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 struggles that enabled them to party in the world’s most famous stone circle, or of the free festival that sprawled across the fields opposite Stonehenge every June for 11 years from 1974 to 1984, or of the brutal suppression, in 1985, of the convoy of travellers, anarchists and environmental activists heading to Stonehenge to set up what would have been the 12th Stonehenge Free Festival, who were violently set upon and “decommissioned” in what has become known as the Battle of the Beanfield.

Those who want to know more can check out my books Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield, and can also find out more via my most recent article on the Beanfield, three weeks ago, and my recent radio interview, which I posted yesterday. However, I believe this is also an excellent opportunity for people to watch “Festivals Britannia,” a 90-minute long BBC4 documentary by Sam Bridger, first broadcast in December 2010, which I’m posting below in six parts, as available on YouTube.

This is an important programme, with excellent commentators and some astounding footage (including dreamlike Super-8 footage from the ’70s by Chris Waite, and equally dreamlike images from the last great gathering of the tribes, at Castlemorton in 1992), even though watching it was a rather surreal experience, as its narrative arc seemed to be drawn entirely — but without credit — from Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion. Read the rest of this entry »

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 night, mingling amongst the stones of one of the world’s most famous prehistoric monuments, without some famous rock star or other strutting their stuff on a floodlit stage.

I haven’t been to the solstice for six years, having visited every year from 2001 to 2005 — after the wilderness years, from 1985 to 1999, when a military-style exclusion zone was declared, to keep out those who had not learned that they were unwelcome after the dreadful events of what is known as the Battle of the Beanfield — but every year I think about those converging on the ancient stones, and wait for the first reports and photos, to find out whether the sun shone at dawn, and to hear from those who were there.

My interest, as some of you will know, stems from the visits I made to the Stonehenge Free Festival, an annual riot of anarchy and alternative lifestyles that occupied the fields around Stonehenge for 11 years, from 1974 to 1984, until it was suppressed with unprecedented violence in 1985, when an advance convoy, heading to the stones to set up the festival, was ambushed by the massed forces of Margaret Thatcher’s militarized police, and decommissioned with savage violence at the Battle of the Beanfield. Read the rest of this entry »