Stonehenge and civil liberties

“Kindness is Better than Greed”: A Response to Margaret Thatcher on the Day of Her Funeral, a set on Flickr. To paraphrase William Shakespeare, I came to bury Margaret Thatcher, not to praise her. However, due to a hospital appointment, I missed the procession and only arrived at St. Paul’s Cathedral after the funeral service, [...]

So today, as 14,000 revellers at Stonehenge faced a rainy summer solstice morning, with some of them, at least, echoing the reverence that those who built this giant sun temple over 4,000 years ago had for the great axis of the solar year, many of those in attendance may not have known of the long [...]

Listen to my interview here! A month ago, I was delighted to meet up with — and be interviewed by — an old friend and colleague, Tony Gosling, a journalist and broadcaster, who also has a long-established mail order service, Culture Shop, making videos and books on important political topics available. For many years, Tony [...]

27 years ago, a convoy of vehicles driven by refugees from the chronic unemployment of Margaret Thatcher’s Britain — commonly described as new age travellers, but also including environmental and anti-nuclear activists and land reformers — was set upon by police from six counties and the MoD, en route to Stonehenge, to establish what would [...]

What a disgraceful day to be British. In Basildon today, riot police have been leading the eviction of 86 Gypsy and traveller families from land they own at Dale Farm, but for which they do not have planning permission, hospitalising several residents, tasering others, and generally creating a situation that is reminiscent of the 1980s, [...]

As the Gypsy and Traveller community at Dale Farm in Essex continues its long struggle against eviction with another High Court hearing today, seeking a judicial review on a number of grounds, including the absolutely crucial basis that it is “disproportionate” to remove a family from their home when no suitable alternative accommodation exists, a [...]

This is a bleak summer solstice as far as the weather goes, but no doubt for many of the thousands of revellers at Stonehenge last night (an estimated 18,000 people in total), it was, nevertheless, a memorable occasion, as it remains essentially unprecedented for tens of thousands of people to gather in a field at [...]

Ten years ago, in July 2001, 200,000 protestors converged on Genova, Italy, to disrupt the 27th G8 Summit, at which the leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the UK and the US — plus the President of the European Commission — were meeting to discuss issues of global significance, including the debt burden [...]

So farewell, then, Sid Rawle, who passed away, aged 64, at the end of his annual SuperSpirit summer camp, overlooking the River Severn near Rodley, on August 31. The “King of the Hippies,” as the press dubbed him — although it was never a title that he claimed for himself — Sid played a major [...]

On a fine morning at Stonehenge, an estimated 20,000 people turned up to watch the midsummer sun shine into the heart of Britain’s most celebrated ancient monument. Numbers were down on last year, when the solstice took place on a weekend, presumably because so many revellers had to be at work this morning, but those [...]