29 July 2010

For thousands of years Stonehenge has attracted celebrations and revellers over the summer solstice, but for 2009 Wiltshire Constabulary have adopted a heavy-handed approach to policing the festivities.

Using technology more suited to scouting for donkey-mounted terrorists in the Hindu Kush, the police intend to monitor the event with an unmanned drone which will remain on station above the stone circle. There will also be drug sniffer dogs in attendance and, with unsettling echoes of the violent and scandalous Battle of the Beanfield in 1985, police mounted on horseback will maintain control of the crowd.

This is to keep the event "safe and enjoyable" apparently, and anyone caught with drugs, or anyone who tries to set up a rave or sound system, will be dealt with. All sensible revellers who intend to act and behave within the law should have nothing to fear. But if the general behaviour of the police force recently is anything to go by, who knows what to expect?

Toxin hopes that the pagans to whom the summer solstice means so much are able to celebrate one of the most auspicious days of their calendar in peace, and that the police will take a back seat and act with the kind of dignity, tolerance and respect deserved by any large religious celebration. But obvious comparisons are already being drawn to the G20 protests, and critics remark that this is the first chance the police will have to show that they have learned their lessons from that bungled shambles. It is the first large-scale event, so spiritually and politically sensitive, since then.

Toxin would like to publish your eyewitness accounts and photos from the event - please email the Editor for more details.