RIP Sid Rawle, Land Reformer, Free Festival Pioneer, Stonehenge Stalwart
8.9.10
So farewell, then, Sid Rawle, who passed away, aged 64, at the end of his annual SuperSpirit summer camp, overlooking the River Severn near Rodley, on August 31. The “King of the Hippies,” as the press dubbed him — although it was never a title that he claimed for himself — Sid played a major part in the British counter-culture from the 1960s until his death, although he is, of course, best known for his involvement in the free festival movement, first at Windsor, from 1972 to 1974, and then at Stonehenge, until the violent suppression of the festival in 1985.
The author and activist Jeremy Sandford (who died in 2003) described him as “the squatter to end them all, having squatted flats, houses, commons, forests, a village, boats, an island, an army camp, Windsor Great Park,” and I would only add that, if I was to be asked to identify one topic for which he should be remembered, it was his passion for land reform in the UK, something that the State always regards with the utmost fear and suspicion.
I only met Sid once, when I was invited to attend his SummerSpirit camp in August 2004, following the publication of my book Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion. I arrived to find Sid and the author and historian Ronald Hutton sitting together at a table in the camp’s café, greeting me warmly and congratulating me on writing the social history of Stonehenge and the counter-culture that they had hoped someone would eventually write (which was a great honour), and I spent a thoroughly enjoyable few days hanging out, holding a few workshops, at which I read out excerpts from the book and Sid chipped in, drawing on his vast repertoire of memories of the time, and, one evening, watching political folk-rockers Seize the Day play a storming set.
People tended to either love or loathe Sid, but I was given the most gracious welcome, and have nothing but respect for his revolutionary example. At the time of my visit, he was surrounded by supportive family members, who all made me feel extremely welcome, and his camp — which aimed to have no more than 400 people present — appeared to be a refined example of the kind of gatherings that he was involved in establishing in the 1970s — often chaotic affairs, but ones that were seeking out a new world.
Below I publish excerpts from Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion that deal with Sid’s life, interspersed with some contemporary commentary, and at the end of this article I publish Sid’s manifesto, “The Vision of Albion,” and some comments by Jeremy Sandford regarding his failings, and his attempts to address them in later life.
Sid Rawle and his contributions to the British counter-culture
In the mid-1960s, Sid was already a colourful figure in London’s counter-cultural scene, where he gave the youthful squatting movement some historical ballast by establishing the Hyde Park Diggers, inspired by the example of the original seventeenth century Diggers, founded by Gerrard Winstanley […]
By 1970, John Lennon was so impressed by Sid Rawle’s revolutionary rhetoric that he summoned him to the offices of Apple, the Beatles’ short-lived and ill-conceived Utopian business offshoot, and offered him custodianship of Dorinish Island — a small, uninhabited island off the coast of County Mayo that Lennon had bought in 1967 — for use as a Digger commune, ‘for the common good’. After a brief recruitment drive amongst the hippies of London, twenty-five adults and a baby duly set off for the west coast of Ireland. Rawle described their initial experience as follows: ‘We decided we would hold a six-week summer camp on the island. Then we would see what came out of that and decide if we wanted to extend our stay. It was heaven and it was hell. We lived in tents because there were no stone buildings on the island at all’, although he concluded that, ‘Most of the time it was really good’.
In the end, the Diggers stayed for two years, growing their own vegetables, which they stored in specially dug hollows, and cadging lifts off the local oyster fishermen every fortnight or so for supplementary shopping trips to Westport on the mainland. There was a certain amount of conflict — in March 1971 The Connaught Telegraph declared, ‘After a year of seething anger, Westport has finally declared war on the ‘Republic of Dorinish’ — but the commune finally closed down of its own volition the year after, when a fire destroyed the main tent used to store supplies.
Rawle had made sporadic visits to England throughout the duration of the commune. At the Glastonbury Fayre in June 1971, for example, free food had been provided by two groups — the wittily named Communal Knead, and Sid’s Diggers, now known as the Digger Action Movement. On his return to London in the spring of 1972, he took the Diggers’ message on from Dorinish and Glastonbury to a new and more politically explosive location. Along with members of the Free City of Camden, ‘a loose street-by-street network of squatters, revolutionaries and artists’ and the ubiquitous White Panthers, he was involved in setting up the first People’s Free Festival in Windsor Great Park over the August Bank Holiday weekend, under the leadership of Bill ‘Ubi’ Dwyer, a well-known anarchist activist, ‘on the basis of an acid vision he’d had’.
Windsor was the most direct affront to the land rights of the establishment yet seen. By squatting the Queen’s own backyard, the festival’s organizers were joining the Diggers in taking on unfinished historical business. Windsor’s park had been common land before it was enclosed by King George III to provide himself with an exclusive hunting ground. The hippies were simply taking back land that had been stolen from the people for 200 years.
The People’s Free Festival ran for three years, growing in size and influence, with the result that, in 1974, it was violently suppressed by the authorities. In the meantime, another charismatic individual, Phil Russell (aka Wally Hope) had established the Stonehenge Free Festival at Britain’s most celebrated ancient monument. Phil died in mysterious circumstances the following year, but the Stonehenge Free Festival had already taken root, and Sid Rawle soon became involved:
Imprisoned after the last Windsor festival along with Bill Dwyer, Sid came to Stonehenge as one of the chief organizers of the fourth People’s Free Festival, which took place in August 1975 at Watchfield, a disused airfield in Oxfordshire. Set up as a one-off replacement for the bitterly contested Windsor site, Watchfield was an extraordinary event — the only instance in British history of the government providing a free festival site. Although no inquest had taken place after the brutal suppression of Windsor the year before, Home Secretary Roy Jenkins clearly felt that the hippies were due some kind of compensation. Independent reports suggested that the police’s instructions for people to leave the site had not been clearly heard, that the Drug Squad broke the law in searching suspects for drugs, that excessive force had been used in the eviction of the site, and in particular that the 220 people arrested had been treated with unnecessary harshness. Taken to a nearby army barracks, suspects were made to undress completely, and were subjected to anal and vaginal searches, according to one of the doctors present.
