Stonehenge Summer Solstice Sunrise 1999

We knew beforehand that it would not be easy. For one thing, there were the premonitions. The day before we set out for the henge a number of us had already shared a dream/vision of a huge crowd among the stones, of a lintel stone falling from one of the trilithon arches and crushing the life out of people below. We had heard of a rave being advertised on various websites, there had been misleading articles in the national press saying that one had only to turn up at Stonehenge on the morning of the solstice and free access would be given to all. On the train that carried Philip up to London on the solstice eve, he wrote this poem:

Dovetailing into a crazed adolescence,
the world sweeps up its clotted history
and smears it on a triangle of bare earth
marked out with tarmac and wire.
It`s here the police will gather,
here the decadence of another fin de siecle
will dance its way to another missing doomsday,
skipping stones across the pond of the silent dead,
confusion of ripples run against each other,
distorting perfect circles that the crows have now abandoned
to the noise of helicopters, hierophants and hacks.
No time to play, no room to expand on so few words
snatched from the rubble of dreams,
scattered gently like petals onto the surface
of the ancestral pool.
Giants look on, a mixture of emotions
and an age of distant longing
furrowing their mottled brows.
Long before we came, they stood,
and after we are gone, they still will stand,
welcoming the crows` return,
snake-hissing wind`s caress,
and most of all,
the wet familiarity of rain.

We reached the car park where buses were waiting to take us to Stonehenge to see the dawn. We were among the 150 people privileged to be offered this opportunity. And how did we gain this privilege? We asked. Simple as that. This year, about 800 people put in applications to English Heritage, the stones` official guardians, to be at Stonehenge for the solstice and midsummer. Over a period of five days, all of these people were to have been granted access.

Over the past four years, we have spent many long hours sitting around tables with English Heritage, the National Trust, Wiltshire police, Druids, Witches, Pagans, travellers, hippies, local councillors, archaeologists and others. We have discussed access to Stonehenge. Remember that three years ago, no one was allowed into Stonehenge for the summer solstice. Then last year a hundred people, ourselves included, were given tickets and bussed in through the four-mile-wide exclusion zone around the stones. The event passed off reasonably peacefully. There were a couple of minor problems. Cameramen popped flash-guns every time anyone twitched a muscle. The loud, grandstanding antics of one group who staked their claim to the centre circle effectively prevented anyone else from enjoying peaceful prayer or silent meditation. It was hardly a great spiritual occasion, but it was another significant step in the process of achieving better access without seeing a return to the bad old days of 1980s confrontations. It was hoped by all those involved in the access negotiations that this year we could build on the success of last year and iron out the problems. We laid careful plans for the Press to be more restrained, the police presence to be more low-key, for access to be spread over several days, for more groups to attend, for rituals to be shorter and to allow space for others, for this, for that. We put together a flyer to be handed out to those who might turn up without tickets and be unable to get in. The flyer explained the situation, said a little about what would be happening in the circles, suggested that those wanting access should apply for next year and ended by wishing everyone a happy solstice.

But it was not to be.

On our arrival at the car park we were told that at 2am a group of about forty people had knocked down a section of the fence around the henge and that the police line had been attacked with bottles, stones, beer cans and bodies. A few on both sides sustained minor injuries. About four hundred people broke through the police and security guards and made it to the stones. But it was still hoped that our access might go ahead.

The buses took us as far as Amesbury, then a policeman told us that they judged it too dangerous to allow the buses to go on, that the access we had come for had been cancelled, but that we could walk on to the stones if we wanted to. We decided that, having come this far and having worked so hard to bring about peaceful access, we should go on. About fifteen of the British Druid Order group walked the last two miles to the henge, together with Druids and individuals from other groups, arriving alongside the Heel Stone just as the sun was rising. The sky was beautiful, one of the clearest sunrises Stonehenge has seen for a good few years. The sight on the ground was much less inspiring. In fact, it was thoroughly depressing. As we approached the stones, we saw seven or eight figures on top of the trilithon arches that straddle the rays of that sacred sunrise, and hordes of other small black figures moving around among the stones on the ground. Another throng was gathered on the road. As we got closer, we saw that some of the figures were police officers wearing yellow reflective jackets. Closer still and we saw that they were holding transparent riot shields and short batons, wearing crash helmets with visors. There didn`t seem to be many of them given that the crowd must have amounted to about a thousand people. There were triumphant shouts from the crowd in the circles, insults hurled from the crowd on the road. Some of the police were trying to get the people in the circles to leave. The number of women and children (including babies) in the fray prevented them from taking action, their only option being to try this by persuasion rather than force.

We were witnessing the desecration of a sacred site and there was nothing we could do to stop it. It was ghastly.

Emma was called to do some radio and tv interviews: an opportunity for damage limitation, if such were possible. Philip stayed on the road with the rest of the British Druid Order group. After a while, Clews Everard, the director of Stonehenge for English Heritage, and David Batchelor, an EH archaeologist, appeared. Clews was devastated. We hugged and wept. She more than anyone had worked tirelessly for a peaceful solution to the problems surrounding Stonehenge, balancing the wishes of scores of different interest groups with admirable tact and diplomacy, optimism and good humour. The last solstice morning of the millennium should have represented the happy outcome of all of her and everyone else`s efforts to date. Instead, it was a chaotic mess. The bottles, beer cans and other debris that had been hurled at the police still lay all over the ground and an aggressive crowd of stoned and drunken revellers were preventing access to the stones for all those who had wished to be there to make ritual, to express their spirituality, to commune with their ancestors, or just to enjoy the beauty of the sunrise alignment.

