I got into conversation with a student who has a ticket for the Taylor Swift concert at Wembley Stadium on Monday. He called her Eras tour ‘the biggest event – ever’, which I suppose I would if I had paid £433 for a re-sold ticket for a seat in the ‘nosebleeds’ (I didn’t interrupt him too often to ask him what things meant, and I took him to mean he’ll be at the very back). Quite apart from my fascination for the American singing phenomenon, I found it interesting to hear his views on security, without formally getting my notebook out. Fans seem to know what they’re in for, thanks to online videos, on their phones, and Swift has been going on this tour for over a year. They know of the thwarted terror plot in Vienna, and the remarkable spectacle of tens of thousands of people sitting on the hill overlooking the Olympic Stadium in Munich, for a view of her show (which she acknowledged).
He knows about what he cannot take into the venue: no umbrellas, weapons, no bag larger than A4 size – the list as given by Wembley, like many such stadiums, is long. He knows to take a 500ml plastic bottle (not glass) and that he cannot take actual water inside; so he knows to drink his water while queueing, and to fill up once inside.
To state the obvious, he knows about the sheer number of people – Wembley is sold out, and despite Wembley on its website urging people to stay away unless they have a ticket – ‘No one is allowed to stand outside any entrance or on the Olympic Steps at the front of the stadium. Non ticket holders will be moved on’ – such is the love that fans have for Swift, some will ‘tail-gate’, or (such is Taylor Swift’s power over even the English language) ‘tay-gating’. Now I thought tail-gating meant what can happen at railway station ticket-gates, and indeed what notoriously happened at the Euros football final in July 2021, when possibly 2000 ticketless fans got in, by blatantly gate-crashing or pushing in behind a valid ticket-holder to get through the turnstile at the same time as the genuine customer. By ‘tay-gating’ the fan meant just hanging out, to be in the vicinity of Taylor Swift, to say you were there (and to prove it by taking and posting video of yourself doing so). People have been doing that as long as they have had curiosity; in the 19th century, the rich and noble and nosey would attach themselves to military or royal headquarters on campaign so as to have a view of the Battle of Waterloo, or Gravelotte.
Hence the by now routine ‘soft’ ticket check, that will serve to find who hasn’t a ticket at all, and who should be turned away. And hence the extra physical layer of perimeter security installed over the winter around Wembley, fences and gates (on the right of picture) in accord with the Casey Review into the 2021 disorder, with the idea of preventing a repeat. However, messaging on the Wembley website isn’t going to put many, or any, off doing what they want; and there has to be some geographical points – at the Tube stations, the Brent borough boundary? – where the writ of police and Wembley Security runs no further, if only because even the largest uniformed contingents can only keep holding back so many people, or because non-fans can claim to have business to be there (because they live there?! they want to go to the Tesco convenience store?!). If enough are determined to simply be there, let alone push back, some will succeed in doing so, no matter what danger they put others and even themselves in; as was proven in the disgraceful scenes by anti-social England football fans at the 2021 final.
Taylor Swift and her fans are by all accounts decent people – Swift with her vantage point on stage will point and direct stewards towards people in the audience looking distressed – who do not want to make trouble. Perhaps the bottom line is our capacity to get along even when crowded, hot, surrounded by other sweaty people and with expectations of enjoying the occasion; such as, to take another north London example, on Camden High Street. On an ever busier, wealthier and higher-velocity planet, it’s a crowd safety issue that will only crop up more often and more pressingly – more people wanting to be at a time and place than is the norm, safe, or even feasible.
