Firstly, thank you for your sympathetic editorial about this year’s Wivenhoe May Fair (Gazette, May 29).

I acted in various roles, as compere, organiser, booker, or performer, from the mid-Eighties until the mid-noughties. This year, although not on the committee, since it was the 30th May Fair, I helped compere the event.

I found it to be quite as good this year as many of the best years ever – movingly so, in fact.

It would be a terrible shame were it to cease.

In three decades, a number of things have changed, however.

The early May Fairs were smaller, hippy-ish affairs. There was no stage, only one leaky old tent.

Bands set up on the grass and played. Amplification was much smaller.

There were fewer acts and music which was acoustic was actually unamplified. There were usually no more than six bands. There was no Facebook then, nor other viral types of social media. For years, the Gazette didn’t even bother covering us – preferring instead to report on traction rallies or drum majorettes.

Back then, the tiny May Fair committee usually had two short meetings – one in February and a smaller one a week before the fair. Being a CND and Labour Party-organised event, the security plan, as formulated by Mrs Sally Young, was as follows: “If a scuffle breaks out, let the women deal with it.”

There were no fights. The alcohol licence was organised by the late Bob Richardson, former Colchester leading fireman and local councillor. No one ever needed to be told more than once by him, my feistier younger self included.

The Wivenhoe May Fair, a peaceful sort of event, with far fewer people then attending, didn’t attract groups of young drunks.

There was more than a liberal sprinkling of children and silver citizens in attendance. Even keen pugilists don’t generally start a fight in front of children.

For me, the May Fair is now over-organised, over-policed and over-regulated.

It was once smaller, unpublicised and scantly-organised. If fairgoers wanted alcohol, they queued to buy warm weak lager, or warmer weak beer. It wasn’t perfect, but it all worked. Why don’t we go back to doing that?

Martin Newell
Wivenhoe