Stonehenge '83

STONEHENGE '83

That same summer at the Stonehenge Free Festival, the cultural fusion that had begun at previous festivals was continuing apace as tribes of Punks, hippies and bikers mingled together to form both mental and physical cross-breeds.  A network of summer fairs and free festivals was by this time in place, including the Green Moon Gathering in Cumbria, the Cantlin Stone Free Festival, the Norwich Peaceful Green Fair, the Vines Cross Festival in East Sussex, and the Ingleston Common New Age Gypsy Fair near Bristol. The mother of them all, however, was Stonehenge, the prime alternative Butlins holiday destination for Britain's thriving counter culture that during the solstice was attracting up to 70,000 people.

When travelling between festivals it made sense both for practical and safety reasons to leave and arrive en masse, so all those living and travelling in coaches and buses and so on would always travel in a convoy. The year before, when setting off for Greenham Common from Stonehenge, these New Age travellers had announced themselves as the Peace Convoy. The name had stuck but by now due to the sheer size of the convoy they had attracted the attention of the mainstream media who unsurprisingly was choosing to depict them as unsavoury, lawless hippies; prefixing 'Peace Convoy' with 'so-called'. A process of demonization was beginning.

Meanwhile, over at Glastonbury Festival an entirely different problem was also starting following the introduction of a Local Government Act that required the festival for the first time to have a license; one of the conditions being that numbers get limited to 30,000 people.

The times were once again a-changing and with the prospect of four more years of Conservative rule, not in a good way.

Stonehenge '82

STONEHENGE '82

Out at the Stonehenge Free Festival in that summer of '82, the anarchic free-for-all continued apace although even here tensions were rising over what was deemed as unacceptable behaviour and acceptable misbehaviour.

In this autonomous space where anything was allowed, the one thing the festival stalwarts objected to was the growing number of heroin dealers who were setting up shop on site. Any other drug was viewed as being fine (and dandy) but heroin came with a lot of problems and a lot of anti-social baggage; and seeing as how Stonehenge was meant to be a totally social affair, the use of heroin didn't square at all with the festival's unspoken ethics.

These tensions eventually erupted into some fighting along with damage to vehicles being caused as heroin dealers were ejected from the site. For this reason, perhaps it was just as well that Conflict didn't play there or some of the methods used to take out the unwanted elements may have been blamed upon and attributed to them?

For all this trouble, the festival as a whole was another magnificent success graced by an array of Punky/hippy bands, and was yet another kick in the eye of authority. Apart from the solstice, of course, there was even more cause to celebrate that summer due to the birth of the first baby on site. More important than anything else, however, as the festival drew to a close instead of setting off for home or for the next free festival at Inglestone Common in Bristol, a large number of festival-goers and travellers set off in a convoy of various vehicles to join and support the peace campaigners still camped out at Greenham Common in Berkshire.

This was the birth of the Peace Convoy.

Since setting up camp at Greenham Common in the autumn of 1981, the peace campaigners there had been conducting a series of non-violent direct action protests aimed at disrupting the establishing of the base in preparation for the arrival of Cruise missiles. From cutting down sections of the perimeter fence to stopping sewage pipes being laid to blockading the main entrance, the tactics were diverse and brave - and a major thorn in the side of the base authorities.

Influenced by the actions of the protesters there, similar camps were being set up at other military bases around the country such as Molesworth Common in Cambridgeshire, Fairford in Gloucestershire, Burtonwood in Cheshire, Burghfield in Berkshire, and Lakenheaf in Suffolk. At Greenham Common, however, an inspired decision was made to have the camp there be for women only. Not only would this tactic potentially prevent soldiers and police acting violently towards the protesters but it would send out a profound and unique political message.

Greenham Common was on its way to becoming one of the most famous protest sites in the world.

'If not you - who? If not now - when?' asked a pamphlet handed out at the Stonehenge festival. 'On Wednesday at 12 noon we pull out to Greenham Common, the biggest convoy these isles of Albion has ever seen, straight through the heart of the apathetic wilderness our country has become.

Even as we sit here on Stonehenge Free State, the death machine of Nuclear War threatens our very lives. The time for sitting and talking about it is over, we now need to DO IT.

The women at Greenham Common have shown us all the importance of commitment by sitting through one of the coldest winters on record to show their implacable enmity for the whole Nuclear Death Machine. The least we can do is lend these warrior women and all the other rainbow warriors our support.'

