Stonehenge and civil liberties

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 [...]

Today is the 25th anniversary of the Battle of the Beanfield, a notoriously violent, one-sided confrontation between 450 unarmed travellers and green activists, and a quasi-military police force of over 1,300 police and MoD personnel, which crippled the New traveller movement in the UK, brought to an end the annual Stonehenge Free Festival, and marked [...]

Tuesday June 1 is the 25th anniversary of a brutal and pivotal event that signalled the start of a serious assault on civil liberties in the UK, leading to the passage of two horrendous pieces of legislation — the Public Order Act of 1986 and the Criminal Justice Act of 1994 — and paving the [...]

The following interview, conducted by email, was published on the website Celebrity Dialogue, run by blogger Zeeshan Kureshi, which describes itself as being “dedicated to bringing forward those who have made a difference in our world.”
Celebrity Dialogue: Andy, we really appreciate the time you took out of your busy schedule for Celebrity Dialogue. First of [...]

On Friday, prior to a screening at Oxford Brookes University of the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (directed by Polly Nash and myself), Polly and I met up with my old friend, the photographer Adrian Arbib, at the Art Jericho gallery, where his exhibition “Homeland” is showing until March 13. Featuring [...]

Happy solstice, everyone! As an estimated 30,000 people descend on a field in Wiltshire and its ever-inscrutable ancient stones, I’d like, first of all, to pay tribute to John Michell, English mystic, iconoclast and provocateur, who passed away on April 24, aged 76 (see obituaries in the Fortean Times, the Guardian, the Times, the Independent, [...]

For the Guardian’s Comment is free, “Remember the Battle of the Beanfield” is an article I wrote to commemorate the 24th anniversary of the Battle of the Beanfield, when a convoy of new age travellers, peace activists, anti-nuclear campaigners and free festival goers were ambushed en route to Stonehenge, to set up the 12th annual [...]

Before I became a chronicler of the men detained without charge or trial in the US prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, I wrote a book about the British counter-culture, Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion, which told the story of Britain’s most iconic ancient monument from the point of view of those who have sought to make [...]