The battle of the Beanfield

Today I visited Stonehenge for the second time and although I have already written a blog about it (which you can find here) I am now going to write about the Battle of the Beanfield.

The battle of Beanfield occurred on the 1st June, 1985.

It all started when about 600 new age travellers and their families were heading towards Stonehenge for the annual free festival when they came across a roadblock. Due to the damage to the stones at the previous year's free festival the police decided that the festival should be cancelled and that the people attending should have no permitted access to the stones from then on.

When everybody saw the police they all moved into a neighbouring beanfield. People expected that the police would leave them alone now but all the police got in the vehicles and drove into the field and surrounded all of the people.

There were about 600 travellers all in their homes with their pets and family and everything they owned. There were also about 1,300 police officers, all covered in armour and armed with truncheons, so that's two armed police men or more to each individual person!

The chief police officer eventually came over in a helicopter and ordered for everyone to be arrested.
Afterwards the police claimed that most of the travellers chucked rocks and threw sticks when only ten or so actually did so.

What happened next is horrible. The police came round smashed the windows of the travellers' homes and dragged out any people inside and arrested them, if anybody resisted (which most did) they would get hurt.

Here are some quotes from the people who where there,

'But it wasn't a battle, we offered no resistance.' - Rose Brash (above, with her baby).

'Police rushed out on foot, from behind their barricades. Clutching drawn truncheons and riot shields, they ran round to the driver's door of each vehicle, slamming their truncheons into the bodywork to make a deafening noise, and shouting at every driver, 'get out, get out, hand over your keys, get out!' - The Earl of Cardigan.

'I was trying to give first aid to people who'd been injured. An observation I made was the number of people who'd been clouted around the back of the head. They must have been running away.' - Alan Lodge, former paramedic

About 80% of the travellers were arrested! The people who weren't arrested were let go but without their vans or anything of theirs that they owned. It was the biggest arrest in British history. Once everyone was arrested the Battle of Beanfield was over and no one else was hurt.

Several years later about twenty people were awarded money for damage to their vehicles and wrongful arrest.
S

Today you aren't allowed to get near the stones and touch them except on the solstice and as long as you don't climb on the stones or bring in alcohol.