Dale Vince calls for Battle of the Beanfield to be included in Orgreave policing inquiry

The Guardian

a day ago

The entrepreneur Dale Vince has called for the recently announced inquiry into violent police clashes at the Orgreave miners' strike to be extended to cover a similar aggressive clash with new age travellers heading for Stonehenge the following year.
Vince, who was involved in the Wiltshire clash, known as the Battle of the Beanfield, said the truth of both incidents had been covered up by police. He said he believed both episodes were part of a plan by the then prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, to 'smash' the miners and travellers, who she considered to be 'enemies of the state'.
He said he was writing to the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, to ask her to include the Battle of the Beanfield in the Orgreave inquiry.
The founder of Ecotricity was part of a travellers' convoy trying to set up a free festival at Stonehenge to celebrate the solstice in 1985. As the convoy grew, so too did complaints about the impact of some of its followers. Police enforced a high court injunction to block it, and scores of vehicles raced along narrow lanes being chased by police in riot gear.
ITV News showed police smashing the windows of travellers' vehicles as they careered around a field. The episode resulted in more than 500 arrests and numerous injuries.
Vince said: 'You're talking about people driving around [the field]. The police are with truncheons, smashing the windows as [the travellers] are driving along. Kids being handed out [of windows]; people being dragged out by their hair through broken glass windows. I mean, it was truly horrific, and probably shouldn't be forgotten … no.
'You know, the police got away with the most incredible lawlessness that day and I don't think they should be allowed to get away with that. And if we don't put that right, then it's not a good thing.'
Vince recently told an audience at Glastonbury festival: 'I think I buried [the trauma] for a few years. I left the country, actually, to get away from the police.' He said he believed he may still be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
More than 530 travellers were detained by police, many of them injured, in one of the largest mass arrests in British history. Eight police officers were also reported hurt. Intermittent calls for a public inquiry since then have been rejected.
Vince said he hoped the recent decision to open an inquiry into the clashes between police and miners at Orgreave coking plant in 1984 would strengthen his case.
His company has supported Labour with more than £1.5m, making Vince the party's biggest individual donor.
Ben Davies, who was working as a photographer for the Observer during the clashes in Wiltshire, said he was arrested and had his film confiscated. 'I was filming a woman being battered over the head when I was arrested for alleged breach of the peace. They gave my camera back but banned me from taking more pictures – it was clearly just a way of stopping news coverage.
'It was very frightening and I feared someone might get killed. Certainly, they weren't like any police I had seen.'
The event marked the end of an era. From the early 1970s, hundreds – then thousands – of people made the annual pilgrimage to Stonehenge in the weeks before the solstice.
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But as numbers reached 100,000, complaints grew of damage to the stones, trespassing and vandalism. Police said some travellers were anti-police and anti-establishment, and the convoy did include anarchists alongside environmentalists, druids and people living an alternative lifestyle. There were complaints that supermarkets had been ransacked and travellers were camping in woodland and cutting wood for fires.
Eventually, an injunction was put in place to stop it. A 4-mile exclusion zone was set up and police blocked a convoy of more than 100 vehicles.
Helen Hatt, whose converted ambulance was part of the convoy, told the BBC: 'Police started smashing the windscreens of the vehicles at the front [of the convoy] and dragging people to the ground, hitting them with truncheons. Somebody ran past me with a head wound and blood running down his face.'
She said her vehicle's windows were smashed, and two officers grabbed her by the hair. 'I can remember how excruciating the pain of having both sides of hair pulled. I was screaming: 'Stop, stop, tell me what to do'.'
Vince said: 'Margaret Thatcher identified the miners and the new age travellers as the country's two biggest threats – and sent the cops out to smash both. We were both enemies of the state, of the highest order. And both experienced the same state-authorised brutality and lawlessness. The same leaders, the same cops, the same plan – from Orgreave to the Beanfield just a few months and counties apart – even the same cover-up.'
Nearly six years after the event, 24 members of the convoy sued the police for wrongful arrest, assault and criminal damage. The police were cleared of wrongful arrest, but the members were awarded £24,000 for damage to 'persons and property'.
Wiltshire police and the Home office haven't commented on Vince's request. A police spokesperson told the BBC that 'much has changed' since 1985. He said the force reflects on everything it does, and seeks to learn lessons from major events.