Archive for June, 2026
The 41st Anniversary of the Battle of the Beanfield: Still No Accountability for a Monstrous Crime of State Violence
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Somewhere south of Savernake Forest, and just to the north of the A303, in Wiltshire, is a crime scene that has never been examined by the British authorities.
It was in a field here that, 41 years ago today, on June 1, 1985, the British state undertook the most savage assault on unarmed civilians in modern British history.
This has become known as the Battle of the Beanfield, although, in reality, it was a one-sided rout of heartbreaking brutality, as riot police from six counties cornered a vastly-outnumbered convoy of vehicles seeking to make their way to establish what would have been the 12th annual Stonehenge Free Festival, in fields around the ancient sun temple on Salisbury Plain, and “decommissioned” them with extreme violence, brutally assaulting the men and women of the convoy, terrorizing their children, destroying their live-in vehicles, and making 537 arrests in total.
The events of that day dealt a crippling blow to a growing counter-cultural movement of modern-day nomads, known as the new travellers, or new age travellers, who travelled around the country in old coaches, buses, vans, trucks and even decommissioned military vehicles.
Who's still at Guantánamo?
