Massive Attack

It seemed to me, by the end of my working life in 2014, that I had spent the best part of 30+ years either clearing up the mess created by ill-laid plans or making myself unpopular by my efforts to prevent the mess happening in the first place. As I have said several times before in this blog, my main insight into the smooth working of institutions that are in the business of doing stuff was this:

In any organisation, most people are passive onlookers, little more than passengers working their passage on a journey whose reward is a monthly salary and whose destination, in the short term, is the weekend and, in the long term, retirement. Therefore, to ensure the success of any enterprise, whether it be a voyage of discovery, a zoo, a business, or a university, two unusual personality types are necessary at senior level: people who make things happen, and people who make things work. These are two very different and equally rare sets of characteristics, hardly ever embodied in a single person. The two types often hold each other in contempt, openly or secretly, but, when brought together – by force, if necessary – they can generate an awesome transformative energy. The true inner secret, however, is this: People Who Make Things Happen must never be given a complex task to see through, and People Who Make Things Work must never, ever be put in charge. [1]

That's right: despite my day-dreamer persona, laziness, and artistic inclinations, I discovered to my enormous surprise that I am also very much a Person Who Makes Things Work. When I look around me, I see the litter of fixable chaos everywhere, induced and then abandoned by People Who Make Things Happen. They're welcome to their imaginary gold-braided hats, smart uniforms, and glittering prizes: I carry my virtual oily rag and spanner with pride. Made a mess? I, or one of my crew, can fix it! Or could have fixed it, if you'd only thought to bring us in earlier. Our guild membership tattoo reads, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". We're not keen on change for change's sake, or simply to decorate your CV, but we're here to help.

Quite often, the core problem is a simple matter of failing to count quantities, or "logistics", to use a word you'll often see painted on the side of delivery vans. You'd be amazed how often some self-styled Make It Happen visionary has failed, for example, to do a simple sum like "how many people would it take for how long and at what expense to complete this task?" Nearly always, in my experience. How often have I been told, having pointed out the likely consequences of pouring several gallons of ambition into a single pint pot of reality: "I'm a big-picture person – I don't bother myself with these nit-picking details!" And how often have I been thanked for saving someone from a career-wrecking misjudgement? Just the once, actually, but that was a really BIG one.

Why am I telling you this? Because last week I saw a classic example acted out on a grand scale in public.

As anyone who follows the UK news or the music scene will probably be aware, there was an open-air concert by trip-hop combo Massive Attack in their home town of Bristol on Sunday 25th August. We were taking a break there in our flat, which is very near Clifton Downs, the large open area of common land at the top of the Avon Gorge where the concert was to be held, and I had several enjoyable walks around the perimeter of the site, watching and photographing the progress of the installation of the stages, lights, enormous screens, and other outdoor concert essentials, and then on Sunday seeing the first large groups of ticket-holders arriving, around 3:30 pm, for a main act performance scheduled to start a full five hours later at 8:30. Rather them than me, I thought, no matter how good the support acts might be.

Massive Attack are an act from a time well after I had stopped paying attention to pop culture. I have never been to a rave, or indeed any event where the music is characterised by samples stolen from, ahem, real music plus (in the hilarious wording of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994) "sounds wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats" (I don't think they wanted to outlaw the likes of Philip Glass). It's just not my idea of music and, frankly, by the 1990s I was too busy changing nappies [2] and earning a living as a professional wet blanket and Destroyer of Dreams (see above) to care much about what was going on in some muddy field far away.

The thing is, by now the logistics of festivals and open-air concerts have become well-established and routine. You know: X thousand people over D days require a readily-determined amount of space, catering, facilities, and so on. You can probably get a handy look-up table from Michael Eavis's people to work it out. The days of the muddy disasters of the late 60s are long gone; why, even the first large-scale festival I ever attended – the Knebworth Festival of 1974 – went off pretty much hitch-free.

But, some Make Things Happen people had decided that this Massive Attack concert would pioneer a thoroughly green, carbon-free approach to the business: that, and not the music, is what got it all the coverage on the news. So all toilets and rubbish were to be be composted, all catering would be vegan, nothing would be allowed on site that couldn't be recycled, no power would rely on fossil-fuel generators, people would be encouraged to walk or travel to the site by public transport (including laid-on electric bus shuttles from Temple Meads rail station), and so on.

Obviously, these were incredibly ambitious and worthy goals but, having listened to the radio, walked around the compound a number of times, and knowing the area well, my Mr. Make Things Work warning lights were already going off. It seemed thirty-four thousand tickets at £79 each had been sold. Woah... What, here? In there? As always, vision and intention are one thing, competence and delivery quite another. I wished them luck, mentally, and hoped they'd ordered enough pint pots for this impressive volume of ambition.