Watchfield duly cemented the success of the second Stonehenge Free Festival, running for nine days, attracting over 5,000 people, and providing the clearest working example to date of the free festival as a self-regulating alternative community, despite a persistent police presence that led to ninety-five arrests, and despite sporadic violence from the Windsor chapter of the Hell’s Angels. Festival regular Convoy Steve ‘especially liked the daily site meetings where everyone sat around and said their piece. Policy was made, site matters were discussed and it felt like real democracy in action’ […]
In the end, however, the most significant aspect of the trade-off between the festival-goers and the government that led to the provision of Watchfield was that it also included the Stonehenge Free Festival in its ambit. According to Sid Rawle, ‘the representatives stated that if they [the festival-goers] kept away from Windsor Great Park, they would be left alone at Stonehenge’.
From 1976 to 1984, Sid was a key figure in the summer solstice celebrations at Stonehenge, where, as I explained in relation to my own visit in 1984, “on solstice morning the fences came down, the sun shone out in all its summer glory, and the Druids and the festival-goers were once more at the stones together. There were pagan weddings, children were blessed, there was nakedness, and all manner of other rituals were performed, from the profound to the impenetrable.”
Summer solstice at Stonehenge, 1984 (Sid Rawle, arms outstretched, greets the sun). Photo copyright Alan Lodge.
During this period, Sid was also involved in establishing the enormously influential Tipi Valley community in south Wales (also see here, here and here), where he lived from 1976 to 1982. He was then involved in setting up the Peace Convoy, which traveled from Stonehenge to Greenham Common in 1981, in solidarity with the Women’s Peace Camp, and in 1984 was involved in establishing the Rainbow Village at Molesworth in Cambridgeshire, the proposed site for the second cruise missile base in the UK after Greenham, which was broken up by the largest peacetime mobilization of the military in February 1985.
He was also involved in numerous other free festivals — mainly in the West Country and Wales — that were part of the travelling free festival community’s summer itinerary, and in establishing smaller, more sustainable gatherings than Stonehenge, whose unfettered anarchy — and crowds of 50,000 or more throughout the month of June — prompted the violent clampdown at the Beanfield in June 1985.
In the summer of 1980, for example:
[T]he first Ecology Party Summer Gathering was held at Worthy Farm in Pilton. This small but significant step for the nascent ecological movement was convened by Michael Eavis in the absence of the Glastonbury festival, which he’d been forced to cancel for a year while he juggled the financial loss he’d made in 1979 with his ambitious plans for a larger festival in 1981. Significantly, the Summer Gathering brought the existing green pioneers, including Jonathan Porritt, into contact with the ecological leanings of the free festival scene for the first time. Music was provided by Roy Harper and Nik Turner’s Inner City Unit, and Sid Rawle became so involved that he was duly elected to the Party Council at the Autumn Conference in Cardiff, when ‘a controversial motion for the legalisation of cannabis was passed’.
In July 1982, Sid was involved in establishing the first Green Gathering at Worthy Farm, a development of the Ecology Party meetings that attracted over 5,000 people. As I explained in Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion:
As well as widening the scope of the green movement, the gathering also established a template for sustainable gatherings that were able to maintain the ethos of the free festivals in the face of a growing influx of less focused ‘consumers’. The music was restricted to acoustic music only, everyone was encouraged to participate — financially, physically and spiritually — and it’s significant that the Green Gatherings, as well as other small scale gatherings along the same lines, are still running today [although see this report about the cancellation of the Big Green Gathering in 2009].
In 1985, after the Battle of the Beanfield, when over 1,300 police from six counties cornered a convoy travelling to Stonehenge to establish the 12th free festival and subjected men, women and children to brutal treatment, abruptly ending the festival and signaling an end to the state’s tolerance of the burgeoning new age traveller movement — and its interest in land reform and political campaigning against militarism and nuclear power — Sid retired from the road, settling in the Forest of Dean with his family, where he lived until his death.
On the day of the Beanfield, as I explained in my book The Battle of the Beanfield, Sid “was so convinced that the state was planning a disproportionate response to the threat posed by the convoy that he stayed behind in Savernake [Forest, the location from which the convoy for Stonehenge had set off], arguing that if all the travellers stayed put and waited for thousands more people to join them, the authorities would be powerless to break up the ever-growing movement that he had worked for so long to encourage.”
He may have been right, but we will never know. Personally, I think that, even if disaster had been avoided at the Beanfield, the State was committed to destroying the travellers’ movement. The Beanfield took place just four months after the eviction of Molesworth, and the two events were not unconnected. Both the Greenham women and the Rainbow Village had attracted the wrath of Margaret Thatcher’s government by opposing cruise missile bases on UK soil, and I have always maintained that the only reason that the authorities could not truncheon the Greenham protestors into submission — as they did with the travellers at the Battle of the Beanfield — was because they were women. With the Rainbow Village, however, the Stonehenge connection meant that “decommissioning” the travellers en route to Stonehenge could be sold to the media and the public as ridding the country of a violent anarchic scourge.
