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Further trouble and the Public Order Act 1986

Things have never been the same again since the Beanfield. Throughout the rest of the year, whether in small groups or at events, travellers were continually harassed.

In May and June of 1986, the tribes again tried to gather. More of the same was in store. Huge numbers of police pushed various convoys all over the south of England. Much stress!!

On the 1st June, we arrived at Stoney Cross in the New Forest, Hampshire. The whole issue was on newspaper front pages for a week! Politicians again whipped up the moral outrage.

On the 3rd June the Home Secretary, Douglas Hurd, described the convoy in a speech to the House of Commons as:
“Hon. Members from the west country will be aware of the immense policing difficulties created by the peace convoy, it is anything but peaceful. Indeed, it resembles nothing more than a band of medieval brigands who have no respect for the law or the rights of others”.

The National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL) observed that this assertion was made without any evidence being presented that the convoy contained a higher proportion of people with criminal records, or evidence the travellers were committing offences on the road.

Two days later on the 5th, Margaret Thatcher said that her government was:

” …. Only too delighted to do anything we can to make life difficult for such things as `hippy convoys”.

Shortly after the `green light’, Hampshire police mounted “Operation Daybreak” on the 9th June. 550 police charged onto the field in support of bailiffs and an eviction order. Many arrests then ensued, the convoy put up no resistance. Policemen carried a large amount of documentation on people and their vehicles, most of which were again impounded.

It was against this background that the now famous `anti-hippy’ clauses where put into the Public Order Act, these powers began to operate in 1987. Section 39 of the Public Order Act makes it a new criminal offence for a trespasser on land not to leave it after being ordered to by police.

After the previous year’s events, this section is seen as yet another example of how the police are being drawn into enforcing the Civil Law and deciding issues which, until then, had been the province of the civil courts. The first time for hundreds of years that trespass had become a criminal offence. It was a most controversial measure, it had been inserted into the Act hurriedly.
Under the powers, the most senior police officer present may direct people to leave land if it is reasonably believed that: two or more people are trespassers intending to remain on land for any period of time and have been asked to leave, damage has been caused to the land or threatening behaviour used against the occupier, or 12 or more vehicles have been brought onto the land.

The Home Office had stated: “That the clause was a response to the `problems’ of new age travellers and that the power is not aimed primarily at Gypsy groups”.

However, according to the National Gypsy Council, by 9.27am on the day the act came into force (1st April 1987), section 39 was being applied against Gypsies by Avon and Somerset police.

The increasingly hostile political climate that followed, had a dramatic affect on the travelling community, frightening away many of the families integral to the community balance of the festival circuit.

for more …. https://alanlodge.co.uk/OnTheRoad/the-story-4