Film Screening: Operation Solstice – The Beanfield 1985 (40th Anniversary Edit)
Bonington Gallery is pleased to screen a special 40th-anniversary re-edit of Operation Solstice first released in 1991. This updated version features recently recovered and previously unseen video testimony alongside newly added archival material. Together, these elements create the most comprehensive account yet of what became known as the Battle of the Beanfield.
The film revisits the events of 1 June 1985, when hundreds of people set out in convoy for Stonehenge to establish what would have been the 11th People’s Free Festival. They never arrived.
The events of that day resulted in what many regard as the worst incident of police violence in modern British history. The operation involved 1,300 officers from six police forces. Homes and vehicles were destroyed, 536 people were arrested in what remains the largest mass arrest of civilians in English legal history, children were taken into care, and seven dogs were killed. No public inquiry was ever held.
The confrontation took place against a backdrop of growing government efforts to bring both the free festival movement and the travelling way of life to an end. It reflected the increasingly militarised policing strategies that had also been deployed during the miners’ strike the previous year.
The Battle of the Beanfield followed shortly after the eviction of the RAF Molesworth Peace Camp, from which the travellers’ Peace Convoy took its name. It was a period in which those seen to oppose government policy were frequently characterised as the “Enemy Within” and subjected to surveillance, infiltration, marginalisation and, in some cases, physical confrontation and legal sanction.
This anniversary edition also includes a recent interview with entrepreneur and campaigner Dale Vince, filmed by Aaron Trinder, Giulia Franchi and Gareth Morris.
Film duration 1hr. There might be an informal opportunity for a Q&A with Alan Lodge following the screening.