Sid subsequently became involved with the Green Party (as it developed from its original incarnation as the Ecology Party), and, after also playing a part in the Oak Dragon and Rainbow Circle camps — developments of the smaller scale gatherings pioneered in the early 1980s — set up Rainbow 2000, which held a number of camps each summer, including the SuperSpirit camp at which he passed away, while packing up on its final day.
Sunset at the SuperSpirit summer camp, August 2004.
The Vision of Albion
By Sid Rawle
In the end it all gets back to land. Looking back, I see that a link that runs through my life concerns the right to land and property on it.
Shared out equally, there would be a couple of acres for every adult living in Britain. That would mean each family or group could have a reasonably sized small holding of ten or twenty acres and learn once again to become self sufficient.
The present day reality is the reverse, with some folk owning hundreds of thousands of acres and others owning none. That can’t be fair!
There’s talk of community in wartime. We can be ordered to go and fight and die for Queen and country. In peacetime is it too much to ask for just a few square yards of our green and pleasant land to rear our children on?
That’s all we want, myself and the squatters and travellers and hippy movements I’ve been involved with. Just a few square yards of this land that we can quite easily be asked to go out and die for.
And if we ever achieve that, what else? What else is what I call the Vision of Albion.
Albion, the most ancient name of this fair country. It was in Albion that the industrial revolution occurred. And I and many others now have a sneaking suspicion that in Albion will be forged the first post industrial society, a Green Community in this green land, living in equity and peace.
The Vision of Albion is a vision of one world united in love, a vision of unity in diversity. Not the same chant every day. Not everyone finding the same cure for the same ills. But a vision of all people uniting in love and respect for one another.
We have to find out how all us individuals in the world can have enough space to live in love and harmony, enough to be self-sufficient and be ourselves, and how to give everyone else this space. That is the vision of Albion, that is the vision of the Rainbow people.
It is the Rainbow vision because the rainbow is the symbol of God’s promise. And it is the vision of Albion because there is a sneaking feeling amongst some of us that it is from these islands, the islands that make up Albion, that change will come. So many of the white man’s dreadful fuck-ups in the world originated here. It is from these islands that peace and harmony must come.
Because although we’ve given the world so many of its institutions and a common language to communicate to each other in, we’ve lost our own real ancient roots. We don’t know who built our stone circles, how they did it, how they loved, what their economic system was, what their religion was, all this we’re ignorant of.
All over the world there are other peoples who do remember what their roots are, people who are still in touch with their tribal history. What lies deep in their systems must also lie deep within our system. We have to learn to find it again.
We have to reclaim or rediscover some of their ancient wisdom, the wisdom of ancient Albion.
There’s no magic in this, no mystery, however. The mystery is that we keep ourselves in hell when we could be in heaven. That’s the mystery.
Note: Sid attracted criticism as well as praise during his life, and it would not be fair and balanced to present this article without acknowledging his failings. The best comments I have seen came from Jeremy Sandford, who explained how his “enthusiastic breaking down of what were then perceived as the shackles of sexual taboos, including boundaries of age, sex, or style, which were such a feature of the sixties, were in Sid’s case characterised by a fervour which, though not unusual then, became inappropriate when carried on into the time of vastly different sexual mores of the 80s and 90s.” He added that Sid, “although still admired by many, was not sufficiently able to change, or change enough, in these areas.”
After working with Sid on his unpublished memoirs, Jeremy Sandford noted, “Speaking very frankly of all of this and while defending his actions in many cases and roundly condemning his critics, there are areas in which the present day mature Sid feels he has erred and strayed into actions which he now regrets.” He also wrote that, in his memoirs, his “confession of mistakes, and what amounts to his first public confession and apology, gives to his book an added poignancy and resonance.” As I mentioned above, excerpts of the book are available here (scroll down for links that begin with “sid”), and I hope that someone will one day be able to make the whole manuscript available.
For further information about Sid Rawle, see the videos here, and the obituaries here, here and here. For information about the Beanfield and its impact on civil liberties, see this article I wrote for the Guardian last year, and this accompanying article, and also see the articles here and here, written to mark the 25th anniversary. Also see these articles about Stonehenge here, here and here (and also see here for information about a book of photos from the 1994 Solsbury Hill road protest). Also see the website of Alan Lodge, and the Festival Zone website.
Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook and Twitter). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in July 2010, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, currently on tour in the UK, and available on DVD here), and my definitive Guantánamo habeas list, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.
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36 Responses
rainbow jo says...
I really appreciate your clarity Andy, always good to read your articles. Haven’t seen Sid for many years, but I moved in the same circles for a while – Peace camps, festivals, Rainbow Village on the road… I also stayed behind at Savernake and can reliably report that at the moment we heard (over the police radio we were listening to) the order to go in and arrest everyone, Sid staggered out of his truck, beard aflame… Sid was always interesting to listen to, very involved with his children, and I counted Jules as a good friend. But like many young women, I found his sexual advances repulsive. We young feminists did have a problem with the patriarchal culture of much of the convoy!
...on September 8th, 2010 at 5:49 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks, Jo. Great to hear from you, and thanks for the insights. Hope all is well.
...on September 8th, 2010 at 10:11 pm
dicegeorge says...
