performers
PUNK-FOLK MAESTRO: Babar Luck

AN ENTIRE summer has been cancelled. It’s heartbreaking but the only redeeming feature is the fact that everyone — or at the very least everyone who has access to a computer and a level of technical knowledge beyond that of a bemused triceratops — can be at the Tolpuddle Martyrs’ Festival.

I heartily recommend you log in and watch, wherever you are and whatever the weather is like and whether or not you like festivals, camping, mud, stubbornly convex toilet facilities, stoned hippies, welcoming pools of sick and random people asking if you want to buy horse tranquilliser, etc.

I know most of that doesn’t happen at Tolpuddle — it’s just my memories of 40 years of festival experiences rolled together for your amusement.

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
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