BUREAU OF LOST CULTURE – The Battle of The Beanfield (07/06/2025)
It was the largest mass arrest of civilians in the country’s history. Over 1000 police, many in riot gear, some with their ID removed so they couldn’t be held accountable for what happened, wielding shields and weapons. Women with babies were dragged through smashed windscreens, vehicles completely trashed, people truncheoned, some knocked to the floor unconscious. There were a huge number of arrests, but in the end, virtually nobody was found guilty of a crime.
This was not some banana republic or some oppressive distant dictatorial regime; this all happened right here in the green fields of England and in the vicinity of one of the most loved sites in the British landscape, that wonderful, strange, mysterious prehistoric temple called Stonehenge.
Matt Pike, an official guide at Stonehenge and a social historian who has dug deep into its countercultural legacy, came to the Bureau to talk about ‘The Battle of the Beanfield’ an incident that happened 40 years ago today, when the British state turned its security services on its own people, in a shameful brutal act to block their attemp to hold the annual Stonehenge free festival, and as warning signal against the counterculture of the times.
