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The Story So Far

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The Story So Far http://www.gn.apc.org/tash/ ALAN LODGE - Photographer - Media One Eye on the Road tel: 0115 911 3804 mobile: +44(0)7712 836603 email: [email protected] web: http://www.gn.apc.org/tash wap: http://wappy.to/tash 1 Some of the story so far ........ http://www.gn.apc.org/tash/ Intro.... 4 Beginnings 4 Stonehenge and the ‘Battle of the Beanfield’ 6 Further trouble and the Public Order Act 1986 14 Attacks on our ‘alternative economy’ 18 Raves, Dance Parties etc... 20 Castlemorton Common 21 Police Surveillance 23 Criminal Justice Act 1994 25 The aftermath 26 My Resume 27 2 Some of the story so far ........ http://www.gn.apc.org/tash/ Some of the story so far...... one ought to be lord over another but the earth be free for everyone to live on. Garrard Winstanley 1649 Garrard Winstanley was an outstanding philosopher and political thinker of the seventeenth century. He became one of the principle advocates for the ‘Leveller’ and ‘Digger’ causes. Earlier in the century, the Royal Enclosures of common land had grabbed vast areas for their own use. Three quarters of the country was common land at this time. The common people suffered. During the chaos left at the end of the Civil War, the new Establishment took advantage and seized Royalist land and further expanded their estates by shamelessly enclosing more of the commons. The new Parliament acquiesced to this and people remained landless and hungry. The common people suffered. Over time, some were attracted to the principles of self help, non violent direct action, self sufficiency. To help themselves, nobody else is going to do it for them. After all, they had helped fight a war against the King’s tyranny and they where still dispossessed. On the 1st April 1649, the landless Diggers established a commune on St. George’s Hill, Surrey, intending to grow crops and graze livestock. The adventure lasted little more than a year before people where forcibly evicted. 3 Some of the story so far ........ http://www.gn.apc.org/tash/ Park’ and the Isle of Wight Festival saw huge crowds. Intro.... Alongside the commer- cial events, ‘Free Festivals’ developed. People fed up It might seem strange to begin this tale in the with the exploitation, rules, seventeenth century, but some facts seem as squalor and general rip-off relevant today. Government seems remote from that so many events came to the people and knows little of their concerns and represent. They discovered situation. Pressures to conform, deviant activities something. It is a powerful being forcibly discouraged. The existence of the vision. People lived together, ‘underclass’, the dispossessed, of land or of oppor- a community sharing posses- tunities. Additionally now, we are increasingly aware sions, listening to great mu- of environmental considerations. It is an old strug- sic, making do, living with the gle which has taken new forms. (The tension environment, consuming their probably began between the farmers and the hunter- needs and little else. Parallel gatherers of the Stone Age!). Glastonbury `main drag' Beginnings to all this, the squatting move- Gatherings in the open air with music are ment was taking off, and probably as old as anything human beings have groups such as the ‘Hyde Park ever done. Diggers’ were beginning to The ‘Pop Festival’ became a more modern question land rights. manifestation of peoples desire to gather and cel- It is from these beginnings ebrate. We are social animals. In the late 1960’s, that the 1970’s saw the es- they went to Woodstock and the Monterey Festi- tablishment of many commer- vals by the million. In the UK, the free ‘Stones in the cial and free events. The 4 Some of the story so far ........ http://www.gn.apc.org/tash/ Windsor People’s Free Festi- invented the town. The following year however, val became an annual event the bank holiday event died due to much police over the August Bank Holiday. pressure and days of very heavy rain! As numbers continued to rise, The Stonehenge Free Festival had been held and with the politics of the situ- ation, (after all, we were in the Queen’s back garden), in 1974 Thames Valley police eventu- ally acted. Forcibly braking up the site with much violence and injury. (They have been hitting us with sticks for over at the Summer Sol- stice since 1974. However at the 1977 event, numbers suddenly increased and this became the Annual People’s Festival. Since then, the numbers in- volved doubled each successive year. The 1984 festival at- Free Festival in South Wales, disused railway line. twenty years now!) tracting hundreds of thousands over