reported to have called the collective to tell them that whilst the event was happening there was no rioting at all. In the aftermath of the 2011 England riots, Jenkins later commented in Red Pepper magazine: "From 1995 onwards we proved that youth diversion works better than police oppression. We stopped the Marsh Farm riot by putting on a dance just outside Luton. We wanted to divert the energy and say, c'mon, let's dance, then let's talk, and then let's build". In 1997, and for the next three years afterwards, Exodus held the Free The Spirit Festival at Longmeadow Farm. The 1999 festival resulted in local councillors calling on the then Home Secretary Jack Straw to intervene. Member of Parliament for Mid Bedfordshire Jonathan Sayeed called on the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions to support a decision to evict Exodus from the farm. However, by the end of 1999, the collective had bought the farm co-operatively with loans from Triodos Bank and the Industrial Common Ownership Movement (ICOM). Bedfordshire Police launched another operation (codenamed Canterbury), intended to stop a rave happening on the May Day weekend of 1999. At the cost of , the police used a helicopter and 140 officers to stop vehicles, seize the sound system and arrest three people on suspicion of obstruction. These actions were later declared unlawful in court, so the charges were dropped and the sound system was returned. In summer 2000, the collective achieved their aim of holding a licensed rave. The location was near Ridgmont, Bedfordshire, on land owned by the Marquess of Tavistock. His son, now the Duke of Bedford, had negotiated with Exodus that they could organise raves three times a year on the 135,000 acres of Woburn Estates and commented that "they are very easy to talk to, they talk perfectly good sense and I would recommend someone talking to them". Dissolution After the fourth Free the Spirit Festival in 2000, the collective went in different directions. Some people continued to stay at HAZ Manor, others at Long Meadow Farm, but the parties stopped. Despite the difficulties, members of the group would persevere in their vision to build a truly "people-led" community and social centre in Marsh Farm, referred to as The Ark. After initially securing funding from the Civic Trust's Regeneration Unit, the application was blocked when Chief Constable Michael O'Byrne raised concerns