Sid Rawle

Sidney William Rawle (1 October 1945 – 31 August 2010) was a British campaigner for peace and land rights, free festival organiser, and a former leader of the London squatters movement. Rawle was known to British tabloid journalists as 'The King of the Hippies', not a title he ever claimed for himself, but one that he did eventually co-opt for his unpublished autobiography.

Early life Rawle was born in Bridgwater, Somerset, on 1 October 1945. His parents separated when he was a child. He was raised by his father leading to him dropping out of school. He then lived for a time with his mother in Slough, where he worked as a park attendant, became active in his trade union and radical politics, and organised a strike of Asian workers in a local factory and a love-in in the municipal gardens. he formed the Hyde Park Diggers who campaigned on the issues of land use and land ownership, concerns that were central to the rest of his life's actions. He formed the Digger Action Movement, which brought him into contact with John Lennon.

During the early 1960s Rawle became increasingly involved in the London squatting scene (living for a while in a recently vacated vicarage in Gospel Oak). In 1969, he was one of the squatters in the London Street Commune, occupying a 100-room mansion at 144 Piccadilly, who were evicted by police. as an organiser of the Windsor Free Festivals and the 1974 Stonehenge Free Festival. After reprinting, as publisher of International Times, an article similar to the leaflet that had led to the imprisonment of Windsor Free Festival organiser Bill 'Ubi' Dwyer, Rawle was himself jailed for three months in 1975 to prevent him publicising that year's festival.

Dorinish commune In 1970, John Lennon invited Rawle to establish a commune on Dorinish, a small island in Clew Bay, Ireland, which Lennon had owned since 1967. After surviving Atlantic storms, the commune eventually disbanded in 1972 after a fire destroyed their main stores tent. Lennon did contribute money towards Rawle's communes and other projects, and was reputed to have financed the film Winstanley, about Gerrard Winstanley, a charismatic leader of the Diggers movement, and in which Rawle had a role as a Ranter, which suited him admirably. During this period he joined the Ecology (later Green) Party, and used his festival experience to help set up the first Green Gathering at Worthy Farm, Glastonbury. The years of travelling to festivals and events had turned an ad hoc collection of people and vehicles into what became known as the Peace Convoy. He stayed at Tipi Valley until 1982 when he began to live permanently on the road and at convoy-associated communities. In 1983 he set up the Rainbow Village, a peace camp at the disused US air base at RAF Molesworth, Cambridgeshire, a proposed cruise missile site, which was broken up by police in February 1985. ), and in recent years on top of a hill overlooking the River Severn near Rodley. He was sitting in a chair by the outside fire, while the last Rainbow 2000 Camp of the season (the SuperSpirit Camp) was being packed down by the crew, when he collapsed and died on 31 August, 2010 from a heart attack. He had at least seven children, by different mothers.