a six week After finding a sense of period. community and purpose, some People looked at the various examples pro- for the first time in their lives, vided by gypsies here and in Europe. To nomadic many adopted an alternative people across the world. To try life outside the lifestyle and travelled between house in many different ways and to pick and events in the ‘season’. They select those means that make life comfortable, didn’t go ‘home’ in between. easy and meaningful. The ‘bender’, the Indian You got to choose your neigh- ‘tipi’, the Moroccan ‘yurt’, the Romany ‘bow top’, bours and defeated the aliena- the western two-man tent, the truck and the dou- tion that many had felt back in ble decker bus. the cities. Many developed a sense of common purpose In 1975, the People’s Free and identity. There was an acceptance that mod- Festival was re-established on ern life was too fast, expensive and polluting to the a disused airfield in Oxford- environment. We had discovered Anarchy in shire. Over 10,000 people action, and it worked! People began working out came and for two weeks, re- and managing relations within ‘our’ communities, without reference to Them. 5 Some of the story so far ........ http://www.gn.apc.org/tash/ The temperature had been rising for some Something had to be time. Assisted by the representation in the press done! Stonehenge appeared and their invention of the ‘Peace Convoy’, a moral central to the situation. Po- panic was created. lice “Operation Solstice” was The papers were initiated. full of the shock - hor- ror that we have come to expect. The Sun’s Stonehenge and the - “Gun convoy hippies Battle of the attack police” (No mention of gun in the Beanfield article!). The News of the World contributed At a meeting of the Asso- - “The Wild Bunch - ciation of Chief Police Offic- Sex-mad junkie out- ers (ACPO), in early 1985, it laws make the Hell’s was resolved to obtain a High Angels look like little Noddy”. These were head- Court Injunction preventing lines read my millions of people and made modern the annual gathering at Stone- day `folk-devils’ out of essentially peaceful people. henge. This was the device to In objection to the American Cruise Missiles to be used to justify the attack at be stationed in this country, a peace camp was the “Battle of the Beanfield” established at Greenham Common and later at on the 1st June in Hampshire. Molesworth. However, in February 1985, ‘Field Well it wasn’t a battle really. Marshall’ Heseltine, the then Defence Secretary sent in huge numbers of troops to evict the three It was an ambush. hundred or so that had occu- It was a pied the site as magnificent the Rainbow convoy Village for stretching some months. and snaking Although its way over the authorities the Wiltshire found all this Downs, as far distressing, as you could there wasn’t see in either law effective in direction. It dealing with it. was a warm So they in- Saturday af- vented some. Convoy going to Stonehenge It the past, a police force generally felt that their ternoon as we drove through job was done when pushing people over their villages, people stood outside boundary. Thus mealy passing on the ‘problem’ as their garden gates, smiling they saw it. In the wake of the Miners Strike, the and waving at us. A carnival police had learned how to act as a national force atmosphere with little evi- under unitary direction. dence of the ‘local opposition’ 6 Some of the story so far ........ http://www.gn.apc.org/tash/ Police `ambush' at the Wiltshire / Hampshire border 1st June 1985 Seven miles from Stone- henge (the exclusion order was for that we had been lead to be- four and a half miles), just short of the A303 and lieve was one of the reasons the Hampshire / Wiltshire border, two lorry loads for obtaining the court orders. of gravel where tipped across the road. Up to this A police helicopter watched point, no laws had been broken. I got out of my overhead but there was little truck to take photographs when I first saw some other sign of trouble un- twenty policemen running down the convoy ahead til........ of me smashing windscreens without warning and ‘arresting’ / assaulting the occupants, dragging them out through the windscreens broken glass. I and others who saw this were fearful of the level of violence used by the police in making arrests. Clearly we were in for a beating, again! Running back to our vehicles, we drove through a hedge in to the adjacent field. The scale of the police operation was becoming obvious. The same level of violence had been applied to the rear of the convoy. Large numbers of police in many lines deep could be seen on the road forming up.
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