Sid was a character I recognised at many Stonehenge Free Festivals, and I talked with him a few times when we were camping at Greenlands Farm Glastonbury summer of 1985 after Stonehenge… last time I saw him was here at Jeremy Sandford’s funeral – he was sitting in the snug when Viv shouted at him that he was dirty old man and he retreated to the garden – shame that his past goatism led to him hiding out in the forest for his last decades …
My links to Jeremy’s unfinished biography of Sid are:
http://www.jeremysandford.org.uk/jsarchive/sid-intro.html Contents and Introduction
http://www.jeremysandford.org.uk/jsarchive/sid-kinghipp.html
Contents
http://www.jeremysandford.org.uk/jsarchive/sid-exmoor.html
Exmoor
http://www.jeremysandford.org.uk/jsarchive/sid-dropout.html
Dropping Out in the Sixties
http://www.jeremysandford.org.uk/jsarchive/sid-johnlen1.html
Life on John Lennon’s Island
http://www.jeremysandford.org.uk/jsarchive/sid-johnlen2.html
Life on John Lennon’s Island (2)
A storm deprives the little community of most of their homes
http://www.jeremysandford.org.uk/jsarchive/sid-tipi1.html
Sid sees his first Tipi and resolves to own one
http://www.jeremysandford.org.uk/jsarchive/sid-tipi2.html
Advantages of Living in a Tipi
http://www.jeremysandford.org.uk/jsarchive/sid-convoy1.html
Sid invents the Peace Convoy
http://www.jeremysandford.org.uk/jsarchive/sid-convoy2.html
At Nostell Priory; Arrival of the Riot Police
http://www.jeremysandford.org.uk/jsarchive/sid-convoy3.html
The Vision of Albion
http://www.jeremysandford.org.uk/jsarchive/sid-omit.html
Bits omitted from Sid Rawle
[george]
...on September 9th, 2010 at 1:25 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Here are some comments from Facebook:
Dave Digger wrote:
Thats a lovely piece Andy.
...on September 9th, 2010 at 1:25 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Gareth Newnham wrote:
Great article.
...on September 9th, 2010 at 1:25 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Spencer Spratley wrote:
Lovely. Shared.
...on September 9th, 2010 at 1:26 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Neil Goodwin wrote:
i remember seeing a huge picture of sid at stonehenge 84 on a billboard in north london — i think it was selling life insurance or some such nonsense. the video history trust has a lengthy interview with Sid that gareth and i did for ‘Operation Solstice’. he used to ‘doss down’ in underpasses for the night and wear a little bell round his neck. He was a fascinating, forthright, colourful, creative mover and shaker, and will never be forgotten while I’m alive.
...on September 9th, 2010 at 1:26 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Stephen Summers wrote:
Thanks, well written article Andy. Some of the hippies tried to break the mores of family and communal living. That breaking of taboos rebounded on them as in Sids case as the times they were a changing.
The heroes of the counter culture revolution were not it seems without their flaws. RIP Sid
...on September 9th, 2010 at 1:29 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Dave Digger wrote:
Indeed, but I must remind everyone that Sid’s flaws (and indeed my own) were used and exaggerated by the forces of darkness in order to besmirch in an organised fashion, using spies and fellow travellers. One of them confessed this to me many years later. It worked (and still does).
...on September 9th, 2010 at 1:30 pm
Andy Worthington says...
This was my reply:
Thanks for the comments, everyone. Much appreciated. Anyone have any good anecdotes? I love this one from Simon Fairlie, which I received via a Yahoo group I’m part of:
Sid’s best stunt at the 71 [Glastonbury] festival was when a hot dog salesman set up his van right in front of the pyramid stage. Sid sent his minions out to hassle for donations, drove off to Bristol and bought hundreds of rolls and sausages, and then set up a “free hot dog” stand right next to the salesman — who packed up and drove off.
...on September 9th, 2010 at 1:56 pm
Andy Worthington says...
And here, finally, is a mainstream obituary — in the Daily Telegraph, no less:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/7992526/Sid-Rawle.html
Sid Rawle, who has died aged 64, was the so-called King of the Hippies, a veteran of the New Age movement of the 1970s and a fervent follower of the alternative lifestyle.
He was also a serial squatter, having occupied flats, houses, common land, forests, an entire village in Wales, boats, an Irish island, an Army camp and – incurring royal displeasure – Windsor Great Park. His argument was that since young men and women could be called upon to die for their country in time of war, it was only fair that each should have a right to a few square yards of meadow or mountain for themselves.
“In the end,” he declared, “it all gets back to land.” Rawle believed that it was becoming harder for ordinary people to get access to land, and his efforts to ensure it made him something of a folk hero. “Shared out equally,” he noted, “there would be a couple of acres for every adult living in Britain. That would mean each family or group could have a reasonably-sized smallholding of 10 or 20 acres and learn once again to become self-sufficient.”
Sidney William Rawle was born (he believed reincarnated) on October 1 1945 at Bridgwater, Somerset, the son of a sheep farmer on Exmoor who was forced to sell up and become a labourer. Educated at Minehead Comprehensive (now the West Somerset Community College), he was impressed by the self-sufficiency he witnessed on neighbouring smallholdings, and as a teenager in the late 1950s became a beatnik, drifting to the artists’ colony at St Ives in Cornwall, living on the beach and sleeping on the sea wall.
When he was 16 he traced his mother, who had left home when he was six, to Slough, and moved to live with her there. Having worked variously as a cowman, wine waiter, cellarman and gravedigger, Rawle became a militant shop steward for the Amalgamated Engineering Union, in which role he organised a strike by Asian workers at a local factory and, in his free time, a love-in at the town’s municipal gardens.
Rawle resented being described as a layabout, but would earn the ire of his young wife who complained that “Sid seemed to think people who worked were out of their minds”. When he heard of a small village on the north Wales coast that had been abandoned after the war, he and 20 or so followers occupied it for several weeks before being evicted.
