LOSE YOURSELF IN 1985
RED OR DEAD
British Telecom announcement that it was to phase out its red telephone boxes led to a public outcry. The angular stainless steel and glass KX100 box was unveiled as the successor, heralded by BT as ‘…the most perfect telephone kiosks you could imagine’. The original plan, announced by Nick Kane, the company’s marketing director, was to replace all old boxes, but the campaign against the ‘clinical’ new ones was so vociferous that the scheme was eventually abandoned.
The Guardian newspaper’s assessment was that BT ‘has done its utmost to turn the phone box from one of the most famous and elegant pieces of street furniture into one of the most boringly ugly’.
THE BATTLE OF THE BEANFIELD
The Stonehenge Free Festival had been held since 1974, but New Age travellers intending to set up the 1985 staging clashed with police after a High Court injunction was taken out to stop them reaching the historic landmark.
When the ragtag convoy of old vehicles ran into a roadblock of lorry-loads of gravel tipped across the A303 by the authorities, seven miles from the site, violence broke out, with the police employing shock tactics similar to those used in the recently-ended miners’ strike.
The startling scenes, dubbed The Battle of the Beanfield, were broadcast on television, resulting in considerable public sympathy for the travellers. Dozens were injured, both on the convoy (which contained about 600 people) and in the police ranks (which contained 1300 officers).
Some 537 travellers were detained, making it the largest mass arrest of British citizens since World War Two.