The Battle of the Beanfield: Book launch and talk by the book’s editor, Andy Worthington, on ‘The legacy of the Beanfield’, The Moot with No Name, upstairs at the Devereux pub, Devereux Court, London WC2, Wednesday July 6th 2005, 7.30 for 8 pm.
It’s 20 years since the police closed down the Stonehenge Free Festival with unprecedented brutality by ambushing, assaulting and arresting a convoy of travellers, peace protestors and festival-goers at ‘The Battle of the Beanfield’.
As well as suppressing the festival and introducing a summer solstice ‘exclusion zone’ around Stonehenge that lasted until the year 2000, the events at the Beanfield also marked the start of a concerted effort to ‘decommission’ the whole of the new travellers’ movement.
To commemorate the anniversary, historian Andy Worthington, author of Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion, has edited the first full-length book on the topic.
Published by Enabler Publications, the 14 chapters in The Battle of the Beanfield feature extracts from the police radio log and in-depth interviews with a range of people who were there on the day – including travellers, journalists Nick Davies and Kim Sabido, the Earl of Cardigan and Deputy Chief Constable Ian Readhead – as well as Lord Gifford QC, who represented 24 of the travellers at the Beanfield trial in 1991. These accounts cut through the myths, misconceptions and propaganda that have built up around ‘The Battle of the Beanfield’ to present a detailed picture of what actually did happen.
Also included are many previously unseen photos, a description of the making of the documentary ‘Operation Solstice’, and chapters which set the events of the Beanfield in context. These look at the evolution of the free festival scene, new travellers, convoys and peace protestors, ‘raves’ and road protests, the campaigns for access to Stonehenge, and the wider implications of the events of the Beanfield, through increasingly draconian legislation, on civil liberties in the UK.
The Devereux pub: off the Strand, opposite the Royal Courts of Justice, down an alleyway next to the George pub.