Memories of Battle of the Beanfield - one witness recalls the day police violently attacked hippies trying to get to Stonehenge
1985 – And civil war rages thru England’s green and pleasant lands. The miners have just been vanquished by the forces of Thatcher, the latest victims of Thatcher’s “democratic” bootboy tactics; they join the ranks of the teachers, the printers, the Argentine conscripts among many others to have been stamped on by the Grantham Gargoyle. Like Sauron’s unsleeping eye, her twisted gaze lands on Stonehenge, the Free Festival – and the Peace Convoy.
Stonehenge Free Festival grew from the ashes of the Windsor Park Free Festival, that used to take place on the Queen’s lawn, but when this was crushed in 1973 (by the then Labour Government – surprise, surprise), those gallant band of bikers, hippies, stoners and freedom activists moved to the Henge and did feast and frolic in free green fields until 1985. By Common Law, if the gathering could take place for this 12th year then a right to have the fair was forever guaranteed. But out from the stinking vapours of the dark side a sinister force was being assembled! By 1984, the first year I went to the Henge, by the Solstice weekend a gathering as large, if not larger, than Glastonbury Festival, was the peak of this month long gathering. By now, punks, squatters, anarchists as well as bikers, hippies and drug fiends had joined the ranks and a mutant band of travellers had become the shock troops of the movement “The Peace Convoy”. I remember being in awe of these mythical creatures in their multi coloured vehicles, but these were not just hippies. The anti nuclear peace camps had helped politicise and Thatcher’s Draconian laws had recruited this group of people together. Not all they did was politically correct, but the treatment these people had suffered from at the hands of the authorities had created a wild anarchist spirit, white hot and rampant. As the festival kept growing over the years, it became clear that these people had to be stopped. If the festival and its spirit had continued to grow unabated I think that all of Wiltshire would now be an anarchist federation and over a million people would be flocking to the Stones.
Anyway, the scene is set. The summer of ’84 had seen various trashings, including Nostil Priory, but nothing like the events of June 1st 1985 – The Battle of the Beanfield. I was a young squatter in 1985, that summer I set off hitching around and in the last days of May I headed for Wiltshire, someone told me the Convoy were at Savernake Forest, Marlborough. I hitched there, ate at the free food kitchen and joined up with a couple of lads I’d met the year before and on the morning of the 1st, after much discussion, set off in their “RAMBULANCE” for the Stones. The journey for me was amazing, riding through the countryside, the green wheat rippling like the sea either side of the road. We did the usual slow journey, stopping for breakdowns and beer stops until finally we ground to a halt and the word came down the line ”ROAD BLOCK”. The time passed, I walked up to the front of the line where piles of gravel blocked our path and ever increasing numbers of police were appearing. People were talking to the police and I, wrongly as it turned out, felt quite calm about the whole scene, until what seemed like a few hours later I heard lots of Shouting “Pigs, Pigs” “Into the field! Into the field!” We started to hack at the fence and hedge as vehicles started to pull into the field of beans next to the road. A helicopter had been flying around by now, I can remember hearing “we got the miners, now it’s your turn”, whether this came from the helicopter I can’t say but later on it was encouraging the police more and more “Get them! Get Them!” I still innocently thought we would circle the wagons and have our festival here, and then I saw the police flooding into the field and clubbing people that they came near, and my illusions were shattered. At first I thought escape, but as the sounds of the chaos increased and people were running back towards me saying “Pigs that way, run”. |
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Some of the vehicles were driving round the field, I got caught up with a group on foot, some people were trying to rally us to fight, and what I discovered were police Snatch Squads running into our crowd trying to grab these organisers. As I ran, a copper ran past me swinging his truncheon just missing a fleeing girl’s head. Suddenly he was tripped up and was kneeling in front of me, I punched him in the back of the head – panic had made me a desperate man – and my hand swelled up immediately, then I helped educate him with my boots as the crowd swirled around him in a flurry of boots, fists and bits of the field’s fence. The fighting intensified and I ran, shitting myself, I thought I was going to be killed here in this green field in Jolly England. By now, the police were in some of the vehicles, ramming others, people and children were screaming, dogs were barking and biting and everyone had the look of the hunted – desperate. Suddenly a bus pulled in front of me and police swarmed out, I held up my hands saying “please, I surrender please” and I got beaten on the head and arms, them dragged by the hair and arms, bleeding, back across the field and into the queue of the arrested, where someone helped me walk towards the riot vans and held their t-shirt on my head to help stop the blood (thanks M). We were thrown into the van, then locked in a garage behind Amesbury Police Station with about 25 others, where we took all the drugs we had on us!! Then I was driven to Portsmouth and finally released on Monday morning about 3am, after being charged with assault, carrying an offensive weapon, resisting arrest etc. and signing a pledge not to go within 25 miles of the Henge.
Now I could tell you how the local landowner stopped the police trashing the women, children and vehicles that had stayed at Savernake, how fourteen children were in Salisbury hospital that night with head wounds, how Rosie’s windscreen was smashed all over her as she held her baby up and asked to surrender, how the dogs were put down that day, how the press stitched us up, the police all got commendations, how 500 people had marched from Amesbury Car Park that day and had also been trashed, but what I really want to say is that day changed my life forever. I was treated as a terrorist that day, and that is what I became, any grief or damage I could cause the System I then did. Be it throwing eggs at the police, to rioting in Trafalgar Square, I was turned into a warped freedom fighter. They let me get away with my life that day and I dedicated myself to making anyone in authority’s life as miserable as possible. I’m not saying there weren’t nutters on the scene already, but a lot of the peaceful people who went that day were similarly warped by the experience. Thatcher’s attempt at destroying us instead recruited a bigger problem and created a massive upsurge of contempt for them and their rules. When I look back now and think of the freedoms we enjoyed back then, free festivals every weekend through the summer and the right to party wherever we wanted and the freedom to demonstrate that we took for granted, it strikes home that our freedoms have been stolen from us for the last twenty years, and Blair’s gang want to clamp down even more, I say don’t just take it – Fight Back. This article first appeared in issue 7 of Now or Never! To buy a copy check out the Back Issues
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