From the vantage point of the road there was little to enjoy. Philip stood listening to the talk amongst the angry people around him who were supporting the chaos. Some expressed their hatred and mistrust of English Heritage, claiming that there was a great conspiracy between EH, the National Trust, the police and the government that had been going on for years, a conspiracy that had the sole aim of preventing anyone from holding ceremonies in Stonehenge. Having held a great number of ceremonies in Stonehenge, we know that this is complete nonsense, an urban myth that derives from the brutal suppression of the free festival at Stonehenge that happened under Margaret Thatcher. Times and attitudes and even governments have changed, but the angry folk at Stonehenge on the morning of 21 June apparently hadn`t noticed. Another explained that they were there to make sure that there would be a perpetual ban on anyone holding ceremonies inside Stonehenge. Others expressed their simple hatred of English Heritage, the police and all other `establishment` bodies in crude, monosyllabic shouts. Philip asked questions, trying to gain some insight into what these people were doing there. All the answers were couched in terms of opposition to, mistrust or hatred of some group or other, none in terms of spirituality, respect or celebration. These folk clearly saw themselves as society`s dispossessed and were intent on honing their bitterness by wreaking revenge on society by any means at their disposal, even the rather bizarre means of preventing Druids and others from celebrating the summer solstice at Stonehenge. We were stunned by such uncomprehending hostility.

As the morning drew on, the folk in the circles got bored and allowed themselves to be led back to the road. The people on the trilithons clambered down one by one. The crowd on the road began to drift off. By midday the fence was back up, the litter of a thousand revellers and their many dogs had been cleared, the police were gone, and the site was strangely back to normal, with a few hundred tourists taking pictures, listening to the audio tour, oblivious to the nightmare of the solstice dawn.

In the early afternoon, sitting in the grass behind the meandering tourists, we made our offerings to the spirits of the place and to the ancestors. The stones of the circle seemed to us somehow black, the spirit having flinched into a catatonic tension of withdrawal. When we left, still stunned, still reeling, still overwhelmed by the sadness of it all, the tears were those of grief. There was a powerful sense of our tradition, our heritage, our land, having been violated by the rage and footfalls of such misplaced protest and disrespect.

And what now? The process of negotiation will continue and we will be a part of it. But will it mean anything? What is the point in working for peaceful access to the stones if there is an army of disaffected folk who refuse to take part in the process and who are willing to destroy any agreed access that happens? It seems that the only way to ensure peaceful access at the summer solstice is to have the exclusion zone back in place and Salisbury Plain covered with policemen. This is a ludicrous state of affairs.

One can think of many reasons why the summer solstice at Stonehenge could be the focus of such anger and tension. There is, as already mentioned, the history of the suppression of the free festival and all the residual, and perfectly understandable resentment that caused. There is the fact that the summer solstice is a time when chaotic energy is at its height. There is the origin of Stonehenge as a symbol of power erected by a Neolithic military and political elite. There is the fact that the monument remains surrounded by Ministry of Defence land regularly trundled over by tanks and shaken by cannon fire, buzzed by military helicopters and jets.

But what can be done? Those of us committed to peaceful access will continue to look for answers. We must also find a way to deal with those who won`t talk to us or listen to us and who view the stones not as an ancestral sacred temple but as a symbol of anti-authoritarian protest. At present we have no common language.

Stonehenge is in some way an archetypal sacred site. The desecration feels to many to be a wound inflicted upon the earth we know is sacred. We have had, since Monday's events, dozens and dozens of letters, emails and phone calls from people around Britain, Europe, America and Australia, proffering their support, their empathy and sympathy. The prayers are powerful. To those that this horror touches deeply, to those who are confused, to those that feel impotent and violated, we suggest you walk with gentle footsteps to your own sacred places and make prayers, sharing the blessings of beauty and inspiration that come with perceiving the world as sacred. Only by living our native traditions openly and freely can we guide this horrendous descration to stop.

You might like to know that we returned to Stonehenge this morning to greet the dawn, to bless and purify the sacred circles, to make prayers for peace and healing and to celebrate Midsummer`s Day. Forty-five people attended the rite, which was beautiful, moving and entirely peaceful. We called, heart to heart, spirit to spirit, to the crow people of Salisbury Plain, to the spirits of place and the spirits of our ancestors to return from the shadows into which the hostility of June 21st had driven them. As the first call went out from the circle and our drums began to sound, two crows alighted on top of the Heel Stone. We were the last to leave the circle after the closing of the rite. As we looked back through the northeastern trilithon arch, the gate of the Midsummer sun, seven crows flew into the circle, wheeled around and landed on the Altar Stone and other stones in the inner horseshoe. The process of healing has begun and will continue.

This was confirmed today (June 24th) when Clews Everard for English Heritage publicly re-affirmed their resolve to see the stones open for all who come in peace. Wiltshire police spokesman Andy Hollingshead has confirmed their support. It seems that the anger and aggression of this tragic solstice dawn have served only to re-double the determination of those who would bring peace.

May the eye of the sun strengthen the spirits of all peace-makers in all conflicts, wherever they may be. In the name of the old ones, Blessed be as blessed is.

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