Fired-up if not somewhat frazzled from the Stonehenge experience, a rag bag alternative army took up the challenge and set off for what was to be a date with destiny. It was a sight to behold as the ramshackle convoy of coaches, buses, trucks, motorbikes, caravans and other assorted vehicles descended upon the prime future location for Britain's Cruise missile national defence system.

Having navigated the roads and the continuous police presence, the convoy by-passed a police road block at the base and successfully landed; the travellers immediately launching themselves into setting up the Cosmic Counter-Cruise Carnival.

There followed weeks of the usual (and unusual) festival frolics attracting thousands of visitors, with much pulling down of perimeter fencing, smashing of concrete posts with sledgehammers, and confrontations with MOD police.

Society in general might well have been fragmenting but this was a pivotal moment in the cultural cross-pollination that was also occurring during the early years of the 1980s. It was the moment when the core of the Stonehenge festival crew announced themselves as the Peace Convoy and set off for a confrontation with what was nothing less than western military interests, and in doing so fully and completely politicising themselves in the process. Joining with the women peace campaigners already there at Greenham Common and displaying moral and physical support in such things as drawing more public attention to the campaign and showing the women how to build benders and other more practical accommodation to live in rather than normal tents.

A common link between the Stonehenge festival and the protest site at Greenham Common was in many ways, Crass. From members of Crass being involved in the initial instigation of the Stonehenge festival in 1974 to the condemnation displayed by Crass of the Cruise missile plan and their wholehearted support of the women peace campaigners.

Apart from being a seminal Punk band, this was where the true worth and importance of Crass lay.

Stonehenge '81

STONEHENGE '81

That summer of 1981 at the Stonehenge Free Festival, other people were lifting the veil from their eyes - or from their third eye, at least - through copious amounts of psychedelic drugs. Unswayed by the previous year's 'biker riot' at the festival, a new generation of Punk Rockers were there in attendance, swelling the ranks of the already flourishing and criss-crossing tribes. For many, this would have been their first encounter with a range of drugs beyond the accepted 'Punk drugs' of speed, alcohol and glue; and no better place could there be to take a first trip.

Careering around the site from dusk to summer solstice dawn, the festival offered an array of assaults upon the senses: fire breathers and flaming torch jugglers, poets and ranters in hippy/Punk rags, hawkers and dealers with spikes and dreadlocks, city hobgoblins and road rats, Hells Angels on honeymoon and hippy would-be high priests. The outlandish, the exotic, the weird and the frightening. Characters straight out of Middle Earth, from the darkest streets, from all corners of the country with accents to match.

Tents, benders, wigwams, coaches, caravans, buses and ambulances. Banners and flags declaring such messages as 'Happy Anarchy', 'Disorder - Complete Fucking Chaos', and 'Anarchy England'. Drug price menus, nudity, sound systems and a main stage graced by such bands as Ruts DC, Androids Of Mu, Misty In Roots, Lightning Raiders (apparently featuring a certain 'Wally' from the prototype Sex Pistols), Nik Turner's Inner City Unit, The Mob, Flux Of Pink Indians (showing either bravery or stupidity having under the guise of their previous band name, The Epileptics, been bottled from the stage the previous year), The Raincoats, Here And Now, and of course, Hawkwind.

A strange sense of warmth and brilliance had descended upon those fields adjacent to the standing stones, causing an air of common awareness. Though no doubt magnified somewhat by the drugs, the people there were sharing an insight into a vision of freedom where anyone could say, do and be anything they wished so long as it didn't impinge upon the freedom of others to do exactly the same. The very idea of anyone coming along and saying you couldn't do this or you couldn't say that, or of trying to assert their morals or their values upon another seemed suddenly to be absolutely absurd.

In many ways this was a representation not of an alternative society but of a true society; standing in stark contrast to the society outside, represented by the gangs of police waiting around on the edges of the festival site busy training their binoculars upon the goings-on within.

The festival made apparent that these police officers were the real weirdos, especially when harassing and strip-searching hapless festival-goers at the side of the road, which was their wont.

Having suffered the biker's violence of the previous year's festival, Stonehenge was bearing up to be a life-changing experience in the positive. So much so, in fact, that rather than simply returning after the festival was over to the world of Thatcher and all which that entailed, a number of people were deciding to continue the experience by moving on to the next free festival site at Inglestone Common, near Bristol and setting up camp there. Then after Inglestone moving on to the next festival and then the next, and on and on.

