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The Police Viewpoint .
This surprisingly tolerant and realistic review of police operations at Stonehenge is taken from a police publication circa 1981.
| THE
DRUIDS have been going to Stonehenge to celebrate the Summer Solstice
for a long time. Their ceremonies culminate when the sun, rises over the
Hele Stone at around 5 am on the morning . For years their audience was
scarcely more than the occasional hardy American tourist with a camera. Gradually fringe celebrations of the barbecue and booze variety grew up - and grew and grew. In the 60s the Flower People came and strummed guitars in the field next to the monument, perhaps joined by a crowd from the officers mess of the nearby Army camp. It was generally a pretty happy event, with no policing problems. Everyone had gone by 6 am. |
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In 1974 a man known as Wally Free arrived with his cult group, called
the Wallies. They saw Stonehenge as the centre of their cult and decided to
stay there well after the Solstice ceremonies. In fact they stayed the whole
summer. Eventually, the National Trust, who owned the land on which they were
camped, got fed up with their uninvited guests and obtained a civil injunction
for civil trespass in order to remove them. They moved to the next field.
The whole business started again and could have gone on forever with the Wallies
hopping from field to field. In the end, the Salisbury Plain winter did its
job and they moved into squats in the nearby town of Amesbury where they stayed
for a year.
Free festival cult
From that humble beginning
the free festival cult was started by the 'hippy' fraternity. In 1975 this
burst into a very big free festival, apparently organised by no one in particular,
just lots of people camping and lots of love and peace. The festival has occurred
every year since then and now lasts about 10 days to a fortnight. No one admits
to organising it because if they did they would get an injunction not to hold
it.
Chief Supt Frank Lockyer Division Commander 'For an
injunction you have to have certain things – Set venue,-we never know
which field they will use, and names of persons to serve it on .Those essential
requirements are not there in advance. Probably it is the case that there
are no organisers as such'
The
force is resigned to the yearly policing commitment the festival brings -
planning starts around January and the mopping up operations finish around
September. It is generally thought that the Stonehenge free festival will
survive long after the others have disappeared. The myth and folklore of Stonehenge
helps sustain it. People come in large numbers up to a peak last year on the
Solstice day of about 10,000. Officers involved estimate that around 2,000
or so attending the festival are in their words, 'hippies' and 'dropouts'
and certainly the drug culture is a large motivator. The rest are just ordinary
youngsters ranging from the unemployed to young Yorkshire miners using it
as an annual holiday. Publicity is given to the dates around colleges and
universities, and in the underground and pop music press.
Chief Supt Lockyer: 'Many are decent youngsters , here
for the fresh air, sun and music'. The police claim that the festival
is consequently never particularly well organised . There are boasts in advance
that there will be lots of music but as I was told it's been going a week
now and no band has arrived because no one has money to buy big music .Every
year it is rumoured that Bob Dylan will be there. He never is .
Continued Supt Lockyer
'The
farmer who occupies the land (it is owned by the National Trust) is the only
one who doesn't seem to have any rights. He doesn't give permission, they
just take this land over and for reasons that have been explained it's difficult
to stop it. You can't get an injunction in advance and by the time you could
have gone through the procedure they've all gone.
lf
you did get an injunction how do you move 10,000 people from a field on Salisbury
Plain if they are unwilling to go? You would need a lot of policemen and is
it worth the hassle? That is the big problem we face enforcing mass disobedience
in a field on Salisbury Plain. If there was a law and we could enforce it,
where do they go? The next field and you probably create a worse problem for
the next farmer. It is an illegal festival, but it happens and it has to be
policed. The policy is firstly to protect the monument, because it is a significant
national monument. The Department of the Environment pays for a number of
policemen to protect it. Other officers have to police the festival and the
cost of that is down to the rate payers.
The policy there is to contain
the festival, keeping it at least within tolerable bounds, and try to lessen
its effects on the local inhabitants. Public order has to be maintained as
well as the usual tasks of prevention and detection of crime. Drug abuse is
of course prevalent and it is difficult to keep that to a tolerable level
because of its extent. Theft is also a problem. The campers want wood to make
fires so they go off into the woods and hack down branches, doing considerable
damage. To the average festival attendee its just cutting down a branch and
there are plenty left. But to the countryman cutting down something that has
been growing 20 years is very serious.
Local people expect the police to enforce the laws as best they can, but if
10.000 people are going in all directions gathering wood it's difficult. The
other great problem is theft from local shops which are most generally used
to receiving people in such numbers. Special anti-shoplifting teams are employed
on that task'.
The
police patrol the site by Range Rover but officers entering on foot are accompanied
by a senior officer as a precaution against provocation from abuse by people
attending the festival. They enter, of course, too to deal with police problems
when called upon -crime and missing persons for example. In the first week
of the festival this year, seven under 15s were returned home.
In all, it's a three-part operation: (1) uniform; (2) CI D for crime, with
plain clothes operations to detect wood stealing, etc; (3) specially selected
and trained drugs officers
Mass influx
To cope with this mass influx
once a year, the small rural sub division of Amesbury draws in policemen from
all over Wiltshire. There is a mobile police station outside the site. Officers
from Hampshire and Dorset are on standby, although fortunately they have never
been called in.
For the duration of the festival. The monument itself is surrounded by barbed
wire, looking hideous in the tourists snaps no doubt - and about 2,000 or
3,000 of them visit the 3 monument every day. But it is the only way to keep
people out, I was told - other than having a ring of policemen round it for
14 days.
On the whole, though, the hippies
in the nearby field are not very interested in the Druid ceremonies. Most
nights the music plays until about 3 am, so they tend to miss the sunrise
anyway.
Chief Supt Lockyer added: 'It's a knife edge situation
like many public order duties'. He concluded:
'To the passer-by on his way down to Devon and Cornwall its a colourful scene
of tents and people being free in the fresh air, whereas in reality it's a
squalid scene There is drug abuse, there is no sanitation because there is
no provision for it - it gets particularly obnoxious when it's hot. I hope
my daughter never wants to go there'.
About 10 miles from Salisbury
is Amesbury (pop 600), the small town nearest the festival site. The sub divisional
commander is Chief Insp Alex Morrison. He has been involved with every festival
since they started, indeed it occupies his time to a greater or lesser extent
for nine months every year. He is a familiar figure on the site. He walks
round it, in uniform every day, a lot of the time on his own. The police are
determined that the festival site will not become a 'no go' area.
Growing acceptance !
He said: 'I
walk round the site every day of the week. I have been dealing with the festival
for seven years and am known by most of the regulars and generally regarded
as the liaison link. I am accepted on site. Perhaps over the years they grow
to accept you . The site survives on rumour and counter rumour. One of the
arts of dealing with it is to dispel such rumours'.
Walking round the site, Alex Morrison
rarely stops smiling. He greets as many people as possible and they return
his greeting, sometimes shaking his hand, other times just exchanging pleasantries.
On site little enterprises have sprung up, selling anything from scrumpy to
jumble. There is a merry-go-round for the kids and a couple of donkeys. There
are teepees, dormobiles, tents of all shapes and sizes and, contrary to what
I had heard, a surprisingly good, although unknown, group had just started
up.
There are smells of cooking,
incense and the occasional whiff of cannabis. Police admit that their enforcement
of
drug laws is but the tip of the iceberg - how many policemen would be needed
to raid a site which this year covered 45 acres?