Local club meets are just a bunch of kids that have their car on PCP or have a cheap beat up car that they roll around showing off. 90% of them would have never touched a track. (this is 90% of the meets, mainly ones that are publicized alll over facebook drawing attention from all over the country) It's the ones you don't hear about which run according to plan and don't cause disruption.
I used to do the VW scene many years ago and attended quite a few, they started off well, but after a few years the above behaviour increased drastically, maybe as the popularity grew. I also did loads of bike meets, surprisingly they were the most well behaved, you would get the odd sporadic incident but that was maybe down to over exuberance than absolute disregard to road laws.
There was a bike meet at Odiham first weds of the month, Police were always on hand and to be fair they seemed to turn a blind eye, there was a regular chain of guys wheeling off up the duel carriage way, it was good to watch. Until one night a guy tried, failed miserably and went straight into the crowd, but that was one incident in 5 years i remember.
Thing is, times are changing, Social media is a huge impact on the world, say 5-10 years ago, you'd be handing out flyers and telling friends about meeting up.
These days, you create an event online and within minutes you could have a thousand attendee's.
Bigger number = more chance of getting caught and singled out.