Festivals Britannia Page #8

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At one point, we were on our way to a festival up in Cumbria.

I think it was called Blue Moon.

The police were on their way to the miners' strike.

This huge flotilla of police went by and they all had banners in the back saying, "You're next."

It was pretty bloody obvious what was going to happen in Stonehenge '85-

the Beanfield.

You could see it coming like a train.

The local chief constable had borrowed police from all over the country.

I'm not here to bargain with you.

I'm here to say something to you for you to consider.

Now, you don't have to make an answer now. You can get through to me.

We want to go to Stonehenge.

Well, the Stonehenge Festival, as you know, has been cancelled.

I'm hoping we'll get through the day

without too many people being injured.

Before the actual confrontation happened,

literally minutes before, and as it was happening,

there were instructions coming from senior police officers

to break skulls.

We just want to get off this field as peacefully and quietly as we can.

This lot, all these coppers, are just here for one reason, and that's to cause trouble.

I mean, I don't want to cause trouble.

I ain't going to cause trouble. I ain't got a stick or anything.

There weren't just riot police. There were special forces, there were soldiers.

They had large truncheons and they had their heavy shields and they were banging them

and moving slowly forward and it was surreal.

We were standing there filming this as it was happening.

I was thinking to myself, "I'm in another world."

Open the door, then!

I didn't do anything, mate. They smashed me windows.

They hit me on the head with truncheons!

Then they hit me when I was on the floor!

On the deck, on the deck!

On the deck!

You stay there, boy!

They then started using their truncheons to smash windows.

Hundreds of police officers, batons waving, smashing the window as this thing was still moving.

They brought it to a halt by standing in front. There were a lot of people in it.

It was their home, and they absolutely trashed it.

They just went in and smashed the windows, smashed the door down,

got inside, and all you could hear was screaming.

Someone help me! Help me!

What we, the ITN camera crew and myself as a reporter,

have seen in the last 30 minutes here on this field

has been some of the most brutal police treatment of people

that I've witnessed in my entire career as a journalist.

We're genuine people just like yourselves, and we need help right now.

Please. Help us.

All of you, help us. Stand by us.

Their convoy, in a way, had turned into its own worst enemy.

It had turned into a bit of a Babylon on wheels.

There were still a lot of good people in it

and there was a lot of hope, but there were ugly and greedy sides to it.

I don't know what would have happened if it hadn't been attacked.

I think it needed to change anyway. But it was a brutal way to change.

# I travelled to a mystical time-zone

# And I missed my bed and I soon came home

# A rush and a push and the land that we stand on is ours... #

With the Battle of the Beanfield, the establishment had crushed free festival culture.

The original dream of an alternative Utopian society now lay in tatters.

# A rush and a push and the land that we stand on is ours

# It has been before, so why can't it be now..? #

What was left of the convoy made their way to a place where they knew they could find some sanctuary.

A lot of people were really scared to deal with them,

so Michael ended up driving...

He got the call that they were leaving Stonehenge at 2am

and he was up all night waiting for them.

This is really quite a small village in the middle of the West Country.

So when all these trucks were arriving, people were really scared.

I was dealing with these people on my own, really.

I was just an ordinary Somerset farmer lad, really.

I'd never seen anything like it before.

And they were wild.

They were angry as well.

They were really tough times. People were really embittered after it.

People started living on sites with the wreckage of what they had left over.

But it was really the wreckage of their dream, which was what had been destroyed.

You say we're bad news. We're the good news.

You're so f***ing unreliable.

All the work I've been doing for you all the way through...

You invited yourselves here.

I gave you 19, or however many tickets, to come on. I said we'd look after you well...

We gave you the best show you've had here for years.

We said we'd look after you well... I don't know what you expected.

We expected to not be out of pocket.

I've been running this show for 17 years, and I've been fair and reasonable all that time.

If I hadn't been, I wouldn't be here now. I'd be cut to pieces by now.

By the end of the '80s, with Glastonbury struggling with the times

and Reading facing bankruptcy, the outlook for British festivals was bleak.

MUSIC:
"What Time Is Love?" by The KLF

But in and around the fringes of Britain's cities,

a new drug and a new generation would combine once again to reignite festival culture.

The whole 1980s acid house and free party stuff

was an actual reaction against the sort of Thatcherite idea,

or the enforced ideology that there was no society.

And I think that's where they made that big mistake, and their mistake created the void that we then filled.

The acid house came along and the ecstasy came along simultaneously, and they were the antidote.

Acid house quickly spread from the inner cities to their ring roads,

as the nation's youth jumped in their Fiesta XR2is,

dodged the police and put their hands in the air.

It was cat and mouse. What people loved about those was...you know,

the meetings, everyone getting together in car parks, and someone's bleep would go off

and he'd go "The party's here", and everyone would convoy down there.

Then another message - "No, it's here",

the police would run there and everyone would shoot off there.

I think people enjoyed that as much as the party.

Sometimes it was absolutely rubbish, and sometimes amazing.

I went to one M25 party that was in a farmer's tunnel that he used for his cattle

to get under the motorway, with a massive sound system and lights at one end

and everybody else at the other end.

It was like something out of Close Encounters Of The Third Kind.

CAR HORNS BEEP:

But increasingly, the hunt for the rave's secret location would lead to nowhere

but a service station on the M25, where nobody knew what was going on.

What are you doing?

Waiting for someone to tell us where it is.

Isn't that an old story?

- Yeah.

- Sounds familiar to me.

Well, apparently only one person knows where it is.

I think the culture of the M25

was people wanting to make bigger and bigger parties.

It was fantastic fun, and they wanted to make money as well.

There was that money-making element that made them grow,

but we found it was a lot of driving around and not much partying.

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