Stonehenge – Battle of the Beanfield 1985

June 1985 witnessed a vicious pitched battle between riot police and what were described as ‘New Age Travellers’ in the shadow of Stonehenge. An extraordinary level of violence was used by police against people who had turned up for a free festival at the ancient site. These festivals had been going on throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, eventually merging into the much bigger and commercially more focussed Glastonbury Festival – still going strong today.

Two months earlier, the year long strike by the National Union of Mineworkers had ended. That struggle turbo-charged the already developing transformation of the police into a semi-militarised force for controlling riots and public disorder. Now, with their new helmets, shields, and other paraphernalia, the police came down heavily on the free spirits who dared to camp around Stonehenge.

The counter-culture at Stonehenge

For many of us on the political Left at the time, the events that unfolded at Stonehenge were a curious aftermath to an intense year of political and campaigning activity. I’m sure many left-wingers also sneered at the ‘crusties’ congregating at Stonehenge with their weird New Age beliefs and viewed them as a hangover from the 60s hippie era. But in fact, many of these travellers were people who had given up on mainstream society during the early 1980s recession that had blighted entire communities across the Midlands, north, and Scotland. They had just given up on capitalism.

The free festivals at Stonehenge had kicked off at the start of the 1970s and by the end of the decade, tens of thousands swarmed to this enigmatic Neolithic structure for music, juggling, free food, and free love. Mingling among them were latter-day Druids and purveyors of New Age philosophy, crystals, etc.

In the 1970s, the sight of long-haired drop outs clambering over the four-thousand-year-old stones would have given archaeologists palpitations and annoyed locals but most of the public shrugged it off. But by the Thatcherite 1980s, this kind of ‘alternative’ lifestyle’ was viewed with utmost suspicion by Conservative MPs and the tabloid press. Especially as rumours circulated that some were peeling off to join the anti-nuclear Greenham Common protest camp – thereby politicising their activity. Whether this was true or not didn’t matter to the average Conservative.

The Battle of the Beanfield at Stonehenge

It’s often forgotten that Thatcherism wasn’t just about free markets and privatisation but also wiping out the ‘permissive’ society believed to have been spawned in the 1960s. Thatcher was no cultural liberal. There was a grim determination on the part of an older generation of Tories to return society back to a perceived 1950s or even pre-war golden age of deference, suits, and cutting your hair short.

In 1984, police had shown up at the Stonehenge festival to make 260 arrests, out of the 35,000 attending, with 180 being for drug offences. The smoking of weed was undeniably prevalent. By 1985, with Tory MPs and the tabloids in full-throated hostility towards the festival, the police treated the New Agers like striking miners. A so-called ‘Peace Convoy’ was intercepted and the windows of coaches smashed with their occupants dragged out and forced to the ground.

In a sign of how hyped up things had got – even the Order of Druids was told that their annual summer solstice rites at Stonehenge were now banned – in case the hippies infiltrated! Meanwhile – and seriously I’m not making this up – the army mobilised to protect the 91,000 Salisbury Plain military training area from marauding New Agers.

For the sake of balance, I should point out that there had been acts of vandalism at Stonehenge going back to the 1960s. I visited in March 2024 and you can still make out where the letters L-O-V-E were painted on to Neolithic sarsen stones by hippies in the 1960s. Bits of the henge were also chipped off as souvenirs or magical talismans while surrounding later Bronze Age sites were thoughtlessly damaged. The National Trust and English Heritage were beside themselves.

The events of June the First – where police reacted with maximum force to the Peace Convoy approaching Stonehenge – became known as The Battle of the Beanfield. Hundreds of travellers, men and women, were arrested and placed in jails across England. The newspapers were full of images of blood-splattered festival-goers being carted off by riot police.

Court action against the police after the Battle of the Beanfield

If the police thought the hippies would melt away in a mist of pot, they were to be disappointed. The result of their tactical approach was years of legal action eventually resulting in damages being paid for wrongful arrest and injury. In the days that followed the Battle of the Beanfield, the Home Secretary Leon Brittan demanded a report from Wiltshire police while Labour MPs called for a public inquiry.

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.