teifidancer: OPERATION SOLSTICE - The Battle of the Beanfield 1985 (40th Anniversary ) Lest we Forget

Sunday, 1 June 2025

OPERATION SOLSTICE - The Battle of the Beanfield 1985 (40th Anniversary ) Lest we Forget

The Battle of the Beanfield took place over several hours, ago today on the afternoon Saturday 1 June 1985, when Wiltshire police prevented a vehicle convoy of several hundred New Age Travelers, known as the ' Peace Convoy' from setting off from Savernake Forest in Wiltshire towards the twelfth Stonehenge Free Festival and setting up a free gathering and celebration of the summer solstice that had been taking place since 1974.

Stonehenge Free Festival had grown 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 that had gathered there moved to the Henge under the right of Common Law.

However at a meeting of the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), in early 1985, it was resolved to obtain a High Court Injunction preventing the annual gathering at Stonehenge. This was the device to be used to justify the attack at the “Battle of the Beanfield” on the 1st June in Hampshire. Well it wasn’t a battle really. It was an ambush.

They were stopped by a militarised police roadblock, following which 1,300 police descended upon them and British and brutally attacked people that resulted in innocent unarmed people, women and children being violently beaten up in their own homes, after years of gathering in the same place of celebration, by the combined forces of the state, who armed with shields and batons ran savagely amok.

The traditional Stonehenge People’s Free Festival, had taken place at Stonehenge for the summer solstice for a decade. The festival, which lasted for the whole of June, had become a countercultural highlight of the calendar for many people, particularly the growing number of people who had chosen to live on the road in Thatcher’s Britain. In 1984 an estimated 30,000 people had attended.

It was estimated that at the time of the Beanfield there were some 12,000 travellers living on the road throughout the UK. And the numbers were steadily growing, taking advantage of the thriving free festival circuit throughout the UK at the time.

The marginalised and dispossessed of this land were brutally targeted by a police forces under the auspices of Margaret Thatcher's right wing, repressive Conservative Government, as they suppressed a peoples thirst for freedom, with quasi military force that systematically carried out serious abuses of their power with such unrelenting frenzied brutality following similar tactics used against striking miners the one in Orgreave the year before.,

On their way to a festival in the North the previous year travellers had encountered officers from the Met returning from the pit villages. As they drove passed them police held up signs with ‘YOU’RE NEXT’ emblazoned across them.

The ambush on June 1 resulted in the worst police violence in living memory, and involved 1300 officers from 6 constabularies. The government and police, deciding to put an end to both the Festival and the travelling lifestyle that growing numbers of people were adopting. Using an increasingly para-militarised police force, as an extension of brute strength tactics employed against the miners the previous year.

It was also just after the eviction of the Molesworth peace camp, which is where the traveller's Peace Convoy got it's name, at a time when anyone who opposed government policy was considered to be an 'Enemy Within' and investigated, infiltrated, marginalised, and often attacked, both physically and through the law.

A truly horrible time, like today, when people who live on societies edges are attacked simply for being different. Women and their babies were left showered with glass after the police had smashed up their vehicles and homes and the police cracked skulls (literally), One young mother carrying her baby, was dragged out of her home by her hair. Some of the police, clearly intent on causing serious damage to both people and homes, were masked up to protect their anonymity. Many didn’t wear numbers.

It would subsequently leave over 116 travelers hospitalised and see 537 travellers arrested after their homes were systematically looted, smashed and burnt with their possessions being stolen.. At the time this represented one of the largest mass arrests of civilians since at least the Second World War. ( the few that were arrested were never ever prosecuted)

Innocent people who were beaten and bloodied because they simply refused to conform or bow down to a rotten system, and had decided to try and live by their own set of alternative values. Who simply wanted to gather under the stones to celebrate their lives, sing and dance.. The overall cost of this operation was a staggering £5 miillion. The media of the time played their part too, with footage of the most extreme police violence being subsequently lost, and the subsequent demonising of the traveller lifestyle.

The travellers unexpected saviour at the time was the Earl of Cardigan, who at the times self-described himself as "card-carrying Conservative" but became an invaluable witness to the travellers' tales of police brutality, vandalism and unfair arrest. An interesting note - the Telegraph called the Earl of Cardigan a 'class traitor' for testifying about the violence he witnessed.

A dark day for British justice and civil liberties and freedom, marking a turning point after the injustices of Wapping, and the miners strike in this supression of our civil liberties that we should never forget.the largest mass arrest in British history.

In a spiteful coordination, social services were on hand to take traumatised children into care, and in some cases held for a few days. Seven dogs were put down. the children of the travellers into care. The last child was returned to their family in the early 2000s It is important to remember that there has never been a proper inquiry into the brutality - physical and systemic - used. and years later people still suffering the consequences ,and bearing the scars of this dark passage in history.

The stones remain, but we should continue to mourn to remember and mourn the pain, and values of human decency that was lost on this day.
Footage of this day which you can see in following film should still make us all, shudder - it's the sight of power off the leash, police arrogant enough to know that they can beat up defenceless people in front of TV cameras without having to worry because they know their political masters had given them them the green light to do what they like, a dark day reminding us how British justice and civil liberties and freedom is eroded, that we should never forget. Years later people still suffering the consequences , and bearing the scars of this dark passage in history.

In February 1991 a civil court judgement awarded 21 of the travellers £24,000 in damages for false imprisonment, damage to property and wrongful arrest. The award was swallowed by their legal bill as the judge did not award them legal costs.

The Battle of the beanfield remains a watermark event and one of the darkest days in contemporary British history and in the fight for the commons. An indicator of what was to come, with increased surveillance and suppression of all dissenting voices. One of the lasting legacies of the Battle of the Beanfield, and subsequent police operations surrounding travellers and the summer solstice, would be to tighten an increasingly authoritarian police state belt.

There were two clear results from the battle, the Stonehenge free festivals came to an end, merging into the nearby Glastonbury Festival. And it spurred calls for similar heavy-handed tactics against gypsy, or Roma, camps around Britain. Local councillors saw an opportunity to win votes from residents by demanding Stonehenge-style policing against all travellers.

In 1986, ushered in on a wave of news-managed moral panic, it was the Public Order Act. Supposedly the government aimed it at a minority, but, as with every legal knee jerk since, it bound everyone. In one section, it limits the number of vehicles that could park up together to twelve – because they really didn’t like people meeting up.

This would soon become thanks to the Criminal Justice Act 1994, another tightened notch, only this time with two new convenient groups – ravers and road protestors – in the crosshairs. And more recently, we’ve seen anti-protest laws, controlling everybody, not just Just Stop Oil. The battle of the beanfield will never be forgotten and the police can never be forgiven for the actions they committed on this dreadful day. At a roundabout in , Wiltshire, someone has placed on one of the fence posts a commemorative plaque. It says:

This marks the spot of THE BATTLE OF THE BEANFIELD June 1st 1985.

An inscription adds:

You can’t kill the spirit.

And despite their best efforts, after nearly 40 years of the Public Order Act 1986, with hundreds of people now taking up van life in laybys, carparks, and in fields all over the country, they still clearly haven’t. Because no matter how hard they push down with that thumb, the spirit, like water, will always find a way: