A year ago, we featured the security behind the phenomenal global success of Taylor Swift’s Eras tour. This year’s must-have ticket has been for the reunion of Oasis, and above all at their five hometown concerts at Heaton Park in Manchester. The differences between securing – as much for people’s safety as from crime – the two was at least partly a matter of geography, and demographics, writes Mark Rowe.
‘It’s good to be back,’ Oasis were singing. Some of the hundreds of mainly young people, not thought of let alone alive when Oasis were in their pomp in the 1990s, sang along as they walked through woodland. They had come down off ‘Gallagher Hill’ that offered the best view of the actual concert, and gone through or even tipped over temporary fencing and gone past a relative handful of Showsec stewards in their mustard-coloured shirts. Clutching at most bottles of water and their phones, they got as far as the high, dark green castle-like wall erected to keep the ticketless out. While the most intrepid of the fans without tickets banged on the wall or even tried to climb on someone’s shoulders, and some got over, even without a ladder (although at least someone brought one); that was as far as they got; the fence was double. Hence the climbers stayed on top and sang the Oasis song ‘Roll with It’ at approaching police officers. Police had enough of a presence to check that no serious attempt at scaling the perimeter developed. At most, out of frustration, as the fans trooped back the way they had come, some stewards got some verbal abuse.
Those mainly young people are a regular modern phenomenon – whether the event is sporting or musical, while knowing that they lack a ticket and couldn’t afford one even if touted outside, crowds turn up to a venue; whether simply to be part of the atmosphere and have a story to tell (and to take footage of on their smartphones) or to try to scale the fence. The likes of Wembley and the new Tottenham Hotspur have such high walls as to make attempts to climb over futile; hence the mass effort at the final of the Euros football tournament in July 2021 to crash a way through turnstiles.
Those with Oasis tickets (who could come from hundreds of miles away, even abroad, given that the tickets went on sale online a year ago) are, then, a different constituency from the ticketless who hung around the fringes. Concert-goers of Taylor Swift and Oasis are two tribes, each with a set of songs they hold dearly, and a sort of clothing. Where they might differ – in a way that matters for Security – is that Taylor Swift fans are famed as law-abiding, while Oasis fans affect a swagger, that may show itself in a casual attitude to littering, and foul language (including by Liam Gallagher). On “Gallagher Hill’, some let off flares, lobbed bottles into the masses. Yet whereas such football hooligan-like behaviour might well lead to confrontation between home and away fans, no such violence threatened; because everyone was on the same side; of Oasis.
The academic of football crowds Clifford Stott of the University of Keele has written of what those in authority might see as disorder as ‘carnival’. Certainly the ticketless at Heaton Park, into the night, were there to have a good time; largely self-policing, because to have uniformed authority figures there would have invited trouble. This is not to be complacent about gatherings of the ticketless; they can hurt others (and indeed themselves) by reckless behaviour, or simply causing a crush of too many people in too little space to breathe; as happened outside the Brixton Academy in December 2022.
Film it all
Another cultural phenomenon is how the young love to film everything, such as the big screen during the concert, even if it were like a thumbprint a mile away to the ticketless. Meanwhile inside the Heaton Park concert arena, the atmosphere was good-natured; naturally, because no-one wanted to fall foul of the rules and get thrown out, because everyone was there to enjoy the spectacle of Liam and Noel Gallagher walking on stage, hand in hand; the stewards (some of them showing themselves able to sing along) as much as the fans. Stewarding duties included handing out cups and bottles of water for fans to stay hydrated in the sun.
Experienced
It helps that the authorities have huge experience of managing events – Oasis is not the only band to have played in Heaton Park, even in summer 2025; Showsec did the stewarding of the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester. Police described their presence as ‘extensive, highly visible’. As for legals, they had a dispersal notice covering Heaton Park in case of anti-social behaviour (to avoid arrests unless necessary, hence judging an event’s rowdiness in terms of the handful of arrests may be misleading); and for airspace too, one-and-a-half-mile restriction zone. A more striking metric was the seizure of five drones on one night, when police also ‘spoke to’ two other pilots; a sign of how lucrative it may be to fly a drone over a concert, to capture footage. Ten in all were seized.
Security praised
The experience includes teamwork; whether with other 999 services (getting ambulances to anyone needing a hospital) or public transport; and security staff, praised by Greater Manchester Police (GMP) Assistant Chief Constable Matt Boyle, lead police commander for the Oasis events, for their ‘key role’. ACC Boyle said: “We’ve assisted local authorities and the event organisers with their plans throughout …. I want to thank all security staff and partners who have done a fine job in making this a memorable experience for all.”
Rangers recalled
Halfway through the Heaton Park series of concerts, John Hacking, Executive Member for Employment, Skills and Leisure at Manchester City Council (which owns the park), said: “The atmosphere across Manchester has been electric over this last week with the whole city swept up in Oasis fever and peaking over the weekend with the first two hugely successful homecoming concerts at Heaton Park. As you would expect given the size of the concerts and numbers of people attending, we go through a continuous process with partners of re-assessing the plans in place for the concerts to ensure both public safety and that any environmental impact on our award-winning park is minimalised. The steps being taken ahead of the next concert regretfully mean the distant view of the large screens behind the event stage will no longer be there. Unfortunately our hand has been forced in having to put these additional measures in place to protect the very recent extensive planting of young trees in that location as we try to establish a new woodland area in the park, and the wellbeing of our cattle herd in the field, as well as to keep people in the park safe. Our advice to music fans who don’t have tickets for the concerts is to head into the city centre instead.”
That advice had a bad precedent – and a reminder of how wrong a mass event can go – because in May 2008 the city put on ‘fan zone’ events for the tens of thousands of ticketless Rangers FC supporters from Glasgow, there for the UEFA League final. Rangers lost although fans had been running amok in the city centre even before the match began.
Photo by Mark Rowe: Oasis fans at Leeds station, Friday, July 11.
