1988
Dweez:
Anybody out there remember Stonehenge '88 ? Last year before
the forces of unlaw and disorder put their oppressive sanctions on anyone having
fun . I remember being in Cholderton wood, zonked of my brain , along with a
couple of thousand others, telling the cops where to stick their exclusion order
. English Heretics giving out tickets to the pretend Druids to attend the
Solstice ... like you need a ticket ! I recall staying in the wood till
around midnight the last band on was "Primal Scream?" (maybe) . Then a
long walk to the Henge, more coppers than I ever saw . Waiting in the cold night
for the dawn , with no less than three helicopters telling us to f'@ck off home
. Waiting Police Rioters marshalling inside the perimeter and then charging
shortly before sunrise . Sheer provocation, small riot ensured, and then 7 miles
back to the van for around 8.am . No rest the buggers followed us back and
forced the wood to disperse . Three days in that wood, in hot weather, everybody
off their heads -no trouble Forces of law + order + media = total bollocks +
"riot" by hippies
Mark: 1988 year of the "riot"
We had often camped in Cholderton woods before but this year
was different, they were so many people, trucks, buses, horse-drawn and so
forth. At solstice dawn our mate Eric went for a wash in the morning dew
on a field of barley. When he got back he complained of a roaring in his
ears. Everyone was right of their heads but we eventually sussed out that
he had three barley hairs perforating his ear drum as he could feel them
tickling in his throat. Two were easily removed by pulling from his ear but the
third refused to budge as the barbs on the hair were pointing the wrong
direction and caused excruciating pain when pulled. We had run out of ideas but
suddenly out of the night appeared this hippie who rapidly fashioned a pair of
tweezers from a twig. With the aid of a torch he reached down Eric's throat and
extracted the final hair.
The following morning people barricaded the road into the woods with a huge log, I'm not sure whether this was to stop people leaving or to stop the police coming in. Helicopters flew overhead saying that if we did not leave in five minutes all the vehicles will be confiscated.
The walk to the stones the following night was amazing as we clambered over police roadblocks including a huge barricade of giant lorries filled with rocks on the far side of the Amesbury roundabout, it seemed that the police had assumed we would try and storm the stones in vehicles. Everyone was giving the old Bill loads of abuse and it felt like we had won. On the road outside the stones police cordons bunched everyone up including horses and children. Later the riot squad charged and drove about 5000 people back down the road and over the fields back to Cholderton Woods. There was a terrible atmosphere of defeat as a police gradually forced everyone to leave.
