21) Research: Battle of the Beanfield 1985 - 2/4/18

After visiting Greenbank community again, Kerry, one of the residents who has been living in a van for his whole life, told me about an event called the 'Battle of Beanfield' which he thought would give me some more insight on where this community of New Age Travellers has come from and what they believe in. The battle broke out because a convoy of vehicles were trying to get to Stonehenge to establish what would have been the 12th annual free festival in the fields opposite Britain’s most famous ancient monument, and was set upon with violence by the Police to shut it down. I decided to watch this video below from an ITN TV News Report & unedited ITN footage to see the event unfold on video:

I also found an article on politics.com (an 'impartial political website with no political affiliation' which you can find here) explained the events of the battle in what I perceived to be an unbiased way. Below are some screenshots of excerpts explaining the story.

After watching this video of the footage and reading the article outlining the situation, I am shocked at how the Police acted. I don't think this should be called the 'Battle' of Beanfield, purely because it seemed the travelers were being attacked even before they put up a fight, and when they did, the eyewitness Earl of Cardigan stated the Police arrested "500 people as a result of the actions of about ten people". A battle means an equal fight between two sides, not one over-equipped force fighting "utterly unremarkable family groups for whom living in a motor coach was their chosen way of life".

Taking into consideration the travelers feelings and Lord Cardigan's after how the Police acted, I can see why the van dwellers living at Greenbank today are would not be happy with the Police interfering with their way of life and wanting to move them on, and I'm glad through them having MOTs and road tax for their vehicles, they are able to live where they're currently parked.

After seeing how the Police were ordered to treat this group of people, I decided to research more into who was Prime Minister at the time (Margaret Thatcher), and her meaning behind this order, as well as what this group was actually doing to cause this order to understand the Police and governments feelings.

After looking at the book 'The Battle of the Beanfield' by Andy Worthington, I found lots more information about the event, and history surrounding it.

It seems that "successive waves of legislation — the Public Order Act of 1986 and the Criminal Justice Act of 1994 — largely destroyed Britain’s traveler community, even though there were fascinating eruptions of dissent along the way — in particular via the rave scene of the late 80s and early 90s, and the road protest movement that was a direct descendant of the free festival movement. Unable to travel freely, protesters rooted themselves to a fixed spot, occupying land regarded as sacred and, in many noteworthy cases, living in trees in an effort to prevent road-building projects from taking place".

I also found that back in 1985 when the Battle of Beanfield took place, what Thatcher wanted to destroy was:

1) an ever-growing movement of people taking to the road in response to the tsunami of unemployment in Thatcher’s Britain.

2) a free festival movement that ran from May to September and that functioned as an alternative economy.

I found this quote from Andy Worthington really interesting, where he states that: "the majority of the tens of thousands of people who visited — or were part of — the Stonehenge Free Festival in the late 70s and early 80s were only dangerous because we were exploring different ways of living than what was being dictated to us by an intolerant, authoritarian state that, it transpires with hindsight, wanted us to be nothing more than obedient corporate slaves".

I feel these views are quite parallel to those of the people living in Greenbank, wanting to move away from society and find a different way to live.

After after reflecting on this I realised how Matthew Smith's work on rave and protest culture really relates, and shows an extension of this history, rather similar to how I want to document the people of Greenbank now. I'm going to research him further in another blog post and refined the guest talk he did at UWE.

Overall I feel researching this event has really given me a further insight into the history some of the people at Greenbank remember and may have faced, and it has allowed me to understand them better. I'm going to use this knowledge and speak with them further about past events to help me build a bigger picture of how I want them to be represented and what they stand for, in a hope to portray them in a better light than they have previously been shown, as for instance the Battle of the Beanfield.

#creativeinteractions #research