So, as it happened, the day after the event, Monday, one of my partner's oldest friends came round, bearing tales passed on to her by a neighbour who had been there and, apparently, was still fulminating with anger. As anticipated, no one had been allowed into the site with their own food or drink – people were actually searched – including those with children in tow. Were there exceptions for, say, diabetics or those on specialised diets? I don't know. It seems everything had to be bought on-site, but by late afternoon pretty much everything for sale had run out: she had queued for over an hour only to find there was nothing left to buy. There simply hadn't been enough catering laid on for thirty-four thousand hungry and thirsty people forbidden from bringing their own sustenance. Why? To minimise non-recyclable litter; no other obvious reason.

Moreover, apparently the space inside the compound was crammed and disorganised: queues were intersecting with dancing crowds in a chaotic and potentially dangerous way once it became dark. There was very little lighting in the public areas, so you had to wonder: what if something unexpected had happened and panic broke out? There was little shelter from the hot sun during the afternoon, and none at all from the downpour of heavy rain that started at 8:30, just as Massive Attack came on stage, as all the tents had by then been closed.

At that point many people decided they had to leave, including our informant. But getting away from the site was difficult. Although it was pouring with rain people were denied access to the special buses, scheduled to leave at the end of the show, not before, and which anyway required the display of a special wristband. Some started ordering Ubers and taxis, but access to the Downs was closed off to traffic. And so on. You get the picture. Wet, hungry, thirsty people, unable to get away other than on foot, having reluctantly decided to miss the headline act: all for just £79.

Don't know about younger, but police are definitely tubbier, these days

The frustrating thing is that none of this need have happened with proper foresight, which always means, in the eternal wisdom of wet blankets and Destroyers of Dreams everywhere: hope for the best but FFS plan for the worst. It was just as well that the very worst, or something like it, didn't happen on Sunday. Outbreaks of the very worst do seem to be becoming more frequent at mass gatherings – they're such an easy target for nutters of all stripes – but I didn't see any ambulances or fire engines parked nearby, for example, on a "just in case" basis. I hope I was mistaken.

Naturally, interviews with people like Bristol's Green MP Carla Denyer emphasised the importance and success of the event's eco-experimental aspect. Of course; but when people are invested in an enterprise for reasons that are, ultimately, quite distinct from its true nature – "green" is great, but is not why so many people had paid £79 for a concert ticket – then any failings are wished away and the successes talked up, perhaps with a bit of muttering about "a few lessons to be learned".

I have to say a certain off-putting air of self-rectitude could be detected floating in the air, like the purported odour of sanctity. I mean, vegan-only catering? Really? Not to mention 34,000 people corralled into a compound resembling a detention camp, while apparently being subjected to graphic virtue-signalling videos about Palestine? Was this meant to be a concert or a re-education camp for the complacent middle-classes of South West England?

Now, the concert's Ts & Cs give every appearance of careful thought, but seem not to have been backed up by proper logistical planning, the sort of stuff that ought to be comparatively routine and dull, like ensuring enough supplies of food and drink, adequate toilets, and strategies for unexpected events and emergencies. This is why People Who Make Things Work need always to be involved at executive level, and their perspective given its due. I mean, where do you even put 30,000 litres of water (that's two large water tankers), never mind the perishable ingredients for thousands of vegan burgers? [3]  Assuming, of course, that these things were ever actually present on site. I don't know.

My guess – perhaps unwarranted – is that some People Who Make Things Happen may have been put in charge of making all those nice ideas work in practice, and some crucial elements in the chain of implementation had been omitted, underestimated, or failed under stress. If so, as always, it will have been because those admirable people will have concentrated on the excitement of the vision thing – not least being seen to be innovative and on-message – and assumed someone else would be attending to the boring facts, figures, and compromises of actual delivery. Noooo...

1. I know... Any variation on the "two sorts of people" thing is always a bit dubious. My favourite is "There are two sorts of people: those who believe there are two sorts of people, and those who don't". For an enjoyably ironic exploration of another "two sorts" (in this case Apollonian vs. Hermetic) see W.H. Auden's poem "Under Which Lyre", delivered at Harvard in 1946, when many "GI Bill" ex-military students will have been present.

2. For American readers, "nappies" are "diapers".

3. Just give that a minute's thought. Be generous, and assume that only half of those you have required not to bring their own food want to eat during the concert. That's still about 15K meals. People are likely to want to queue for food from, say, 5:30 to 8:30: three hours, but with a peak hour around 6:30-7:30. So all food outlets combined will need to process and retail 5K meals an hour, or more likely 2.5K 5:30-6:30, 10K 6:30-7:30, and 2.5K 7:30-8:30. Your challenge: how many outlets, how many staff, and how much food-safe storage are required to meet that demand? You'll be needing a calculator. BTW, do you know how many meals a busy burger drive-through can serve in one hour? (The number 600 seems to come up a lot...). Do you think Vikki's Vegan Victuals Van can handle the job? But then, why trouble yourself with such questions? What matters is that whatever food is available is strictly plant-based; that's the bottom line, anything else is just detail! Hmmm. There comes a point where delegation shades into dereliction...