A mass confrontation between police and New Age Travellers which would go down in history as “The Battle of the Beanfield” took place on June 1st, 1985.
The New Age Travellers movement developed in the 1970s and ’80s as an alternative lifestyle in which groups of mostly young people lived and travelled in converted vehicles such as buses and vans, spending the summer roaming around the country between various ‘free festivals’.
Mainstream society was wary of the travellers, fuelled by stories in the media which labelled them ‘hippies’, ‘dropouts’ and drug users. There was resentment at their refusal to conform with society’s norms or pay taxes, especially when it was alleged many claimed state benefits or relied on taxpayer-funded services like the NHS. In other press reports, communities struggled to evict travellers from sites where they pitched up, then faced large clean-up bills after they moved on.
The travellers countered that they weren’t harming anyone, respected the environment and paid their own way, often by providing seasonal labour or trading at the festivals they attended. It was the biggest of these festivals, held at the ancient stone circle at Stonehenge, in Wiltshire, that became the catalyst for the events that took place 33 years ago today.
The Stonehenge Free Festival had been growing since the mid-1970s, but many people feared it was getting out of hand. The previous year’s event was attended by an estimated 100,000 people, with outbreaks of violence between different groups and claims of widespread damage to the historic site and surrounding countryside, including fences and trees torn down for firewood.
It led to English Heritage, which became responsible for Stonehenge in 1984, winning a high court injunction banning the planned 1985 festival. It was widely expected that the ban would be ignored and police planned to stop the expected crowds with a strength of around 1,300 officers, many drafted in from neighbouring forces. The main focus of their attention was a group of around 600 New Age Travellers known as “The Peace Convoy”, known to be heading to Stonehenge.
On the morning of June 1st the convoy of up to 140 vehicles approached the police exclusion zone, but was stopped by a roadblock about seven miles from the site where three lorry loads of gravel had been tipped across the road. Some vehicles slipped down a side road, only to be met with a second roadblock. After a brief standoff the situation deteriorated, with each side blaming the other.
The police claimed some traveller vehicles attempted to escape the road block by ramming police vehicles, while the travellers said the police launched an unprovoked attack, smashing up their vehicles with batons and sledgehammers and dragging people from them. Most of the traveller vehicles broke through a hedgerow into an adjoining bean field and a second standoff ensued before police officers in riot gear descended on the vehicles and their occupants.
Again, accounts differed from each side; the police claimed they were pelted with missiles and even petrol bombs, prompting their charge. The travellers said they were peaceful and attempting to negotiate and the police action was unprovoked – this version of events supported by most of the journalists and other eyewitnesses who said the police had been unnecessarily heavy-handed.
Most of the travellers – more than 500 – were arrested and the majority of their vehicles smashed up. Some accounts claim it was the largest mass arrest of civilians in British legal history. Many people were also injured, with eight police officers and 16 travellers hospitalised. Those arrested included men, women and children, who were dispersed to holding cells across a wide area, in many cases splitting up families. Most of the arrests did not result in successful prosecutions.
The police described the confrontation as similar to the UK miners’ strike, which ended earlier the same year, and said they used the same tactics to deal with it. Critics pointed out the miners were almost entirely fit and strong young men, while the travellers group included many children, women and even pregnant women.
One of the most outspoken critics of the police tactics was the Earl of Cardigan, who allowed the travellers to stay on his land at Savernake Forest the previous night and followed the convoy on his motorbike. As the travellers began to regroup at Savernake Forest the following day, many having been released from police custody, the Earl staunchly refused permission for the police to go in and move them on: “I did not want a repeat of the grotesque events I’d seen the day before,” he said.
Later, 24 of the travellers sued Wiltshire Police for wrongful arrest and 21 of the cases were successful. They were awarded £24,000 in damages for wrongful arrest, false imprisonment and damage to their property, but the judge declined to award their legal costs, which swallowed up most of the compensation. One police sergeant was also convicted of assault occasioning actual bodily harm on one of the travellers.
The ban on the Stonehenge festival was kept in place for several more years, resulting in smaller scale confrontations and many more arrests. Since 2000, English Heritage has granted open access to the monument on summer solstices, with very little trouble reported.