ROCK & BLUES CUSTOM SHOW Organizers Vow To Carry On With This Year's Event

One Percent Entertainments Group, which organizes the annual UK festival Rock & Blues Custom Show (described as a "three-day festival of motorcycles, rock music and drinking" that regularly attracts some 15,000 people) , has released the following statement regarding this year's 25th anniversary of the event, also known this year as "RBCS 25":

"On the 6th May 2008, one day before One Percent Entertainments Group was due to sit its premises license hearing with the South Derbyshire District Council and representatives of the county's planning and emergency services committee regarding RBCS 25, we made the decision to TEMPORARILY WITHDRAW the event's premises license application. We then placed a statement on the event website to that effect and to the basic reason surrounding that decision, which was based around representations made at the time by the Derbyshire Constabulary, citing they believed possible public disorder could take place at this year's event. At no time have One Percent Entertainments officially declared that the event has been CANCELLED, that was only portrayed by and in the media to which at the time our company saw no reason to make comment to.

"The last two weeks have been difficult for the RBCS 25 organising team and its legal representatives but we can now move forward from what was a static position and will be making further announcements in due course and can reassure everyone that due to obvious changing circumstances regarding the issue of police objections which we based last week's decision on, One Percent Entertainments Group will now be reissuing our premise license for this year's event in due course

"Please, however, be patient with us, especially those of you who have already invested into admission tickets or invested as vendors at the event so far.

'We would like to take this opportunity to thank the many thousands of well wishers who have made your comments felt and shown huge support over the email contact left at the end of our previous website statement, all of which are positive towards not just our event but to the general state of repression this country is under, after all you, like us, do pay the bills for the running of it.

"Get behind 'Europe's No. 1 Motorcycle and Music Festival' and feel free and continue to email us your honest views and opinions and please support and spread the RBCS 25 word and keep checking back with us for further announcements.

"Thank you all for your patience and fantastic support so far."

The UK media reported earlier in the month that British police shut down the 25th anniversary of the Rock & Blues Custom Show fearing that Hells Angels will seek "high-profile retaliation" for last summer's daring UK motorway murder of a Canadian member of the world's largest motorcycle gang.

The police pressure on organizers and municipal licensing officials is evidence of their fear of a brewing biker feud in Britain after the murder of Gerard "Gerry" Tobin last August.

Mr. Tobin, 35, who left Calgary in 1999 to start a new life in England, was shot off his Harley-Davidson motorcycle last August on a busy highway. Police say the shots came from inside a car that followed him from the Bulldog Bash in Warwickshire.

Investigators believed he was targeted because he was wearing his Hells Angels motorcycle club insignia on his back, signifying full membership in the gang.