The 'Battle of the Beanfield' breaks out at Stonehenge - June 1st, 1985

On this day in 1985, a convoy of nearly 600 New Age travelers was assaulted by British police on its way to an annual event at Stonehenge.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to This Day in History Class,
a show that shines a light on the ups and
downs of everyday history. I'm Gay Bluesier, and today we're

(00:25):
reflecting on a dark day for British civil liberties, the
time when a paramilitarized police force led a brutal attack
against a group of unarmed activists. The day was June one.

(00:47):
A convoy of nearly six hundred New Age travelers was
assaulted by British police on its way to an annual
event at Stonehenge. The event later became known as the
Battle of the bean Field, as much of the violence
took place in a field adjacent to the historic monument. However,

(01:07):
the word battle doesn't accurately reflect what happened that day.
Although some travelers did attempt to fight back, they were
outnumbered two to one, making the clash decidedly one sided
in the police's favor. By the end of the day,
numerous unarmed travelers had been severely beaten, their vehicles had

(01:28):
been destroyed, and nearly everyone present had been arrested, with
many families deliberately broken up and sent to separate Police stations.
The New Age Travelers were something of an offshoot of
the hippie culture of the nineteen sixties. Developed in the
nineteen seventies, the British movement aimed to create an alternative

(01:49):
lifestyle based on individualism, New Age beliefs, and environmental sustainability.
The Travelers got their name from their nomadic way of life.
They lived in cars, vans or modified buses and traveled
from one musical festival or fair to the next. The
movement grew substantially during the early years of Margaret Thatcher's

(02:11):
first term as Prime Minister. When she took office in
May of nineteen seventy nine, the British unemployment rate was
five point three percent, but by spring of nineteen eighty
four it had risen to the dramatic peak of eleven
point nine percent. With fewer and fewer jobs available, thousands
more citizens lost faith in conventional society and instead took

(02:35):
to the open road, where they formed their own groups
and sought to live more simply. The Travelers organized many
free festivals throughout England, with one of the largest being
the People's Free Festival at Stonehenge. The annual event began
in nineteen seventy four as a way to celebrate the
summer solstice, and it grew in popularity and attendance year

(02:58):
after year. In nineteen eighty four, the ten year anniversary
of the event, the Department of the Environment handed off
management of Stonehenge and the surrounding area to English Heritage,
a charity that maintains historic monuments and buildings. The festival
went on as schedule that year, with an estimated one

(03:19):
hundred thousand people attending over the course of six weeks,
but English Heritage wasn't used to having massive parties held
at the historic sites it managed. They voiced their concerns
along with local residents, and eventually secured a High Court
injunction to prevent the festival from being held the following year.

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In nineteen eighty five, Many travelers stayed clear of the
forbidden festival, but a group calling themselves the Peace Convoy
decided not to take no for an answer. On the
morning of June Onet, a procession of about one hundred
and forty vehicles slowly made its way through the rural
countryside hide As they neared the monument, they found the

(04:03):
way forward was blocked by police barricades. The vehicles at
the front of the line slowed to a stop, and
some of the travelers tried to negotiate with the police.
It didn't go so well all At once, the police
started smashing windshields and dragging out the occupants. The unarmed
travelers were then beaten with truncheons, and those who tried

(04:25):
to escape were pelted with whatever the officers had on
hand clubs, shields, stones, even fire extinguishers. More than thirteen
hundred officers from six different counties and the Ministry of
Defense were on hand that day. The operation had been
planned months in advance, and negotiating was never part of it.

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After the initial wave of assaults, most of the vehicles
sought refuge in a nearby bean field. The police quickly
caught up with them, an a tent standoff ensued for
more than four hours. The travelers tried to dissuade the
police from further violence. During this time, they explained, though
the police likely already knew that they were unarmed families, men,

(05:10):
women and children who posed no threat to anyone. The
eventual response came from Assistant Chief Constable Lionel Grundy. He
ordered the arrest of all six hundred travelers regardless of age,
and authorized the use of force to do it, And
so at seven p m that evening, the police donned

(05:30):
their riot gear and began their final bloody assault against
the peace convoy. One of the few members of the
press to witness the event was a journalist named Nick Davies.
In an article for The Observer, Davies described the violence
he saw, writing quote, they were like flies around rotten meat,

(05:51):
and there was no question of trying to make a
lawful arrest. They crawled all over, truncheons, flailing, hitting anybody
they could reach. There was glass breaking, people screaming, black
smoke towering out of burning caravans, and everywhere there seemed
to be people being bashed and flattened and pulled by
the hair men. Women and children were led away, shivering, swearing, crying, bleeding,

(06:17):
leaving their homes in pieces. Over the years, I had
seen all kinds of horrible and frightening things and always
managed to grin and write it. But as I left
the bean field for the first time, I felt sick
enough to cry. In the end, more than five hundred
travelers were arrested that day, the largest mass arrest of

(06:39):
civilians since at least World War two and one of
the largest in English legal history, there weren't enough cells
to detain that many people locally, so many members of
the peace convoy were transported to different counties, some as
far away as northern England. There was no effort to
ensure that parents and children were kept together either. Meanwhile,

(07:01):
back in the bean field, the police began systematically destroying
the travelers vehicles, which for most were also their homes.
Every vehicle there was smashed beyond repair, and several more
were set on fire. Seven healthy dogs belonging to the
travelers were rescued from the vehicles, only to be put

(07:22):
to sleep by officers from the RSPCA. When the smoke cleared,
eight police officers and sixteen travelers had been hospitalized. As
for the five hundred and thirty seven people arrested, they
were all charged with obstruction of the police and the highway.
The majority of those charges were later dismissed, with few

(07:43):
actually resulting in prosecution. Twenty four members of the peace convoy.
It later sued the Wiltshire Police for assaults and criminal damage.
The travelers found an unexpected ally in their case, the
Earl of Cardigan, a wealthy conservative landowner who had allowed
the convoy to camp on his property the night before

(08:04):
the assaults on June one. The Earl had followed behind
the convoy on his motorbike and witnessed the violence firsthand.
He later testified against the police, saying that they had
given the travelers no time to comply with orders before
resorting to extreme violence. He described how officers had covered
their ID badges while smashing the travelers homes with hammers.

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Most disturbingly, the Earl recounted seeing a pregnant woman quote
repeatedly clubbed on the head by an officer. The Earl's
testimony lent credence to the traveler's claims and got him
labeled as a class trader by the right wing press
despite his assistance. Though the case dragged on in court

(08:48):
for seven years, the travelers eventually won and were awarded
twenty four thousand pounds and damages, but because the judge
declined to award their legal call costs, the money just
went to paying legal fees. It didn't feel like much
of a victory, and that's probably because the real battle
had been lost years ago. In six the Public Order

(09:13):
Act extended restrictions on unlawful assembly and trespassing, making it
nearly impossible to organize free festivals in England, whether it's
Stonehenge or pretty much anywhere else. The travelers counterculture lifestyle
was being stamped out by the established order, and the
final blow was dealt in when the Criminal Justice Act

(09:36):
gave police the power to shut down virtually any event
with free live music. The era of the free music
festival and all that it stood for, was over. Live
music would still be played, of course, but only when
and where the state allowed, and always with a cover charge.
I'm Gay Bluesier and hopefully you now know a little

(09:59):
more about on history today than you did yesterday. You
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if you have any comments or suggestions, you can always
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media dot com. Thanks to Chandler Mays for producing the show,

(10:21):
and thanks to you for listening. I'll see you back
here again tomorrow for another day in History class