The Battle of the Bean Field

Hello lovelies, I hope you're well and doing your best as always! This week I wanted to soothe the little hippie that lives inside my black soul by telling you about the forgotten Battle of the Beanfield 1985. I grew up on the Hampshire-Wiltshire border, which is about a 16 minute drive from Stonehenge.

One day out of nowhere my mum tells me about the Battle of the Beanfield, in her words (from memory): A bunch of hippies were living at Stonehenge and the police beat them up, including pregnant women.

As you can tell from the get, go, it is a 'lovely and delightful' story. So what happened in June 1985 near those Old Stones?

First, we need to hop back to the 1970s at the birth of the New-Age Traveler. Otherwise better known today as the iconic flower power counter-culture hippie movement. In 1985, new-age travellers were a peace convoy that moved between free music concerts and festivals. They were the OG van-life people that you see on TikTok and Instagram today, and people still move around travelling to festival and rave and so on. That culture hasn't died. It's being repressed, and it's events like the Beanfield are unfortunately where it all started.

The Stonehenge Free Festival was a free festival (would you believe) that celebrated Summer Solistice. Sadly, these days, there is no festival, and that is because Stonehenge Fest 85' never happened. Although people still attend Stonehenge to celebrate Solistice every year, and I swear the numbers keep going.

You're probably wondering, well, why didn't the festival happen? The Battle of the Beanfield, of course!

Roughly 7 miles away from the historic stone circle, the police created a roadblock with three lorries full of gravel. They did this on both the main road on the A303 leading up to Stonehenge and also on the back road. It was on the second road-block that the 600 new-age travellers came face-to-face with what would grow to become a total 1,300 police officers.

Now police at the time claim the convoy began ramming police vehicles and became aggressive in order to bypass the roadblock. Some officers even claimed that they began throwing sticks and petrol bombs at the police...

I know - I know.

Rose Brash (the woman in the thumbnail) stated:

‘It wasn’t a battle because we offered no resistance."

At 7pm, they sent the riot police into the bean-field and began beating pregnant women with batons, some of whom were holding their children. Nick Davies (journalist observing the clash) stated that police were hitting anybody they could reach. The news additionally reported that they also threw shields, fire-extinguishers and stones at travellers who attempted to flee.

One person was badly injured with a fractured skull. Eight people hospitalised, many injured. Parents and children were sent and separated into different cells all over the country. Overall, 500 people were arrested. Making it the largest arrest count for Wiltshire Police since the Second World War and is still the highest.

Another traveller, Alan Lodge, described the conflict as:

"An ambush that happened on a small, mild-mannered bunch of people."

The Earl of Cardigan, who followed the convoy from his estate in Savernake Forest, became a key witness at the trail in 1991. He was even called a traitor to his class for doing so. He said he saw:

"very pregnant women being repeatedly clubbed on the head by police, many of whom had their ID numbers covered up."

Excuse me, when I say - those fucking bastards.

Most commenters on the event suspect that the UK Miners Strike that happened earlier in the same year, lead to the violent response from the police on the Beanfield. However, that doesn't justify the brutality, shape or form. Despite the spiritual significance of Stonehenge and its heritage, there are still hostilities between the New-Age Travellers and the authorities to this day.

Those who live near Stonehenge today are met with the same hostile attitude, with constant letters from Wiltshire Council 'informing' them that Stonehenge is theirs. In fact, in the U.K. the idea of living on the road or the waterways is becoming very difficult to maintain. We don't have free-roaming in our own country. It feels more and more dystopian on this tiny-fucked up little island as time moves on, and it had to start somewhere, right?

I mean, look at the attitudes towards poor people in the workhouses versus those of the benefit system today. It's uncanny:

Out of the 600 travellers and the 500 that were arrested, only twenty-one travellers received compensation of £24,000, to which they ended up using to pay the court fees. Justice, hey? Well, one police officer was charged with Actually Bodily Harm (ABH), only 1,299 to go.

I wanted to write this so that those who didn't know about the Battle of the Beanfield now know and those who already knew need to make sure we never forget it happened. Police brutality is nothing new. We just have things that can record our every waking moment now. Back then, all you had was the press.

I for one, think if you want to live your life in that way, then do so. As long as it doesn't cause harm, what exactly is the issue? It's time we started reclaiming our own land, just like our ancestors would have done.

***

Oh I almost forgot. If you ever hear the term Black Stones, it's usually referring to the Battle of the Beanfield.

The band Levellers wrote a song called Battle of the Beanfield. It is a great song that sadly perfectly sums up what went down that day.

References:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Beanfield
• https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/jan/15/battle-of-the-beanfield-stonehenge-1985-rose-brash-photograph
• https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/the-battle-of-the-beanfield-the-violent-newage-traveller-clash-with-police-at-stonehenge-remembered-30-years-on-10287028.html
• https://www.huckmag.com/article/stonehenge-80s-summer-solstice-festival-alan-lodge
• https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/jun/12/ukcrime.tonythompson
• https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-27405147

• https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/earl-of-cardigan-seeing-police-beat-a-pregnant-woman-does-poison-your-view-8478415.html
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToKrmo9H8XY

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