WHEREEVER you roam, or stumble, on Glastonbury’s 900-acre site — the size of a small town and apparently the seventh largest in southern Britain once set up — signs of left-wing activism, both subtle and obvious, abound.

There are the many sculptures such as the towering Scrap Trident monument, complete with broken missile by Joe Rush, one of the art directors of London 2012’s Paralympics closing ceremony and the usual giant protest banners, this year with messages such as “Stop profits from war” and “NHS for the people not profit.”

And of course there’s Left Field, a whole stage dedicated to left-wing discussion that’s being going strong at the festival for over 10 years.

It’s not to be confused with dance duo Leftfield, who also made a banging appearance this year headlining on the Sonic stage in the Dance Village.

The two DJs thankfully clashed with Kanye West — the widely held consensus being that he was terrible, so much so that even some of his own fans left his performance early.

That’s not to say that the indie fascists always get it right though. Many missed out on Beyonce’s explosive headline act in 2011, proof that narrow-mindedness is not the best baggage to take along to Glastonbury.

Lionel Ritchie was the big-name Sunday afternoon performer this year and the cafes tried to cash in on it with images of his head under the words: “Hello, is it tea you’re looking for?”

Drawing the biggest crowd by far — allegedly more than 100,000, well over half the festival’s capacity — many were forced to watch from the furthest hill as the soul star rendered hits Hello, Say You Say Me and Dancing On The Ceiling.

Viewers at home would have definitely had the best seat.

The line-up at Left Field was as diverse as ever this year. Advertised in the Glastonbury guide with a large picture of Thee Faction frontman Billy Brentford holding a copy of GDH Cole’s book The Means to Full Employment up to his face, like some communist priest clutching his Bible, the stage had its usual mix of comedy, music and debate with Pussy Riot thrown in for good measure.

Former London Mayor Ken Livingstone was at the panel debate 2015 WTF? — presumably a reference to what went wrong with the Labour Party at the general election.

He told the Labour faithful in the audience not to just be benign members of the party but to be activists and campaign for change within it and mocked the right’s propaganda that Labour lost the election because it was too left-wing.

“It wasn’t left-wing enough!” he exclaimed. “Perhaps if it was, then the outcome would have been different.”

In the same debate Welsh singer Charlotte Church explained how she moved to left-wing activism because the right has no rational argument. In the ensuing Q&As, several political punters praised her for her courageous decision to move into campaigning, with one expressing the view that she’s an example that you can be successful and still believe wealth should be shared.

Thee Faction themselves had the whole lot — brassy punk, funk, politics and comedy — all rolled into their performance.

There were many a “thank you comrades” from Brentford who, at one point tried to sell strips of bog roll for 10p each, with the proceeds going to charity. “Get your shit tickets,” he encouraged us, before dedicating the song Bastards to what he predicts will soon be an EasyJet-style queue-jumping system to see your local GP under another five years of Tory government. Another dedication, Police State, referenced Orgreave and the miners’ strike.

Love ’em or hate ’em, Pussy Riot were on site to present political performance art on the Park Stage, where they bound a soldier representing Vladimir Putin before covering his head with a rainbow scarf representing LGBT rights.

But as so often is the case at Glastonbury, the best experiences are the ones that aren’t planned. Stumbling across Shangri La, Block 9 and Arcadia by night revealed the most wonderfully seedy post-apocalyptic scenes you’ll ever see.

An upturned smoking freight crate, a giant flame-throwing spider, a hell-and-heaven stage, joke venues dedicated to political parties, a gospel singer who strips naked before crowd surfing at 6am, a dedicated gay venue called NYC Downlow with drag queens performing on its rooftop and a New York cab crashed into the side of the building were just a few of the hallucinatory experiences on offer.

But then, it was Glastonbury, and at the time they just came across as beautifully deranged.