Political Activity
After recovering from stomach cancer, Eavis stood as a candidate for the Labour Party in the 1997 General Election in the Wells Constituency, polling 10,204 votes. In 2004 however, he suggested that disillusioned Labour voters should switch their vote to the Green Party to protest at the Iraq War, though he returned to supporting the Labour Party in 2010.
In 2005 Eavis was quoted in The Guardian as being a supporter of hunting. "I don't hunt myself, but I support the people who want to hunt. With all that's going on in the world, it was outrageous to ban it." In November 2006 he was appointed as President of the Somerset Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
In June 2011, Eavis was quoted as lamenting the decline in political activity associated with the Glastonbury Festival. Days later, however, a protest by Art Uncut at the Glastonbury Festival against U2's alleged hypocrisy on matters of taxation was stopped with force by festival security.
Eavis is scheduled to be guest editor of the Western Daily Press newspaper on Glastonbury's 'fallow' weekend Saturday 23rd June 2012.
Read more about this topic: Michael Eavis
Famous quotes containing the words political and/or activity:
“The political horizon looks dark and lowering; but the people, under Providence, will set all right.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)