18 years on and some still remember.

A small, albeit one sided, battle took place on June 1st 1985 between what the then, Tory media called "New Age travellers" and the enforcers of "law and order" in the vicinity of the Hampshire/Wiltshire border, close to the ancient stones of a national treasure - Stonehenge.

The details make very uncomfortable reading, even more so when read today, 18 years later, and sit ill at ease with the idea that the "ordinary people" have liberty in their own land, free from Government repression just because of their non-conformist beliefs.

When elected to Government the BNP is going to be tough on crime, but we also have a very clear idea about the definition of "crime".

Real crime as opposed to repression

Since 1973 when we had the misfortune to be shackled to the (then) Common Market, which has evolved into today's EU, over 100,000 new pieces of legislation have been incorporated into the UK law books! Almost every aspect of daily life is subject to criminalisation. With each new law that is passed, thousands of new criminals are instantly created.

A BNP Government will not only reverse such intrusive legislation, but will also ensure that the most basic of liberties are upheld and also the many that have been lost are returned to the people. For the past 30 years or so, many basic freedoms, which had previously been sacred to dozens of generations of our ancestors, have become subject to the same unwelcome and unnecessary scrutiny of the bureaucrats in Whitehall and Brussels.

The "Battle of the Bean Field" which this story is about to relate would never have happened under a BNP Government. It was a small victory for the repressive regime of Thatcher with its eyes towards the big Global business donors to the Tory Party. It was also a huge blow to the very people who valued the real things that makes Life worth living: personal liberty, freedom of belief, humans as stewards of the countryside, choice of how to live, where to live, and how to raise one's offspring.

Here is a summary of what occurred June 1st 1985:

A convoy of over 100 buses and other vehicles carrying mostly young, professional British couples who had made a conscious choice to bring up their children in an alternative lifestyle made its way through Hampshire. Those young couples had decided that their children would be free from the psychological bonds of the TV channels, State schooling and the very real physical chains of monetary debt. They were halted at the Hampshire/Wiltshire border by lines of Police.

Discussions which took place over the next few hours between the convoy leaders and senior Policemen broke down in the early evening.

Within minutes of the ending of the meeting, over 1,600 Policemen and (allegedly) British soldiers in Police uniform attacked the vehicle convoy.

"All of us were shocked by what we saw: police tactics which seemed to break new grounds in the scale and intensity of its violence. We saw police throw hammers, stones and other missiles through the windscreens of advancing vehicles; a woman dragged away by the hair; young men beaten over the head with truncheons as they tried to surrender; police using sledgehammers to smash up the interiors of the hippies' coaches."

Even the ITV news crew said on camera at the event:

"What we - the ITN camera crew and myself as a reporter - have seen in the last 30 minutes here in this field has been some of the most brutal police treatment of people that I’ve witnessed in my entire career as a journalist. The number of people who have been hit by policemen, who have been clubbed whilst holding babies in their arms in coaches around this field, is yet to be counted...There must surely be an enquiry after what has happened today”.



Paramedics attend to a victim of Thatcher's Police brutality in 1985 .






Also Lord Cardigan, a prominent member of the Conservative Party and wealthy landowner in Hampshire, whose land many of the convoy had set out from, said of the events:

"I hadn’t realised that anybody that appeared to be supporting elements that stood against the establishment would be savaged by establishment newspapers. Now one thinks about it, nothing could be more natural. I hadn’t realised that I would be considered a class traitor; if I see a policeman truncheoning a woman I feel I’m entitled to say that it is not a good thing you should be doing. I went along, saw an episode in British history and reported what I saw."

A Government as hideous as the Thatcher regime which sent in the uniformed forces of law and order to smash the "different" homes of young professional couples who choose to do something with their lives, other than watch five hours of television a day, who refused to sign up to credit and store cards they couldn't afford and who refused to send their children to schools which would curtail, not encourage their emotional and physical development, is a Government that should have been openly and vehemently opposed, not tacitly supported!

More information about the misuse of the Police Force by the Government of the day to smash this kind of low level dissent can be found at:

Stonehenge and the `Battle of the Beanfield':  http://tash.gn.apc.org/sh_bean.htm