The Battle of the Beanfield

This clip is a potted documentary of events that took place in 1985 in Wiltshire England and constituted the largest mass civil arrest in English history. Lord Cardigan, a Conservative Party member and aristocratic land owner was an eye witness to the events. He provided testimony that included an account of a pregnant woman "with a silhouette like a zeppelin" being "clubbed with a truncheon"

No British Government since 1985, Labour or Conservative seems to have thought that the unprovoked clubbing of a pregnant woman by the Police is worthy of further investigation.

In fact the Former British Prime Minister John Major seems to have thought that the destruction of the traveller’s homes and the beatings they received, constituted soft touch policing:

“Society needs to condemn a little more and understand a little less. New age travellers? Not in this age! Not in any age!”

John Major’s Government was followed by that of the Labour Party whose mantra of ‘social justice’ doesn’t appear to include pregnant women. There has never been a public inquiry into the events that day.

Almost all of the British media appears to have colluded in the justification of the violence. Lord Cardigan, showing himself to be a man of principle, stood up for the victims. His credibility as a witness was attacked by much of the British media and he consequently won damages in court. 

He was able to gain some measure of justice from the British courts unlike the travellers. All the justice they received was a paltry sum in damages. Only one police officer was ever prosecuted for his actions and none for what appears to me to be a conspiracy to carry out a number of criminal acts including criminal damage and affray.

These New Age Travellers like drug users, seem to give up their human rights when they choose to make life choices that conflict with the social values of those who wield political power.

Or in the words of the Chief Constable of Wiltshire, defending his police force’s actions at the time in a TV interview with the show Newsnight said that he had nothing to be ashamed about. He claimed that the travellers were a “problem for society”, one of the reasons being that they were not “constrained” by the “social order of society”. 

A good account of the events that day can be found here.