HW/OFF: Solstice in Stonehenge

[M Holmes]

Yuri Elik writes:

> Hi folks,
>
> I have a nice video tape with HW in Stonehenge in 1984 (that's the HW
> connection ;), but what I'd like to know is about the festival itself
> and the story how it was banned. Maybe someone here remembers these
> events, or maybe someone knows some place in the web where I can read
> about it?

Basically if something happens twelve years running in England it
becomes legally a "tradition". In 1985, to prevent this the Conservative
government had riot Police escort and then ambush the "Peace Convoy" of
various trucks, buses, and other vehicles of people heading towards the
Stonehenge festival site.

Pictures were subsequently available of Riot Police gone mad and
breaking windows and clubbing people from the vans. In one notorious
piece of film a policeman is clearly seen clubbing a pregnant woman to
the ground. Various long-running Court cases were spawned by this event.

Each solstice now, various people attempt to reach Stonehenge and are
arrested under some dubious laws which were first used during the Miners
Strike in 1984 to prevent miners travelling to picket lines.

> Yuri

FoFP