THE famous Hoppings fun fair has been cancelled after an emergency meeting of the Showmen’s Guild of Great Britain.

The week-long event at Newcastle’s Town Moor is attended by thousands of people every June but this year’s fair has been scrapped following a fall-out over rent and pitch terms.

Following a three-hour emergency meeting held at Ramside Hall in Durham, 200 members of the Showmen’s Guild of Great Britain voted to withdraw all of their stalls and rides from the fair.

Glenn Miller, chairman of the Showmen’s Guild of Great Britain said the move was a “sad day” for the historic event but disagreements with organisers, the Freemen of Newcastle, had forced them into the decision.

Yesterday Newcastle City Council and the Freemen said a waterlogged site, which had failed to recover from last year’s event, may force them to postpone it but not cancel entirely.

Mr Miller, who represents 5,000 showmen across the country and 500 members in the North East, said: “It’s a sad day for the region. It’s the most premiere fair in this part of the country. It’s a flagship fair and we have gone all our lives.

“We did not want this to happen but when the Freemen took over the event in 2011 we had numerous meetings with them and we asked them to abide by the rules of the guild and now they’ve moved the goal-posts.

“It’s not to do with adverse weather, it is concerns only due to them abiding by the guild.”

Mr Miller said breaches of the guild’s rules relate to rent terms for pitches transferred between members and the movement of side stalls to make way for larger attractions.

During the meeting votes were cast by 200 members to put the fair officially “out of order” under section 21 K1B of the organisation’s rule-book.

The Hoppings has its roots in the 19th Century when it was held to coincide with Race Week at Newcastle Race Course.

The first fair was staged in 1882 and drew crowds of 100,000 with its organisation handed to the Freemen of the City in 2011.

Last year’s extreme rainfall led to the first Friday of the event to be cancelled and lorries took three days to get off site at the end of the event following flash-flooding.

Sir Len Fenwick, chairman of the Freemen of the City, said: “I’ve received no communication from the guild and we weren’t invited to the meeting so we weren’t present to directly answer questions.

“To vote it out of order is a lengthy process with several democratic levels which need to be passed through an assessment by the central council of the guild.

“It’s disheartening that there are felt to be such fundamental issues that the opportunity for dialogue first-hand with the membership hasn’t been offered to the Freemen but we have a long record of cooperation and working to success at the fairground in Newcastle.”

Newcastle City Council and the Freemen of Newcastle had hoped to stage Europe’s largest travelling fair “later in the year” depending on the weather.

Atrocious weather conditions last summer – dubbed the wettest year for a century – resulted in the Hoppings being postponed by a day.