Suddenly, adopting a traveller lifestyle seemed quite an appealing career option...

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 Photo: Al Stokes

The Stonehenge Rampage

THE STONEHENGE RAMPAGE

That summer of 1980, in an entirely different corner of society another smaller yet far more grievous riot of sorts took place, this time out on the Wiltshire plains at the annual Stonehenge Free Festival.

Unbeknownst to their burgeoning audience at that time, members of Crass had been seminal to the setting up of the first Stonehenge festival in 1974. From it beginning as a gathering of a few hundred hippies in those early days, it had steadily grown and developed into an absolutely unique cultural phenomenon that by 1980 was attracting thousands. The Stonehenge festival was an example of freedom in the raw where practically anything was allowed due to the total lack of police presence. Standing like a post-apocalyptic shanty town where the music was free (courtesy of Hawkwind et al), the food was cheap or even free (courtesy of the Hari Krishnas), and the drugs were in abundance; it was a glimpse into how anarchy might - or might not - work.

Crass had played at the festival the previous year but on returning that following summer, due to their rising popularity they had attracted a large number of Punk Rockers to the site. Though Punk had moved on somewhat from the days of Sex Pistols-type outrage, to some, Punk still represented a challenge that was difficult to come to grips with. Teddy Boys, of course, were famously known for their dislike of Punk but unexpectedly there seemed to be certain bikers who also shared that disdain.

From its outset, Stonehenge was a predominantly hippy affair but as it grew so did the composition of its attendees, pulling in all kinds of people from different sections of society including straight-dressed kids from council estates (taking full advantage of the drugs sold openly there) and chapters of bikers (taking full advantage of the drugs also, of course). The council estate kids were fine and treated the festival like a narco Butlins so were simply there for a good time (and all the rest was propaganda) but a lot of the bikers seemed to have something to prove. Arriving on site usually in convoys, they would park up in circles and claim areas of the site as their own. Which was fine - anything that made them happy. Some, however, would claim the whole festival as their own and it was these who didn't take too kindly to what they saw that year as a Punk invasion.

Throwing bottles at Punk band The Epileptics was the first sign of their displeasure, which then quickly escalated to them seeking out and attacking any Punk Rocker they could find. The ensuing violence was brutal and frightening.

'Bikers Riot at Stonehenge' read the headline in the following week's NME though in truth it was more of a mindless rampage. The incident, however, convinced Crass to decide never to play Stonehenge or any other free festival again, which was really unfortunate. Nevertheless, by Crass being there at all a chain reaction had started and the floodgates were now opened. The budding Anarcho Punk culture had met face-to-face with free festival culture - causing a mutation in both.

The year 1976 and the advent of Punk is often cited as Year Zero. For some, this is undoubtedly the case but at the same time, Punk - and in particular the Sex Pistols - opened up the past and shone a light upon a veritable treasure trove of reference points and influences: The New York Dolls, Iggy Pop, the Velvet Underground, Patti Smith, the MC5, Captain Beefheart, Dr Feelgood, The Doors, The Who, Alice Cooper, the Situationists, King Mob, nihilism, anarchy, the mythology of the Berlin Wall and the Chelsea Hotel, Paris '68, Dickensian London, amphetamines... and heroin.

Likewise, Crass also illuminated a plethora of references, ideas, influences and possibilities; many intentionally but others not so: John Lennon, Walt Whitman, RD Laing, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Sartre, Arthur Rimbaud, Baudellaire, George Orwell, Richard Hamilton, John Heartfield, Wilfred Owen, anarchism, pacifism, feminism, atheism, existentialism, pop art, collage, Dada, graffiti, CND, black clothes, squatting, free festivals, hashish... and LSD.

All links in a chain. All important stepping stones to an ultimate yet unknown destination.

Worlds were colliding - be they political, social or cultural - causing metamorphosis, unification, friction and (as at Stonehenge) sometimes outright conflict.

It was the dawn of a new decade and as events unfurled in St Paul's in Bristol and at the Stonehenge Free Festival, less significantly (or perhaps more so?) the music charts were being assailed by such classic bands as The Jam, Dexy's Midnight Runners, and The Specials. It was Crass, however, who were arguably becoming the most important band in Britain due not only to their own records but also to the records they were releasing by other artists on their label...