In London in 1969, he was among a group of squatters called the London Street Commune which occupied an abandoned 100-room house at 144 Piccadilly as a protest against property development in Mayfair. Having daubed “Property is Theft” in huge letters on the wall, they were duly evicted by police. The papers headlined the “Fall of the Hippy Castle” and three years later the building was demolished.
In 1971 Rawle helped Michael Eavis organise the first Glastonbury Festival, and was the only person to make a profit from it by cooking up a huge cauldron of fruit and vegetables discarded from Bristol market. The same year he started a commune on Dorinish, an island off the coast of Co Mayo in Ireland, which the Beatle John Lennon bought as a hideaway in 1967. Rawle lived there until 1973.
Then, at the head of the Camden Federation of Squatters, he led 200 hippies in a takeover of the local council chamber, smashing up a wooden rostrum and hurling the gold municipal mace to the ground in a demonstration against plans to evict them from council property.
But a much bigger battle involved Crown land at Windsor Great Park, where Rawle had helped establish a free (but illegal) Festival of the People on the royal meadows in 1972. Efforts by the Crown Estate to ban it proved unavailing (reportedly inducing fury in the festival’s neighbour, the Duke of Edinburgh, as he balefully surveyed the scene from Windsor Castle), and in 1974 the festival was broken up by police, who made 200 arrests for drugs and violence.
The following year Rawle was jailed for three months for promoting a similar event in the International Times, the underground paper of which he had by then become editor. Freed after four weeks, he set about organising an alternative festival on a site at a derelict paratroopers’ base at Watchfield, Oxfordshire, which went ahead in August 1975.
As Rawle, walkie-talkie in hand, took up position in his command post in the old control tower, uniformed police and drug squad officers moved in on with some 3,000 flute-toting, sandal-shod hippies, some of whom were to be seen copulating openly. “No one knows what’s going on,” he confessed, “and nobody cares.”
The following year, he founded the TeePee Valley hippy community at a deserted village in west Wales, before creating, in the early 1980s, a group of wandering New Age travellers known as the Peace Convoy. He eventually left the convoy shortly after what became known as the “Battle of the Beanfield” in June 1985, when police clashed with New Age travellers who were trying to drive their ramshackle trucks and trailers to the Stonehenge Free Festival.
Over the years Rawle’s political allegiances swung between non-alignment and the Ecology Party (later the Green Party), with which he helped to set up the first “Green Gathering”. In 1983 he had helped to establish the Rainbow ecological village at Molesworth, Cambridgeshire, on land leased to the American Air Force and used as a base for cruise missiles. Rawle joined a “Peace Camp” for anti-nuclear protesters along part of the perimeter fence, and was evicted by police and troops in February 1985.
Rawle was a burly red-bearded six-footer with a mane of ginger hair, invariably clad in boiler suit, brightly-coloured shawls, and tapestry hat, with strings of beads and animal teeth rattling at his throat.
In 1997 the Halifax Building Society used a picture of him without his permission in an advertising campaign. The photograph dated from 1982 when Rawle was presiding at a baby-naming ceremony at the Stonehenge Free Festival. Above his image was a speech bubble with the slogan: “Be Part Of Something Big, Man”. Rawle unsuccessfully tried to sue the company.
After his dalliance with the Green Party, Rawle joined the Rainbow Circle, a group organising camps and festivals for hippies, pagans, alternative healers and their patients to “reconnect with nature”. He also helped run the Rainbow 2000 alternative lifestyle camps near Westbury-on-Severn.
It was there that he collapsed and died on August 31 as he was packing up this year’s Rainbow 2000 Camp.
Sid Rawle latterly divided his time between a series of summer camps (where he lived in a converted railway van), and a commune at Hillersland, near Coleford in the Forest of Dean. An early marriage ended in divorce, and having lived communally for more than 40 years, he is survived by seven children.
...on September 9th, 2010 at 5:54 pm
Jason says...
Hi, great piece on Sid, never knew him but saw him around a lot in the late 70’s early 80’s. You don’t by any chance have a bigger picture of Stonehenge ’84? I’d love a look at those faces. Far left beardy with hat (green) George Firshoff, worked for ‘self help’ Housing in Bristol, but I think he may now have passed too.
Best Jason
...on September 10th, 2010 at 7:48 am
Minkie says...
I knew Sid closely from before 144 Piccadilly until after Watchfield.
I will miss his Cornish burr, his determined hippydom and his taste in greasy spoon fry-ups..
Yes he was friendly, yes he liked to think himself a ladies’ man which, to some degree he was, but in my day relationships were negotiated – he must have gone ‘weird’ in later days.
Farewell my Bear of Little Brain
...on September 10th, 2010 at 3:01 pm
Tibetan tony says...
mmmmmm sad to hear about sid. Had quite a long love & hate relationship tro many years and many struggles. No doubt he inspired a lot of people and put them on a good path
...on September 24th, 2010 at 2:34 pm
Ploughshares Jeanne says...
the world is a drabber place without Sid. He certainly had a view of women that was at odds with feminist thinking but I never found him pushy. He looked after those he considered disadvantaged and as far as I could see he faithfully followed his own moral code. I remember him and Jules with great affection. Although it must be twenty years since I’ve seen them, I miss them still. I hope his spirit lives on.
...on November 23rd, 2010 at 2:58 pm
Jim..........from the Warped Ones! says...
