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This is a reply to ‘LionsFan’ – though normally I don’t bother to reply to ignorant critics who hide behind pseudonyms. My name’s Andy Worthington, and I’m proud of it.
First off, I didn’t call the Beanfield ‘the most brutal police operation in the history of the UK’, so you might want to check who you’re accusing of what before you start denigrating my comments. I’m well aware that there have been plenty of other incidents of police brutality in recent British history, including some that you mention, but I stand by my comment that the ‘convoy’ attacked on June 1st 1985 was attacked with ‘unprecedented brutality’. These were unarmed civilians, who, as well as including in their number the ‘hippies’ you so clearly despise, also comprised peace protestors (Green Party members, CND members), many of whom had recently been protesting against plans to locate Cruise missiles on British soil at Molesworth airbase in Cambridgeshire. But then you probably think that anti-war protestors deserve all the beatings the police can dish out too.
While I’m sure you’re wonderfully knowledgeable about American history, you don’t seem to know much about ours. I wonder if you know, for example, anything about the laws that followed the Beanfield (first in 1986, and then in 1994), which gradually criminalized the entire way of life of new travellers and Gypsies (and you might want to note that in British law gypsies are defined as ‘persons of nomadic habit of life, whatever their race or origin’). I wonder if you know that the laws that followed the Beanfield suppressed the quaint tradition in British law of a right of assembly without prior state permission by introducing legislation whereby the police are able to ban groups of 20 or more people meeting in a particular area if they fear ‘serious disruption to the life of the community’, even if the meeting is non-obstructive and non-violent. I could go on, but I expect that some of the audience, here at least, might understand something about the importance of civil liberties, and the ways in which the Beanfield provided a crucial precedent for undermining them.
Another thing that you seem to be confused about is the situation at Stonehenge on the summer solstice now – when between 20,000 and 30,000 people gather at the Stones, many of whom have no knowledge of the site’s significance – compared to that which was in place 20 years ago, when a few thousand of the festival-goers ventured across the road to hold their ceremonies in the Stones. As one of the custodians explained to the journalist Tim Malyon, shortly after the Beanfield, ‘The ‘hippies’ have never done any damage to the Stones over the six-year period I’ve been on duty at Stonehenge. They are respected by the custodians. They come with black bags and collect up all the rubbish when they leave, even the cigarette ends’. 21 years ago, most of the 20,000 to 30,000 people stayed in the festival field across the road, where, contrary to certain sources of misinformation, there was little of archaeological value, after the continuing depredations of 19th century antiquarians, the military and arable farmers. And now, ironically, after all the expense and the grotesque overreaction of the exclusion zone, today’s equivalents, most of whom have not had anything of the education in communal responsibility that was part of the pre-Beanfield world, are all at the Stones instead. No doubt you have some wonderful suggestions about what could be done with all these people, but perhaps you’d do me a favour and keep them to yourself. There’s an interesting process going on here, and it involves many people’s differing ideas about rights and responsibilities, and ways of creating dialogue, rather than pronouncements from afar from someone who clearly regards as a museum what many other people see as somewhere that is ‘alive’, and who may have many reasons for believing that it has a significance that combines the spiritual, the political and the social.
Andy is the editor of 'The Battle of the Beanfield', to be published on June 15th, and the author of 'Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion', published in 2004. For more information about both books, see: http://www.andyworthington.co.uk
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