Sid Rawle - Activist Campaigner and founder of the Forest Fayre. UK. Glastobury June 1992.
Sid Rawle at Glastonbury Festival 1992. Dubbed by the tabloid press as ‘King of the Hippy’s’. Sid was a Hippy environmentalist, activist and campaigner from the early 1960s onwards. Sid was also a prominent figure in the UK squatting and free festival movement (forming the uber-hippy coalition known as the Hyde park Diggers in the early 60s.
Sid started life in rural Somerset, and after spending his early years on his uncles farm on Exmoor he developed a passion for the land and land rights. He spent decades of campaigning and his involvement with Oak Dragon and Rainbow Circle camps, which were small festivals with a spiritual leaning, he set up his own organisation, ‘Rainbow 2000’ . This was held a number of camps around the English countryside each summer. In 1976 he established the Tipi Valley near Llandeilo in Wales, where he lived for almost a decade. He eventually settled with his family at Hillersland near Berry Hill in the Forest of Dean, where he ran the highly successful Forest Fayre for several years. He was sitting in a chair around the fire circle, 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.