I remember Sid well. I don’t think he liked us lot, but i always had respect for him as one of the founders of the Free festival movement. God bless him, at least he made a mark on this world. I will always remember those days as the best in my life.
...on November 29th, 2010 at 10:44 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks for the comment, Jim. Good to hear from you.
...on November 29th, 2010 at 10:47 pm
Anastacia Stonechild says...
Thanks for the detailed write up on my Dad. . . I miss him so much. . . . . Thanks again.
Staci.
...on December 9th, 2010 at 11:26 pm
bev richardson says...
ha what to say well i knew sid closely for many years and visited him and jules was going to visit him last autumn but time caught up with us sadly .. love him or leave him he was a power of our generation and in his way a great man . my own thoughts of him are full of love and respect for all he did by the by he was an exmoor farm lad not a cornish man as some say…
it was sid who gave del and me our first tipi who drove his old rubber duck to the far north shore of scotland to bring us home to the valley a beloved brother warts an all … many who professed to loath him did so for the same reasons as so many loved him ..cant win them all …
for myself he is missed his quick wit and humor his insight and honest outspoken words the so called alternative society could do with people of his commitment and talent now….
so to my brother sid fair well good man.. love luck and laughter bev.
...on July 18th, 2011 at 2:00 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Great to hear from you, Bev. Very glad that you’re obviously still happy and well.
...on July 18th, 2011 at 3:39 pm
Bloggulator says...
I recall Sid at so many of those wonderful events of the 1970s and 1980s in which the people explored self-expression, liberty, sustainability and self-policing. This was a movement with which the UK (and US) authorities were, as expected, most uncomfortable; I was one of many thousands who were on the sharp end of their institutionalized paranoia.
When real history looks back at those times unfettered by the mandates of current politics, it will show that the ‘hippies’ were absolutely correct: we have but one planet, and we need to be responsible stewards. If not, Mother Nature will inevitably react to our collective irresponsibility and consign humanity to the swing-top filing-cabinet of evolutionary failure. We are already witnessing the acceleration of the decline of the habitability of Earth for humankind.
Sid Rawle knew. RIP.
...on September 5th, 2011 at 8:00 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks, Bloggulator. Very good to hear from you, and thanks for the analysis of where we are now, and what the “hippies” knew.
...on September 5th, 2011 at 8:32 pm
Jim Fitzsimmons says...
Sid was a great guy. He often visited me in my teepee in tipi valley. He was humble enough to listen to my wife’s bedtime bible stories to our children. Then we would talk on serious nonsense for hours as the fire flickered fondly. He would then depart like an ancient king to his tipi. We were homeless and it was Sid that sorted out a tipi for us. We have never ever forgotten his kindness that winters day in Cwmdu. Lots of love to all the kids, Jim Fitzsimmons, Annette and our three kids.
...on January 20th, 2012 at 12:45 am
Andy Worthington says...
Lovely memories. Thanks, Jim.
...on January 20th, 2012 at 12:57 am
Andy Worthington says...
Here’s the Guardian obituary by John May on September 15, 2010:
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/sep/15/sid-rawle-obituary
Sid Rawle obituary
‘King of the Hippies’, he fought for love, peace and land
A big burly man with a mane of ginger and a powerful voice to match, Sid Rawle, who has died aged 64 of a heart attack, achieved tabloid infamy as the “King of the Hippies”. Rawle – an unmistakable and charismatic figure who often dressed in long robes or monk outfits – played a prominent role in the squatting and commune movement of the 1960s, in the free festivals at Windsor and Stonehenge in the 70s, and in the birth of the Peace Convoy and the new age travellers movement.
He was a solitary child, born in Exford, Somerset, to a farmer whose family had lived on Exmoor for generations, and his Romany wife. The young Sid roamed the hills, checking the sheep, observing the deer herds and absorbing the wilderness around him so intensely that he would later describe himself as being “very strongly a creature of Exmoor and those hills”.
When he was six, his mother left and his father remarried. Sid’s difficult relationship with his stepmother made for an unhappy home, and he spent as much time as possible at his uncle Sam’s farm, which he always talked about in idyllic terms. At school he was a slow learner (dyslexia was not recognised at that time), and he emerged at the age of 15, able to read but not to write.
His prospects looked grim. The family farm had been sold as the result of a squabble over an inheritance, forcing his father to seek work as a shepherd. Sid recalled later: “I have somewhere deep within me a resentment of my elders because they did not make a space for me in that community.”
Forced by his father to leave home, he tracked down his mother in Slough, Berkshire, and moved in with her. Here he worked as a park attendant, as a shop steward for the National Union of Public Employees, and had a leading role with the town branch of the Communist party, organising a strike in a factory and a love-in in the municipal gardens.
After spending some time in St Ives, Cornwall, hanging out with beatniks, he moved to London in the mid-60s and set up what the writer Richard Neville called an “ultra-hippy cult” known as the Hyde Park Diggers. By the spring of 1968, the Diggers had more than 200 members, who played a prominent role in the squatting movement and, in September 1969, participated in the six-day occupation by the London Street Commune of 144 Piccadilly, a neglected 100-room mansion.
Sid was soon summoned to the Beatles’ headquarters to meet John Lennon, who offered him custodianship of an island he had bought in 1967 in Clew Bay, off the coast of County Mayo. In 1971 Sid recruited a motley group of some 30 people to start a new life there. The tiny island of Dorinish was, it turned out, virtually uninhabitable and plagued by powerful storms. Yet somehow they survived there for almost two years, living in tents before abandoning the project.
