For the 40th Anniversary of the Beanfield (1 June 2025), when the police brutally attacked a convoy of people heading to Stonehenge for the annual free festival in 1985, we are releasing hours of previously unseen video testimony taken in 1990/91 during the making of our documentary ‘Operation Solstice’. Footage that has survived over 30 years, saved largely thanks to Dale Vince, who funded the digitisation, and who took on the role of outrider on the day. Some once familiar faces and voices here, Mo, Phil and Don, now long since passed, brought back to bear witness to the shameful barbarism of that day, ‘the worst police treatment of people’ in living memory, for which there was no public inquiry, but about which we will neither forgive nor forget.
Also, with access to all the rushes again, ‘Operation Solstice’ has been re-edited so that it explains and contains a lot more, and with Dale Vince’s contribution, brings us up to date.
Check out the new edit and available documentary material here.
I’m delighted to read
Comment by Jeff Cloves on 7 June, 2025 at 3:41 pmthat an an updated version
of Operation Solstice has been released
and to learn of Dale Vince’s involvement
our paths have crossed
in local café society in Stroud
for over 20 years I’d guess
tho’ I’ve never had a conversation with him
I think he’s quite a shy private very busy man
but much revered here
in 1992 I wrote a poem
‘A Stroud Riffraff Riprap’
which I think IT published years ago
it also appeared in the
Five Leaves’ anthology ‘Utopia’ in 2012
the poem refers to ‘traveller convoy of the down’
which was pure invention on my part
but I imagined refugees from
the appalling brutal police attack
on the Beanfield site
fetching up here on Swifts Hill
I’d heard that Dale had once lived
in a bender on Swifts Hill
so it was also a nod to him
I wasn’t at the Beanfield
but now I know that Dale was involved
and has helped instigate
the new ‘release of Operation Solstice
my invention seems to be truth
but as for any British government of any stripe
being prepared to properly investigate
what happened at The Beanfield 40 years ago
dream on brothers and sisters
Very, very well done everybody involved in putting this together. I sat up for ages last night watching all the material and at the end found myself wondering what the current crop of physically and morally degraded office wallas in Westminster are planning for anyone who dares to oppose the next round of nuclear weapons, being lured onto the housing treadmill or worshipping the growth monster.
Comment by Tim on 11 June, 2025 at 9:18 am