Battle of the Beanfield
This hand-made banner references the way that the British State treated members of the ‘Peace Convoy’ throughout the 1980s. The Stonehenge Free Festival took place around the time of the summer solstice for over a decade, attracting up to 100,000 people.
In 1982, approx 150 different vehicles all stencilled with the words ‘Peace Convoy’, set off to Greenham Common to create a festival in solidarity with the women’s peace vigil. They outwitted the police and established a site for their ‘Cosmic Anti-Cruise Carnival’. During their three week stay, some got into the base and sabotaged military equipment, others dismantled a long section of fencing. There were arrests, and ‘complicated’ relationships with the women’s camp and CND, before the Convoy moved again, to East Anglia, for more free festivals and a visit to Sizewell nuclear plant.
In August 1984 near Wakefield, West Yorkshire police—fresh from violently suppressing striking miners at Orgreave—attacked the Convoy, arresting over 300 Travellers and destroying many vehicles. The group had recently supported the miners, who helped them in return with food, tools, and bail addresses. Survivors later set up the ‘Rainbow Village Peace Camp’ at RAF Molesworth, which was forcibly evicted in early 1985 by a huge joint military/police operation. From then on, they faced constant police surveillance.
On 1st June 1985, a convoy of 600 people heading to Stonehenge was violently ambushed by police. Though dubbed ‘The Battle of the Beanfield’, it was a one-sided, pre-planned operation involving over 1,300 officers and resulting in 537 arrests—the largest mass arrest in UK history. Vehicles were destroyed, children taken by social services, and were many left with severe head injuries. In 1991, 24 people won damages following eyewitness testimony.
After this, the police used the new 1986 Public Order Act to harass and illegally evict groups in the run-up to the solstice each year. The banner shows another attack by the police in June 1988 in which at least 130 people were arrested and many more injured. In a re-run of the Beanfield, a group of around 50 vehicles was trapped and brutalised, some had their windows smashed by truncheons.
[Caption by Carolyn Wilson]