Sid travelled frequently back to Britain. He and the Diggers gave away free food at the 1971 Glastonbury fayre and, more significantly, worked alongside Bill “Ubi” Dwyer to establish a free festival in Windsor Great Park in 1972. Attendance rose from 700 in the first year to around 7,000 the next. In 1974 the police cleared the site, arresting 200 people. The police tactics were heavily criticised and Sid played a major role in persuading the government to provide a new site at an abandoned airbase at Watchfield, Oxfordshire, where he staged a nine-day people’s free festival, which attracted a large, peaceable crowd in 1975.
By then, Wally Hope had established a free festival at Stonehenge. After Wally’s death in 1975, Sid became a key figure in the summer solstice celebrations there from 1976 to 1984, performing an almost priestly role. During this period, he also established himself as a resident in the Tipi Valley community in Carmarthenshire, Wales, before creating the Peace Convoy which, in 1981, travelled from Stonehenge to Greenham Common in Berkshire to support the women’s peace camp.
In 1982 Sid established the first Green Gathering at Worthy Farm, Glastonbury, which attracted more than 5,000 people. The following year he set up the Rainbow Village at the disused US airbase at Molesworth, Cambridgeshire, a proposed cruise missile site. The camp was broken up by police on 6 February 1985. These anti-war activities, and the growing size of the Stonehenge festival and the convoy, prompted the Battle of the Beanfield on 1 June 1985, when around 1,300 police officers ambushed the convoy in Wiltshire and more than 500 people were arrested.
Sid retired from the fray to the Forest of Dean, where he continued his work through numerous smaller camps and festivals. His heart attack occurred as he sat in a chair by the campfire at the end of his annual SuperSpirit summer camp.
In his manifesto The Vision of Albion, Sid wrote: “In the end it all gets back to land. Looking back, I see a link that runs through my life [that] concerns the right to land and property on it.” He believed that the land in Britain should be shared equitably, so that all could own a couple of acres in order to be able to sustain themselves.
Sid lived communally for more than 30 years and is known to have fathered seven children by various mothers.
• Sidney William Rawle, activist, born 1 October 1945; died 31 August 2010
...on June 21st, 2015 at 7:30 pm
Brian Assiter says...
What the fuck was it? !98 what? My ex partner and present best friend were living legally or squatting in an upstairs flat which had a wooden staircase down to the back unkempt jungle of weeds and nettles! One afternoon, Sid bowls on by and hangs out for a while getting noisier and more pushy in his overt sexual overtures toward my partner, thus enraging my ram spirit and incurring my ire to the extent that i opened the back door to the outside steps to the garden, and pushed him out and he tumbled head over heals down to the foot of the stair where he jerked round and the just lay there panting. Truly i was at first afraid that i had seriously injured him but eventually he hauled humself up and staggering and swearing almost uninteligently he exited the property via a side gate.and i never saw him again. I had lived in San Francisco in the sixties and yes there was a general air of promiscuity in the country and the hippie movement but it was as far as i was concerned mostly having sexual encounters often engineered but without trouble with college girls nurses anybody really. My days were filled with repeated sexual activity and working, kind of four on the go most times..as if i were gathering information for a novel,or sexual behavior report for college…Names got juggled about and a bad memory or dyslexia caused me many hassles but unlike Sid, apparently i changed with the times somewhat but tho i felt i had the right to score if i could i used my head and never assumed a right to any woman or that a male partner should by rights surrender access or allow his access to ones partner! Now, what ur contact with Sid had been i cannot recall. often if there is unpleasantness with an individual one just forgets about that person and moves right along. I am sure my ex would remember the connection, but we knew he was the leader of the Tee Pee people for sure.I was pretty tolerant of people but i knew he had this attitude that he could have anyone he chose. He probably couldn’t but i imagined after the incident that he had been thrown out of many a home by an irate partner or asked in no uncertain terms just to leave. I would of course put his behavior down as delusions of grandeur. He loved his uniforms for sure and changed them on a whim adapting Mongolian gear with monks robes etc etc. of course he wasn’t the only one! I at one time mosyed around in a Tibetan poncho baggy pants and Tibetan yak fur boots. I do remember i had multiple relationships going on and really, i admit it, exploited all of them. I had heard the father of two tell me forget my daughter we are moving to Morocco and you will never see or corrupt her again! etc.Then i had a stroke caused by self abuse and too much high times out of moderation and in visiting me they discovered my duplicity and i ended up with no one, An old man, looking back and sucking his teeth says truthfully, ”I had countless sexual encounters. Caught the clap and other sexual deceases, oh yes and crabs! Would i be different now if i was still sexually active? Yes, probably Picasso and many others were, i couldn’t imagine that i would be any different! Well, one thing leads to another, i guess! We men are as they say, given the charm and a modicum of looks combined with a big penis are the same. But Sid? Got, as i say…Delusions of Grandeur!
...on June 22nd, 2015 at 4:15 am
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks for your fascinating account, Brian. I only met Sid once, in the summer of 2004 at his camp near the River Severn, with the historian Ronald Hutton, so I have no first-hand knowledge of his “delusions of grandeur”, as you describe them. I appreciate your honesty, about Sid, about yourself, and about men in general.
...on June 22nd, 2015 at 9:26 am
Phoebe Stonechild says...
