13 Facts About Sid Rawle

Sidney William Rawle was a British campaigner for peace and land rights, free festival organiser, and a former leader of the London squatters movement.

Sid Rawle was born in Bridgwater, Somerset, on 1 October 1945.

Sid Rawle was raised by his father and educated at Exton Village School and Minehead Comprehensive School.

Sid Rawle 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.

Sid Rawle formed the Digger Action Movement, with Barry Norcott and John Gillatt, which brought him into contact with John Lennon.

Sid Rawle was involved in the free festival movement, as an organiser of the Windsor Free Festivals, and the 1974 Stonehenge Free Festival.

In 1970, John Lennon invited Sid Rawle to establish a commune on Dorinish, a small island in Clew Bay, Ireland, which Lennon had owned since 1967.

Sid Rawle stayed at Tipi Valley until 1982 when he began to live permanently on the road and at convoy-associated communities.

In 1985 the Peace Convoy was routed by violent police action at what became known as the Battle of the Beanfield; Sid Rawle had not yet moved on from the previous night's camp at Savernake Forest.

Sid Rawle wrote The Vision of Albion, an unpublished but widely publicised manifesto, in which he stated:.

Sid Rawle eventually settled with his family at Hillersland near Berry Hill in the Forest of Dean, where he remained till his death at the age of 64.

Sid Rawle was sitting in a chair by the outside fire, while the last Rainbow 2000 Camp of the season was being packed down by the crew, when he collapsed and died on 31 August, 2010 from a heart attack.

Sid Rawle had at least seven children, by different mothers.