I am Sids daughter.. Shame on you if you have nothing better to do than go on to the Internet and speak bad of a man that has been dead for nearly 5 years!!! I know for a fact that my dad was not what some bitter old hippies think, I grew up with these so called victims and they were and are my friends and they have told me that it was total nonsense! Yes my dad slept with a lot of women ( didn’t you all) and yes he had women throwing themselves at him and visa versa, but that was life back then!!! he was not hiding in the forest or any other nonsense he was happily bringing up a family and having a life that wasn’t full of horrible jealous people!!! Anyway my point is – why do you have to be so cruel when he is dead and can’t defend himself and all you are doing is hurting an already devistated family??? Look in the mirror because from where I’m standing you are the evil ones! Watch out karma bites you in the ass!!!
...on November 29th, 2015 at 8:49 pm
Phoebe Stonechild says...
Also thank you to the many people on here that have left nice memories! I don’t mean to come across harsh or bitter just my family have had lots of trolling and nastiness thrown our way since my dads passing and it hurts to think that people would be so evil to a grieving family! My dad brought us up with morals, understanding and compassion, traits that unbelievably seem to be missing with so many of these so called (peaceful and loving hippies). Also lots of these obituaries / stories about my dad portray him as a young man and forget about the 30 years he spent with my mother bringing up a family! He was a loving, caring and doting husband and father that took us away from the traveler scene because my mother didn’t want us around all the drugs and nastiness of site living not because he was ashamed! He did what was best for his wife, children and grandchildren and died surrounded by a large family that loved and adored him! Please remember when posting on sites like this if it was your family reading the comment after your passing would you be happy??? If the answer is no have some morals and compassion and wether you think it or not keep it to yourself!!!
...on November 29th, 2015 at 9:27 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Hi Phoebe,
Very good to hear from you. I am very pleased to have met your dad at the Super Spirit camp in 2004, when I rolled up and there he was sitting with the historian Ronald Hutton! Over the course of the weekend, I did a few talks, which your dad enlivened considerably with his own memories!
...on November 30th, 2015 at 11:47 am
cosmic john says...
i am a Krsna monk and knew Sid…he was very favourable to Krsna and his devotees and liked prasadum and to chant Hare Krsna. he would listen politely when i would do bajans (chanting singing) and talk about Krsna and the soul, karma etc. I found him to be warm hearted with spiritual interest but very earthy as well.with a love of Mother Earth. God bless him. Aum shanti Hari. caran’.
...on January 13th, 2017 at 3:49 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks, cosmic john. Good to hear from you.
...on January 13th, 2017 at 5:18 pm
David Taylor says...
Hi Andy,
Well written piece but wrong on some significant facts. Sid had nothing to do with organising the Ecology Party Summer Gathering at Worthy Farm in 1980, although he did attend along with quite a few others from Talley Valley. Likewise he had nothing at all to do with the organisation of the first Green Gathering in 1982 (which grew out of the Ecology Party Summer Gathering). That event was organised by the Green Collective.
And finally he had nothing to do with oranising the occupation of RAF Molesworth in 1984. The occupation began under cover of a green gathering, turned into the Green Village and then into the Rainbow Fields Village. Again, that was organised by the Green Collective. Sid attended but had nothing to do with setting it up. He later became treasurer of the village. That’s all.
I can’t comment on the other things that have been attributed to Sid as I wasn’t involved, but on these items I can be quite categorical as I was organising them.
...on July 25th, 2021 at 3:35 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Good to hear from you, David, and thanks for your corrections to the historical record.
...on July 25th, 2021 at 11:00 pm
Michael McGrath says...
I met with Sid in Gospel Oak 1974, moved to my own squat across from his at 28 Southampton Road that was comfy, clean and with the electric on.
Sid arrived with a dark attractive Jewish Girl called Suzanne Berger one evening, of wealthy people but doing her thing in Hippy Valley. Her niece became a Labour MP in recent times. He asked me to put her up and she made a lovely oriental habitat out of the cellar.
I helped as part of the community. Sid asked me to get a few fellow Irish lads to help form a ‘self police’ unit to stop some ripping off that had escalated and I busied myself with that.
I found him to be a really honest man, very human and most kind. He did have more women than the rest of us but they were always more than willing. We had fascinating conversations as we walked around Camden where I could see he was a genuine idealist.
He looked after his kids, saw they were fed and dressed and studying, His wife Marie told me he was totally honest with her about the other women and they were staying together for the kids at the time and that’s the truth.
He hardly drank at all, would just sip at a bottle of light ale, and was off all dope – he threw out fellows for doing dope in his living room, complaining they had his dog doped – the poor animal was on its back with all four legs rigid in the air from inhaling the smoke.
I was there six months when I decided to move on back up to my brother in Birmingham. I went out onto the road by High Barnet, was picked up by three traditional witches, we went well out of our way and they left me off in Reading. I went straight across the road to a pub, ordered a drink at the bar when someone tapped me on the shoulder – It was Sid’s PRO, my old friend Frank Harris. Talk about a magical summer!
Back in Ireland I led the return of the druids to the Hill of Tara in 1993. I’ve completed a book recently, waiting to be published by Mercier Press in Cork, THE WISDOM OF THE IRISH DRUIDS that I have dedicated to Sid and Frank and all the lovely 70s anarchists of the Chalk Farm Commune of 1974 and of BIT over in Westbourne Park too. The book is available on Amazon (plug).
Sid had a great love of Ireland and the Irish, though the Irish women were always too clever for him, he admitted haw haw haw.
Frank Harris was a far greater womaniser, Sid was only crawling after Frank in that regard. They were great friends, all very genuine back in the day.
My deepest sympathies to his family, they can all be very proud of their lovely Dad today.
...on May 26th, 2023 at 10:19 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks for those lovely memories, Michael. Very good to hear from you, and good luck with your book.
...on May 26th, 2023 at 11:46 pm